If sound was a matter of science, then space was silent. But if Kharth fell to philosophy and accepted that sound needed an audience, then space could be heard. Space was the ringing in her ears that surged in the absence of all other noise. It was the breathing that filled the helmet of her environmental suit, the reverberations of the mag-boots on the hull of obsidian black. It was the sound made by nothing but imagination when a tool impacted metal, memory and instinct rushing up to fill the void. Sometimes, it was the crackle of the comm systems and the voices of comrades on the same team, or safe on the decks of their ships, who all felt equally distant whether they were metres or thousands of kilometres away.

But most of the time, the sound of space was what she brought with her. And when it came to boarding a Borg derelict, she brought a lot with her.

‘I’m picking up atmo on the inside. This section hasn’t depressurised,’ Cortez reported as she swept her forearm across a sealed door, the tricorder built into her suit. ‘Gather up; I’m going to airlock us.’

They tromped across the hull of this broken section of the Borg Cube to join her. If she looked up, Kharth would see the Excalibur mere tens of metres away; Lindgren had brought them close and the thrusters on their EV suits had done the rest. But that would be dizzying, nauseating, so she focused instead on the dizzying nausea of entering a Borg space.

Lieutenant Qadir didn’t look any happier about it. His grip on his phaser rifle was iron-tight as he stepped up beside her. ‘When you open the doors, Commander, let me go first.’

‘Are you kidding?’ came Cortez’s voice. ‘I’ll damn well push you through first.’ They assembled around the door, and the engineer bent down to attach a forcefield projector to the hull. One press of a button encased them in a cuboid forcefield just large enough to contain them. Then Cortez knelt by the door, cracked open her vacuum-rated toolkit again, and began to work.

It could not have taken more than a minute. It did not only feel longer, but Kharth found herself wanting it to take longer. She was not sure if she heard or imagined the hiss of air when Cortez finally popped the doors and the atmosphere rushed no further than into their small forcefield, an artificial airlock to stop them from blowing the whole interior.

Kharth stared at the dark, then keyed her comms. Their channel had included the Excalibur, but now she switched to also include Endeavour. ‘This is Kharth. We’ve secured an access point to the wreckage and are heading in.’ She didn’t process the details of any acknowledgement before looking at Qadir and nodding.

Qadir was new to Endeavour, freshly promoted and transferred after Frontier Day to serve as Logan’s deputy. Bright-eyed and eager, Kharth also found him serious and reliable, and it was that discipline he brought to bear as he swept the light of his rifle through the interior before swinging himself in.

A moment later, they followed. For a second, Kharth’s gut lurched as she spun ninety degrees, the deck she’d moved to running perpendicular to the hull they’d been stood on. But any sickness from that motion was nothing compared to the sickness of sinking into the oily obsidian and emerald of a Borg ship.

‘Oh, Seb,’ she swore. ‘This place is intact.’

As far as their flashlights reached, the corridor stretched. They were the brightest sources of light, even though several of the alcoves that lined every bulkhead gleamed with the hint of emerald, cursed life. Their footsteps rattled on the metal deck plating, echoing into the depths with a silence that felt like its own answer, a rejection of their very presence, a sign they were intruders who did not belong. This was a hive of the Borg.

Most of the alcoves were empty. A smattering were not, the figures within nothing but silhouettes in the white and green lighting, still as statues that could turn to devils in a heartbeat.

Cortez’s voice sounded loud in their ears, and Kharth saw Qadir flinch. ‘Easy,’ the engineer assured. ‘This is less intact than some of the bits Redemption checked out. These drones won’t move unless we start trouble. And we’re not here for trouble. We’re here for investigation, right?’

‘Right,’ Kharth breathed. ‘What do we need?’

‘A storage access node,’ Cortez said confidently. ‘On a section like this, we’ll be looking for a secondary or even tertiary one. Its memory banks should still contain whatever was recently accessed in this section, and with luck, that’ll help us understand what this Priority Zero-Zero-Four is.’

‘So if we don’t find one,’ came Qadir’s tinny voice, ‘we go?’

‘We go,’ Cortez confirmed. ‘And then we gotta find another one somewhere else and do all this again.’ As they advanced, her voice went up a pitch. ‘Hey, Sae. Remember when we boarded that creepy-ass ship full of blood dilithium?’

‘As someone attacked from the shadows on that mission,’ came the interjection of Thawn, transmitting from aboard the Excalibur, ‘can we keep reminiscing to a minimum?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Kharth, jaw set. ‘If history repeats itself, I’m going to kick Isa’s ass.’

‘Just reminding everyone that we got through something just as creepy okay.’ Cortez’s voice crackled across Endeavour’s bridge, and Valance tried to keep her expression level at the reminder of both the incident and how Cortez could set a team at ease under even the worst of circumstances.

‘There’s certainly a central power source in that wreckage, and they’re approaching it,’ Airex confirmed, the Excalibur piping their sensor feed back to Endeavour so they could monitor the mission progress. ‘But no confirmation what it is.’

‘If the section retained atmosphere and there’s a power source,’ said Logan, ‘they should assume the area is just as dangerous as on an active Borg ship.’

‘Don’t mistake Commander Cortez’s manner for carelessness,’ Airex warned. ‘She’s one of the most cautious officers I’ve met.’

