‘I’m bored.’

Kharth didn’t even look up from the field station console’s display as she chucked a PADD at the speaker. ‘Keep that up, and I’ll have you reassigned again, Shep.’

Cackling, Shepherd picked up the errant PADD from the dirt but stayed bent over to mime a bow. ‘Yes, almighty XO. Your wish is my command.’

Kharth’s eyes snapped up. ‘You promised this wouldn’t be weird.’

‘I promised it wouldn’t be awkward,’ Shepherd pointed out, finally wandering over. ‘If I’d said weird, you should have called me a liar. Besides, you know better than to leave me unoccupied. That’s just bad personnel management.’

Kharth snatched the PADD off her and looked back at the field station console without another word. She’d been as surprised as anyone when the news came from Commodore Rourke of transfers to Endeavour. Losing T’Varel was to be expected; the veteran Vulcan was more valuable in a myriad of places than one engine room in the wake of Frontier Day. Her successor, the amiable Lieutenant Commander Perrek, seemed to be settling in well. But when Valance said Zihan Shepherd was transferring back aboard, Kharth had assumed she was about to lose the post of XO. That had come with mixed feelings; Shepherd was a more proven hand in command and outranked her, even if Kharth had been in service longer. She’d never had ambitions to move into red, but she’d barely made the shift, and losing it so soon would be a blow.

Then Valance had said Shepherd would be coming in as senior officer of the watch, essentially third in command, there to focus on shipboard and bridge operations while freeing up Kharth to focus on personnel management and mission ops. It was effectively a demotion for Shepherd, once Endeavour’s XO, trusted on Gateway Station to command the USS Tempest.

When she’d boarded, Shepherd’s explanation had been a shrug and the simple statement of, ‘I wanted something to do.’ At Kharth’s suspicious expression, she’d sighed. ‘With the Swiftsure, Ranger, and Redemption about now, I don’t go more than five light-years from the station. And even then, it’s to survey a quasar or pick up after Dyke Logistics or escort some crappy shipment from Alfheim. I’m bored, K.’

It was a little more complex than that. Shepherd wasn’t just a new senior officer; she was effectively the final third of a command triangle. Kharth and Valance had discussed their shortcomings openly and frankly, and what they lacked, Shepherd had in spades. With her, they finally had that ‘people person.’ And, either to soften the blow to Shepherd’s prestige or as a genuine demonstration of how far that relationship had come, Rourke had padded her billet, supplementing her responsibilities to Endeavour with more on a strategic level for the squadron in the field.

That all put Shepherd in the position of joining teams in the field now Endeavour was three weeks into surveying the Koperion system. Discovered early in the squadron’s arrival at the sector, all they knew for sure was that the system had been artificially cultivated.

‘I truly think it’s a garden world,’ Doctor Winters said as he padded up the slope with Commander Airex to interrupt their command-level bickering. They had been working their way through the planets of Koperion, sending survey teams to the surfaces, and Airex had identified this one, Koperion VI, as one of – apparently – the most interestingly diverse. Although neither Kharth nor Shep were experts in planetary science, they’d taken this chance to stretch their legs, which Kharth had thought would include more fieldwork for her, and Shepherd had plainly thought might include a comfy chair in the sun.

They’d set up the field station on a rise with what Kharth thought was a rather heart-stopping view of tall evergreens stretching as far as the eye could see. Shepherd had just sniffed and said, ‘Why do so many planets look like Canada?’ and refused to explain further.

‘I don’t know what a “garden world” is, Doctor,’ Kharth told Winters as he returned. The CMO was an expert in xeno-medicine and was ostensibly there to help with the wildlife surveys, but Kharth suspected he was just another rubber-necker wanting to get his boots on the ground.

‘It’s a concept we’re developing,’ Airex offered, and caught the water bottle Shepherd tossed him from the coolbox by the console. ‘As the planets are this old, are teeming with this much life, and haven’t shown any indication of intelligent life evolving, they seem… cultivated.’ He shrugged. ‘That and the wandering comets picking up botanical samples from planets with comparable biomes.’

‘Any update on that?’ Shepherd asked eagerly. They hadn’t picked the location of this fieldsite at random. Endeavour had tracked a comet to the system only for it to shatter itself into parts that had landed on the worlds of Koperion. The one on Koperion VI had come down not far from here.

‘It’s like the others,’ Airex said with a grimace. ‘The comet continued to break up in the atmosphere. The chunk we’ve found in the valley is less than fifty centimetres in diameter. But I am extremely unhappy with the idea of approaching it. I don’t know what a physical disturbance might do to this process.’

‘But,’ Winters pressed on, ‘we did find a flower that isn’t native to this planet.’

Kharth wanted to be interested. But her scientific education meant she’d grasped the general concept of comets hoovering up samples from all manner of other planets so they could thrive in this system and struggled to be impressed by the micro-level botanical implications. And as XO, she had to be a little bit more encouraging than she wanted to be.

In the end, she managed to say, ‘Cool.’

