The power signature was so weak, even Thawn had struggled to pick out its exact location from the bridge. A knot of the Cube’s debris had sunk into orbit of one of the moons of Lockney, none of it very large but already forming a clutch of Borg wreckage. Most of it was dead, disconnected chunks of hull or bulkheads or hardware, but somewhere in the cluster, something gleamed.

‘Redemption is dealing with the main wreckage and hoovering up anything that’s hitting the surface anywhere in the system,’ Kharth explained to Shepherd as she slid into the booth across from her in the Round Table with a fresh mug of coffee. ‘Now we’ve got Cortez with us, they deal with the mess, we deal with the priority targets.’

Shepherd made a face. ‘You’re taking the Excalibur out there, aren’t you.’ At Kharth’s nod, she sighed. ‘I don’t get to go?’

‘Captain wants you with the bridge team.’ Kharth had a swig of coffee and shrugged. ‘Shipboard operations is your priority. I get the field.’

‘I know, I know. You don’t even need a pilot?’

‘I have a pilot. It’s Lindgren. Cortez wants Thawn, too.’

‘So who’s even left on the bridge team to monitor?’

‘Fox needs more time at helm. Athaka’s been fine in Ops for weeks. I’m not bringing Airex or Logan.’

‘You’re not bringing Logan.’ Shepherd tilted her head. ‘He’s Chief of Security.’

‘I’m a security officer.’

‘A security officer’s there to make sure the team is safe. You’re the XO – your priority is the mission objectives. And Logan knows about this stuff.’

‘He’ll be a comm-call away.’ Kharth tried to not scowl. ‘And you’re right – I am the XO. I decide who goes on my away mission. I’m bringing Qadir, anyway.’

Shepherd looked like she might argue, then shut her mouth. ‘Okay,’ she said at length. ‘This just isn’t like anything you’ve done before – we’ve done before.’

‘That doesn’t,’ Kharth said with a faint bite, ‘sound much like “okay.”’ Her eyes flickered to the doors as they opened, and she grabbed her mug when Cortez entered. ‘Oh, shoot, I gotta go.’

But Cortez waved her back down as she spotted them and headed over. ‘You kidding, Sae? I’m not going in there without a coffee. Because what I really need before going onto a creepy-ass chunk of Borg ship is to pump more caffeine into my adrenaline system.’

The tension between Kharth and Shepherd subsided, and the XO waited for Cortez to get her own drink and join them before she gestured between the pair. ‘Have you two met outside of a briefing room?’

‘Sure,’ said Cortez as she slid into the booth beside Kharth and nodded to Shepherd. ‘There was that war zone and everything.’

‘We’ve really gotta find better circumstances to hang out,’ Shepherd agreed dryly.

‘Shep here is mad she doesn’t get to wander around a creepy Borg shipwreck with weird Borg tech,’ Kharth drawled.

‘It’s not that,’ Shepherd transparently lied. ‘It’s that I get to be the one on the bridge watching the reports come in and watching Valance have kittens.’ As Cortez winced, she tilted her head. ‘I’m not looking to pry or anything, but…’

‘Oh, I get it. Gossip is your prerogative as a command-level officer?’ said Cortez, managing a lopsided smile. ‘It’s not a secret. Karana and I were a thing. Then came Jericho and the squadron changes, and we… weren’t.’

‘Long distance is tough,’ Shepherd said sympathetically.

‘What’s really tough is your girlfriend deciding she’d rather have her own command than stay close to you,’ said Cortez, swigging her coffee with a forced air of joviality.

‘That double-sucks. Do you want to pick on Sae to feel better?’

Kharth stared. ‘What?’

Cortez’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, now we’re talking.’

‘What did I -’

‘So you met Logan, right?’ Shepherd leaned forward with a gleeful expression. ‘This girl keeps on exploding whenever he’s mentioned.’

Kharth’s eyes narrowed. ‘I do not explode.’

Cortez’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re right,’ she gasped at Shepherd. ‘And here I thought we’d have to put up with the Airex Disaster Show forever!’

‘There is nothing,’ Kharth said, scrabbling desperately to recover control of the situation, ‘going on between me and Logan.’