That eased the tension in Valance’s spine an iota. Airex had said nothing she didn’t know, but it was reassuring to hear it anyway. She’d wanted to defend Cortez but wasn’t sure how that would be perceived by the bridge crew. ‘We don’t backseat fly this mission,’ she warned. ‘We’re monitoring, that’s all. Commander Kharth has the lead.’

They listened in uneasy silence as the away team discussed their progression deeper into the derelict. All sounded still, the Borg unresponsive to their presence, and Valance’s feet itched. Once, she’d have led the mission. Once, she’d have been with them. With her.

Beside her, Shep offered a tight smile. ‘They got this, Cap,’ she said quietly. Valance knew it was meant kindly, but the words rang hollow.

At length, Cortez’s voice broke through with a change of tone. ‘That looks like something. Yeah, yeah. That’s a tertiary access node. Let me check it over.’

‘If it is,’ came Thawn’s voice from the Excalibur, suddenly very small, ‘does that mean I have to find you on my own?’

There was a pause. At the aft of the bridge, Beckett swore quietly and began to pace. Qadir answered, ‘I can come to –’

‘It’s fine,’ sighed Thawn after a moment. ‘This will be terrible for someone, one way or another.’

‘Good news,’ said Cortez. ‘This is the node we want. Lucky you, Thawn, you get to do the gauntlet of creepy. We’re straight down the corridor; not hard to find.’

‘Physically,’ Thawn corrected. ‘Heading in with the package.’

Logan stood and padded to Kally’s station. At a gesture, she patched him through. ‘Lieutenant Thawn; Logan here. Can you sense anything?’

‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that,’ Thawn admitted moments later. ‘There are… minds here. It’s not like anything I’ve ever felt before. Honestly, I’m not looking too closely.’

‘Don’t,’ Logan confirmed. ‘If you can sense the drones, then they’re active. Commander Cortez, were there drones in proximity to the last nodes you checked?’

A beat. ‘No,’ Cortez admitted. ‘The nodes were part of wreckage we salvaged. The drones were in other sections.’

Logan looked like he might say more, but Valance caught his eye. ‘Commander. Backseat flying.’

‘Captain, this situation is -’

‘Different, yes. But they don’t need to be told to be careful. And they don’t need you pointing out the shadows of the unknown.’

Logan subsided unhappily, still standing by Kally’s station. After a moment, Beckett moved over to join him, and Valance ground her teeth. This was the exact sort of behaviour she’d hoped to avoid on the bridge.

Minutes later, Cortez said, ‘Hey, Thawn, it’s us. Give us the AIP.’

‘That,’ Thawn admitted, voice rather shaky, ‘was terrible.’

‘It’ll be fine now. You’re with us. Let’s take a look.’ The comms picked up the clattering of equipment, and they heard a faint whir. ‘I’m connecting the AIP now. We’ll download anything to sealed storage with us; I’m not transmitting Borg records directly onto our ship.’

‘Very good, Commander,’ said Valance, and tried to not give Logan a pointed look. They were being careful.

‘Extracting now.’ Cortez sounded steady. ‘It’s not…’

‘Hold on.’ Qadir’s voice came like a whip-crack. ‘Did that drone move?’

‘Easy,’ warned Kharth. ‘We’d know if they were activating. We don’t – what’s that thing doing?’

Valance’s spine went iron-tight.

‘It’s uploading, Commander!’ Thawn’s voice had gone up another pitch. ‘That’s a whole new protocol –’

‘Captain!’ Airex looked up as his console bleeped. ‘Power levels on the derelict are rising.’

Valance stalked to the cluster by comms. ‘Away team, report!’

Cortez voice came through in the rock-steady tone that told her something was seriously wrong. ‘The AIP seems to have given the systems here a command; they’re powering up.’

‘Detach it!’ Kharth ordered.

‘It’s fusing in –’

Logan’s hand slammed on the rim of the comms panel, and he leaned in. ‘The AIP has detected damage, and systems and drones capable of repairing. It’s instructing them to do it. You have to kill the power source, Cortez!’

But the away team’s words spilt over him, unhearing.

‘The drone’s moving!’

‘I can’t disconnect it –’

The line went dead. Kally’s hands flew across the controls, and the young officer’s voice held a bite of hysteria as she said, ‘I’ve lost contact with the away team and the Excalibur!’

‘The wreckage is putting out a jamming signal,’ said Airex. ‘No comm signals are getting out, and I can’t read life signs.’

Valance whirled to face him. ‘If we get closer, can you break it so we can beam them out?’ At his hapless shrug, she stabbed a finger at helm. ‘Fox, get us closer. Logan – I don’t care how much debris you need to start taking out. Kally, get me the away team.’

Shepherd swung around the tertiary command chair towards the mission ops console. ‘Beckett, here,’ she snapped. ‘We’re going to try to restore contact with the Excalibur, get eyes on the sitch.’

Valance half-nodded to her, but her eyes were on the viewscreen as Endeavour surged towards a debris field they were not rated to enter and could well hold more secrets they might disturb. ‘You know what to do, everyone,’ she called, trying to summon the commanding warmth blended with urgency she thought Rourke might at that moment. ‘Get us back in touch with our people.’