‘We’re keeping to scans, not samples,’ Airex said rather drily, plainly picking up on her tone. ‘There’s also some tracks suggesting small animal life; I’m hoping we spot some.’

‘There isn’t, I assume,’ Kharth ventured, ‘any further clues about who did all of this?’

‘Oh,’ said Winters, like he’d forgotten that was an objective. ‘No.’

The only reason Kharth didn’t roll her eyes was the comm panel on the console going off. ‘Endeavour to away team. The captain wants you back aboard on the double.’

Kharth frowned. Ensign Kally didn’t normally sound so urgent. ‘We’re good to beam back, Endeavour. What’s going on?’

A moment later, Valance’s voice came on instead. ‘Endeavour’s being recalled.’ There was another pause, then, ‘The Ranger’s discovered wreckage of a Borg ship.’

There were no more questions, no more hesitation. Orders were given to the rest of the survey teams wandering the wilderness, and in less than a minute, they were in Endeavour’s transporter room. Winters returned to Sickbay, and Airex headed to stow his gear in the science labs, but Kharth and Shepherd made a bee-line for a turbolift for the bridge.

‘This can’t be a coincidence,’ Kharth muttered. ‘It’s been, what, six weeks? Seven? Frontier Day must have just been the start.’

‘We don’t know anything yet, K,’ Shepherd reminded her. ‘And this is wreckage. Picard’s reports say the Borg were all fucked up at Jupiter. Maybe this is some of that.’

Kharth forced her breathing to slow, tapping her foot as she waited for the turbolift to arrive. ‘You’re right,’ she said begrudgingly. The XO should be thinking like this. Not be the one who needs to be levelled out. That, at least, helped her think more clearly. ‘Whatever Valance knows, the crew’s going to have a difficult time with this. We’ll have to step up.’

‘Right,’ Shepherd said as they stepped into the turbolift. ‘Frontier Day hit a lot of them real hard.’ She audibly hesitated. ‘We should talk to Logan.’

Kharth gritted her teeth. Jack Logan had been invaluable in guiding the young officers who’d been assimilated on Frontier Day through the traumatic aftermath. ‘He’ll have his finger on the pulse, yes.’

‘Is today the day I get told what’s going on with you two?’

‘No,’ Kharth said firmly. ‘But I’ll talk to him. Because if the Borg are rumbling again, he’s going to be having a hard time, too.’

Shepherd blew out her cheeks. ‘Didn’t think of that.’

For a moment, Kharth wondered if Shepherd was patronising her. Then the turbolift slowed to admit them to the bridge, and her burgeoning insecurities about her friend’s return stopped being her most pressing issue. She bounded through the doors into the buzzing activity of Endeavour’s beating heart. ‘What do we have?’

Valance was on her feet but gave them only an acknowledging nod before she turned to the fore. ‘Away teams are all back aboard? Shuttles docked?’

‘Aye, Captain,’ confirmed Athaka at Ops.

‘Set a course for the Lockney system, Lindgren,’ Valance instructed coolly. ‘Maximum warp.’

‘Lockney?’ Kharth headed for the command chairs as Shepherd took her post at the rear left of the bridge. ‘That’s not where the Ranger is monitoring.’

‘It’s not,’ said Valance, turning away from the fore as Endeavour sped up for their escape from the gravitic pull of the Koperion system so they could jump to warp. ‘The Ranger picked up what we now believe was the collapse of a transwarp conduit. A Borg Cube was inside it. We don’t know what happened first – a systems failure on the Cube causing the conduit’s collapse or the conduit’s collapse impacting the Cube. But the transwarp conduit collapsed across light-years, destroying the Cube.’

‘Lockney is where the wreckage ended up?’ Kharth said.

‘Lockney is where the highest percentage of wreckage we’ve detected so far has ended up.’ Logan’s voice was clipped, more taut than she thought she’d ever heard him – even when the Borg had taken Endeavour’s bridge. ‘The Ranger spotted wreckage, too. Reports are coming in of other sightings of remains.’

Kharth’s eyebrows hit her hairline. ‘A Borg Cube has been destroyed and its wreckage strewn across the sector?’

‘And Cubes are resilient,’ Logan said. ‘They need a very small percentage of systems to remain at least partially operational. So there could be active drones on wreckage containing all manner of active systems.’

‘Commodore Rourke’s heading to Lockney on the Redemption,’ Valance said. ‘That’s where we’ll take stock. More bad news: Thawn and Beckett are coming back.’

There was half-a-heartbeat’s pause at this shift in tone, then Shepherd deadpanned, ‘I always hated them.’

‘I mean,’ Valance pressed on, visibly unimpressed by the glibness, ‘they’ve reported picking something up that was being sold at Sot Thryfar. Borg technology. Not from this Cube. They’ll be joining us at Lockney.’

Another silence, blunted only by the hum of the engines as Endeavour escaped the Koperion system. As if unabashed by Valance’s chiding, it was again Shepherd who piped up. ‘When we see them,’ she said, ‘someone should point out most people just bring back some tourist-y crap from vacation.’