‘Sure,’ said Cortez. ‘Just like there was nothing going on between Thawn and Beckett. When did they decide to start screwing like rabbits, anyway? They reported in from their trip to Synnef, and when Rourke explained it, I first assumed I would need to hose down the inside of the Starfall from all the viscera of what she’d left of Beckett. That changed.’

Kharth rolled her eyes, pretending she wasn’t grateful for the interruption. Otherwise, there’d be no escape. ‘I don’t know. They were on Pathfinder for a time, so maybe something happened there. Then Frontier Day happens, and they’re on double tenterhooks, then Thawn all of a sudden breaks it off with Rhade and runs away with Beckett? I don’t have any line on the gossip of Pathfinder, though.’ She also didn’t care much. But, again, that would tempt the other two to set their eyes on her.

‘Maybe we bully Thawn on this mission,’ Cortez mused.

‘Yes, because when I’m on the wreckage of a Borg Cube that might not be completely disabled, what I care about is the romantic entanglements of my team.’

Shepherd tilted her head. ‘You decided to not bring resident expert Logan on this trip, though.’

Kharth planted her hands on the table. ‘On second thoughts, maybe the Borg Cube doesn’t sound that bad. Isa?’

Cortez looked gloomily at her half-finished coffee but necked it in one. ‘Command changed you. You used to be perky.’

‘That’s a lie,’ Kharth said, and turned back to Shepherd. ‘We’ll stay in touch.’

‘Lindgren,’ gasped Cortez as they left the Round Table. ‘That’s who we can bully for the low-down on Thawn.’

It felt good, Kharth thought, to have Cortez beside her, however horrifying the prospect ahead of them. They’d been side-by-side for years, only for Jericho’s machinations to break up the crew of Endeavour. Everything was different, even with Jericho gone – Rourke had left, Sadek had left, Carraway had left – and even those still here were changed, their life paths irreversibly altered. Still, for a moment, as they headed out of the Round Table towards the shuttlebay, it was just like old times, embarking on another away mission.

But once they were in the turbolift, Cortez shifted her feet, stared at the doors, and said awkwardly, ‘How’s she been?’

Kharth immediately willed herself somewhere else. ‘It’s not like I had any better idea than you while she was on Pathfinder, either, Isa…’

‘Sure, but. The last couple months.’ Cortez fiddled with her sleeve. ‘Frontier Day. Captaining Endeavour. You as XO, I mean, I don’t know what that means…’

‘It means she didn’t want a yes-man in Airex and understands she sometimes needs someone to disagree with her,’ Kharth half-snapped. Then she stopped herself, rubbing her temples. ‘I don’t know, Isa. We’ve sorted our working dynamic. It doesn’t mean we’re friends. That’s never going to happen.’

‘Sure. Of course.’

The turbolift’s whirring was annoyingly loud. After a few moments, Kharth sighed. ‘Frontier Day was tough,’ she said at last. ‘On everyone, but it was her first outing as Endeavour’s captain. Then, we were benched for a while to recover. Since then, it’s been survey work. This is our first time being sent out to do something proper. And she’s still… I mean, she’s Valance. Even if we were friends, I’m not sure she’d tell me.’

‘At least Airex is here.’ Then Cortez winced again. ‘For her, I mean. She was really hurt when he left. I know it’s probably hard for you.’

Kharth shrugged and found to her faint surprise that this wasn’t entirely forced. ‘I’m trying to be done with all that mess with Dav. Coming back to this sector, it… shoved a load of things into focus. We’ve been through too much for me to trust him on anything more than a professional level. Maybe we can even be friends, sort of. But I’m done tying who I am up into decisions he made to protect himself, at my expense.’

‘Woah,’ said Cortez after a moment. ‘That sounded kinda healthy.’

‘Imagine.’

‘So now you’re tying everything up into this Logan guy?’ But Cortez was grinning toothily, and had to know the turbolift was nearly there, as the doors opened a moment later, allowing her to escape into the shuttlebay before Kharth could summon an effective denial or retaliation.

