The moment she set foot in the ready room, Kharth opened her mouth to say, ‘I take full responsibility for what happened back there.’ Except, the words didn’t come from her. They came from Cortez, walking in beside her. Instead, Kharth rounded on her and said, ‘Wait, what?’

Cortez shrugged. ‘It’s my fault, Sae. I got over-confident with the AIP and didn’t take enough precautions, and that thing nearly killed us all.’

Kharth shook her head. ‘Ridiculous; I lost my nerve and shot that drone, I brought us in half-assed -’

‘It can be more than one person’s fault,’ rumbled a voice near the window, and they turned to see Rourke stood at the window, glowering at the distant shards of broken Borg technology drifting in the space between worlds. But as Kharth braced in anticipation of reprimand, he turned back, shoulders slumping. ‘I bear responsibility, too. We bear responsibility.’

Valance, sat behind the desk that had once been Rourke’s, didn’t look like she disagreed. But she did look like she had little interest in belabouring this point. ‘We’re the leaders of this operation. We stop it from happening again.’

Cortez let out a deep breath. If she was uncomfortable being on the back foot in front of Valance, she didn’t let it show. Or, Kharth wondered, the engineer simply had a grip on herself to know the situation was bigger than their broken relationship. ‘Logan was right. The AIP behaved exactly as I expected when we first deployed it at a primary node the other day. But that was on a drifting node. It didn’t have other systems to connect to. When it interfaced on the derelict, it recognised the dormant Borg systems and sent an access request it didn’t have clearance for. That didn’t stop it from extracting the data, but it sure as hell triggered the security reaction. I didn’t expect it, and I couldn’t stop it.’

‘I don’t know if the drones were coming for us when the derelict locked down,’ Kharth admitted. ‘I’d like to say I decided to not wait and see. Truth is… that thing came for us, and I panicked.’ It was hard to feel ashamed of that reaction in itself. The shame came not from losing her nerve in the face of the Borg, but from losing her nerve as the XO, as the away mission leader. ‘I figure it’s safe to say we’d be dead or assimilated if it weren’t for Logan and Lindgren.’

Valance merely nodded, brow furrowed. ‘We’ve reports of a homing signal somewhere in the direction of the Rencaris system. It’s on the same frequency as other signals from the Cube. Endeavour is to answer it.’ She looked up at Cortez. ‘Is the AIP too dangerous to use?’

Cortez hesitated. ‘I still think Commander Logan’s over-cautious,’ she said at length. ‘And I know that’s rich from me, being over-confident. Truth is, we now know more about the damn thing. At a minimum, we don’t plug it into a node connected to other active systems again – we can extract the nodes, bring them aboard or quarantine them in space. But I can use the trip to work on some technical countermeasures to stop this from happening again.’

Valance watched her for a moment. Then gave another nod. ‘Keep working with Thawn. Bring in Airex and Logan.’

‘What did you get off this node?’ Rourke said at last.

Cortez blew her cheeks out. ‘Impossible to say at this point. A whole load of data. I’ll go through it with the others and report back ASAP.’

‘Thank you, Commander,’ said Valance briskly. ‘That’ll be all.’

There was another flicker of uncertainty from Cortez, a wavering. But she nodded, too, and after exchanging a glance with Kharth, she left.

Kharth rubbed her temples. ‘I didn’t want to argue with Isa over who screwed up worse,’ she sighed. ‘But I know I made a mess of that situation. Not least because I benched Logan.’ She glanced between them, and it felt like old times – but back then, she did not bear this same level of responsibility. ‘You should both know this could have been avoided if I’d listened to Shep on any number of occasions. She pushed for me to take him.’

Rourke grimaced. ‘Why didn’t you?’

She tried to not look at Valance, catching a flicker in her eye. Not because I’m still finding my feet with him after… all that, if that’s what you’re thinking, Kharth didn’t say. She drew a sharp breath. ‘The good answer? I found him tense and over-cautious in the initial briefing. I trust his knowledge, but I worried about his judgement in the field with the Borg. I thought he would be better giving us advice from the bridge, instead of being exposed to a high-pressure scenario that could be, frankly, dangerously retraumatising. For us as well as him.’ It felt very stupid in hindsight. Logan had held firm on Frontier Day. He’d been cleared for active operations. And she hadn’t so much as talked to him.

Valance sighed. ‘I didn’t overrule you.’

‘There’s more,’ Kharth admitted awkwardly. ‘Shep also – she made a point that I was thinking like the security officer, not the XO, on the run-up. That I had to be primarily responsible for the mission objectives, not the team’s safety. I argued, but… she wasn’t entirely wrong. I still feel I was acting as XO, even if I wasn’t doing a great job. But I was also acting like I’m still security chief. And I’m not. That’s Logan.’

To her surprise, Rourke gave a short bark of laughter at that. At her sharp look, he waved a hand apologetically. ‘Most of us aren’t forced into that transitional experience on a Borg wreck, Kharth. That’s a rough learning curve.’

She bit her lip and looked between them. ‘I know Shep has me beat on rank and command experience; I know she’s got better command instincts. If you want a rearrangement at the top, I understand.’

That made Rourke frown. ‘You mean, swap you two? No, no. I have other plans for Shep.’

‘If I’d wanted Commander Shepherd as my XO,’ added Valance, ‘I would have kept her aboard in the first place.

Neither woman said more, and at length, Rourke shifted his feet. ‘Don’t you two start doing each other’s hair or anything,’ he said dryly, and shrugged at Kharth’s sharp look. ‘Alright, I won’t tell you how to be a command team.’

‘Because I’m sure you two hugged after every mission,’ Kharth countered, getting the faintest twitch of the lips from Valance. The levity didn’t last, though, and Kharth flopped onto the chair across from the captain. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘we’ve been handling Logan all wrong.’

‘I agreed with keeping him on the bridge,’ said Valance. ‘It was reasonable to assume he’d be valuable for mission control. And he was.’

‘Okay,’ said Kharth, ‘but are we sure we’re not being a little over-cautious about him because he’s an xB?’

Valance stiffened. ‘He’s been embedded in the psychological and emotional recovery of half the crew since Frontier Day. If I had any prejudice against a former drone, I would never dream of letting him become such an intrinsic part of the crew’s wellbeing -’

‘If someone suggested you or me get benched on a mission involving the Romulan diaspora or the Klingon Empire because we might get too emotional, we’d set the bridge on fire. Is this any different?’

‘It’s always different,’ rumbled Rourke, ‘when it’s Borg.’ As they turned to him, he sighed. ‘I heard his objections in the briefing, too. What I didn’t explain is just how far this situation stretches. This is about more than the Midgard Sector; this is happening across the old Neutral Zone, with Borg homing signals going off everywhere the black market squirrelled away tech. Beyond our Beta Quadrant frontier, we’ve had sightings of Borg ship movements. In the Delta Quadrant, they’re back at their old borders, places we thought they’d pulled back from after Voyager. We’ve got to do more here than sweep a Midgard problem under the rug. We have to find answers. And this is no time for Mister Logan to be conservative in his judgements.’

Valance sighed and rubbed her temples. ‘Perhaps. But we need to learn from this first mission, or there might not be a third. Let’s bring Logan further into our planning, if you think that’s right, Commander.’

‘I think,’ Kharth said, with an apologetic glance at Rourke, ‘we should have brought Logan closer in yesterday.’