Thawn and Lindgren were already waiting for them, sat in the cockpit of the Excalibur, the Endeavour’s new Waverider-class auxiliary craft. With all of the ship’s work on the frontier, Valance had estimated that they might need a more well-rounded smallcraft for away missions, where bringing a Constitution III-class might give them too large a profile – politically or physically. The Excalibur could house an away team for days at a time, letting them take expeditions away from the ship with a high degree of self-sufficiency, without being as resource-intensive as keeping two New Atlantic-class runabouts aboard. They were versatile craft, but the Excalibur was fast and sleek and perfect for sliding into a den of Borg wreckage.

‘Commanders, we are ready to go at your say-so,’ came Lindgren’s greeting call as they entered the cockpit.

‘The AIP is stored in the aft,’ Thawn confirmed, sat at the science console already. ‘Lieutenant Qadir’s with it. I think he’s worried it’s going to do something.’

Kharth frowned. ‘Is it?’

Thawn looked at her, clearly trying to keep her expression neutral. ‘It doesn’t do anything until it’s connected to a system,’ she said at length, and Kharth was dimly impressed how she’d managed to not sound patronising.

Kharth turned to Lindgren. ‘Just take us out, Lieutenant.’

‘Aye, Commander,’ said Lindgren, sounding faintly relieved that a fight wasn’t about to break out behind her.

Kharth slid into the co-pilot’s chair, buckling herself in as Lindgren eased the Excalibur out of Endeavour’s shuttlebay. The sights of the Lockney system soon raced into sharp clarity through the cockpit canopy, the sun stained by the debris all around them. Black dots blotted out the light, some still holding the faintest of green hues and gleams, but they were, at least, dwarfed by the USS Redemption. Like a sentinel, the mighty ship hung before the remains of the Borg Cube, on standby to respond if they gave so much of a whisper.

But it was not towards its watchful eye that they were headed. Lindgren brought the Excalibur about, away from the guardians of the Redemption and Endeavour, away from the light, and towards the shadow of the sixth planet and its dozen moons. From this distance, it looked like one had been beset by flies in the black of space, as if ash hung about it, but Kharth knew that was this smaller, secondary debris field.

Thawn’s eye was on a different planet, though – the third from the sun, nothing more than a pinprick of light from here but shining bright on her sensors. ‘I can’t imagine what might happen if Borg technology lands somewhere a pre-warp people find it.’

‘It’ll be horrifying,’ mused Cortez, ‘but they won’t understand it. Daragon suggested they were pre-industrial.’

‘Assuming it’s not a whole section of a deck with a drone in it,’ Kharth said darkly.

‘Brighten up, Sae, we’d have heard if that happened.’

‘You’re right. We’ve got our own worst-case scenario to worry about. Thawn, how’re you doing with that power signature?’

‘It’s deep in the debris field. We’ll need to be closer.’

Lindgren blew out her cheeks. ‘Deeper into the creepy debris field of a Borg ship we’re only mostly sure is dead.’

‘No, Lieutenant,’ said Kharth. ‘There’s a power signature. It’s definitely not dead.’

Distant sunlight struggled to stretch this far. As they drew closer to the debris field, its gleam barely shone on the emerald veins, drained of life, rippling across the remains of this Borg Cube. With a light touch, Lindgren manoeuvred them around the peripheral chunks of debris, and it was as if the blackness of space grew even darker as they fell under the shadows of the the Cube’s ghostly shroud.

The faintest bleep from Thawn’s console made them all nearly jump. Bashfully, she said, ‘I’ve narrowed the power signature to a region of twenty metres. It looks like there’s a sizeable section of debris there.’

Kharth nodded. ‘Take us in, Lindgren. You’re going to hold outside. Cortez, Qadir and I will suit up and head in.’

Thawn sat up. ‘But -’

‘When we’ve secured the area and confirmed there’s even a system for the AIP to connect with, you’ll bring it in,’ Kharth said, getting to her feet. The Excalibur spun gently, drifting around a stretch of broken hull plating, then there it was before them, their destination: a section of the Cube, bulkheads intact.

This would take bringing the ship up close, going EV and moving across by thrusters. This would take going inside to see if this was a viable target for their investigation.

And if there was a power signature somewhere, Kharth thought grimly as she headed for the aft of the Excalibur, what was still alive in there?