Shepherd blinked hard as she entered the bridge. ‘Yikes, who turned the lights up in here?’

Kharth, sat in the command chair, glanced up. ‘I guess I did.’ She hadn’t thought about it much, just picked an illumination setting when she’d begun her shift. Now, at the end of long hours in the central seat, with Shepherd pointing it out, she realised why. The bridge of a Constitution III-class, with its cold metals, could get gloomy very quickly. The last thing she wanted right then was to see shadows out of the corner of her eyes. ‘It’s your shift, Shep, you can do what you want.’

‘No, hey, I respect you caring about our eye strain and all.’ Shepherd sauntered over from the turbolift, glancing around the bridge crew. ‘Anything to report?’

Kharth stood, shrugging. ‘We continue en route to Rencaris. No sign of the sky falling in.’

‘Sounds good.’ Shepherd shifted her feet. ‘Sir.’

Kharth tried not to scowl. There had been nothing wrong with their exchange. But it had felt, just out of habit, like she was the junior officer reporting to a superior who’d come to take on the bridge. It didn’t help that Shepherd would likely have been as casual with even Valance, respectful but relaxed, but it was another tug of discomfort on the chains of command. ‘Enjoy the nothing, Commander,’ she found herself saying, a hint of dismissal creeping in by reflex.

But before Shepherd could muster a manoeuvre of that comment, there was a chirrup at Airex’s console. The tall Trill looked up. ‘Commander?’

Both women turned and said, ‘Yes?’ at once, then froze.

To his credit, Airex’s expression didn’t shift. Either he didn’t care for their tension, or he was trying to manage it by acting normal. Kharth didn’t imagine he hadn’t noticed. ‘I’ve picked up the homing signal on long-range sensors. It’s not at Rencaris itself.’

‘That’s good,’ mused Shepherd. ‘Last thing we need is Borg tech falling on an independent world.’

‘On any world,’ added Kharth.

‘It’s not all good news,’ he pressed on. ‘There’s a reason we didn’t pick up this signal sooner. It’s definitely Borg, but there’s a deep-space plasma field out there. Whatever’s emitting the signal’s right inside it.’

Shepherd rolled her eyes. ‘Of course there is. How bad a plasma field?’

‘Level three. An ion storm is working across it as we speak. Which runs the risk of moving, damaging, or even destroying whatever’s emitting the signal, and shrouding the signal itself.’

‘You’re saying we better move quick,’ said Kharth, ‘except that moving quick inside a plasma field is a surefire way to have a bad day.’

Lindgren turned from her seat at helm. ‘We’re still eighteen hours out from the field.’

Shepherd glanced at Kharth. ‘Do we want to increase speed?’

You mean, you want to increase speed but it’s not your call. Kharth still set her hands on her hips. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘We’re already above cruising speed. If this is an emergency, then everything’s an emergency. I want to save power reserves in case we get an actual crisis. Airex, learn everything you can about the plasma field so we know what we’re dealing with when we get there. You have the bridge, Shepherd.’

‘You got it. Oh!’ Shep turned as Kharth headed to the lift. ‘Don’t forget dinner tonight.’

Kharth stopped. ‘Dinner?’

‘Yeah!’ Shepherd glanced from her to Airex and Lindgren. ‘Senior staff dinner. Round Table.’

Oh yes. That social bonding exercise you keep pretending is Valance’s idea. ‘Right. Dinner.’

‘1930 hours!’ Shepherd called, her voice cut off by the turbolift doors sliding shut behind Kharth.

She closed her eyes. ‘Deck 12.’ It wasn’t that she disliked the idea of dinner with the senior staff. She’d known most of them for years. She had, at worst, learnt how to tolerate them. But Kharth preferred to knuckle down and focus on work, not get shoved into a dinner party and do small talk when the Borg rampaged across the sector.

Except the Borg weren’t rampaging. Except they had another day’s travel ahead of them, or more, depending on the intensity of this plasma field. Except Kharth was good at keeping busy in mental and physical preparation for a crisis, but many officers would stare at the bulkheads and wind themselves tighter and tighter as they waited. Except thinking of holding events such as this was part of why Shepherd had been brought in at all.

Despite all of that, Kharth knew better than to try to beat Shep at her own game. This was still a crisis, and she knew how to deal with those. She knew how to manage personnel through them. Even if that was about to mean acknowledging a gaffe she’d have rather ignored.

She hadn’t been down to the security offices much since leaving the post of security chief. It would have been too easy to become the kind of XO she had always hated when she was a department head, micromanaging and domineering. That she’d been trying to keep her distance from Logan had, of course, helped.

He had his alpha team in the security briefing room. The screen behind him showed the camera footage from Qadir’s EV suit on the derelict, the young lieutenant sat on the front low, rather sallow-faced.

‘…we learn from this,’ Logan was saying as she slid into the back. If he noticed her, he didn’t let on. ‘I know that this is hitting close to home for all of you. But this isn’t Frontier Day. The Collective can’t snap their fingers and turn you against your own. Turn your friends against you. We have to be vigilant of the Borg as an enemy who will adapt to our every move, but also can’t, can’t turn them into the bogeyman who can and will do anything, no matter what we do. And we adapt, too. Next time will be different.’ Now he noticed her, straightened, and nodded to his team. ‘That’s all. Any of you want to talk, you know where to find me. I don’t bench you for expressing fear. I want to know where your heads are at. That’s how we get through this – ‘cos we’ve got our own collective, too. You’re dismissed.’

Kharth gave the security officers polite nods as they filed out, but waited before they were all gone before she advanced to the front. ‘Qadir looked like he wanted to throw up.’

‘He thinks he screwed up back there.’ Logan shrugged. ‘I don’t think he liked me shining a light on everything that happened, even if he comes out of it looking pretty good.’

‘Looking better than me.’ She tried to not tighten her jaw. She couldn’t let guilt immobilise her. ‘Be honest: how would you grade my performance?’

Logan hesitated. Then he said, ‘Shooting that drone was a dumb-ass thing to do.’

‘I know.’

‘And most people who make that kind of mistake don’t live to tell the tale.’

‘Alright, alright, you’ve made your point.’ She raised her hands, knowing she couldn’t be too defensive when she asked. ‘So, acknowledging that I screwed up… if I were Chief of Security and my XO had benched me for a mission like that, I’d have kicked up a storm. But here you are, patting your officers on the back and bucking them up for what comes next.’

‘You missed the part where we’re modifying all our phasers and I’m running drills so they train to modulate their own frequency faster. That came first.’ Logan turned away. He took his time switching off the briefing room display, picking up PADDs stacked on the lectern. ‘If I had kicked up a storm at you – before or after – would it have made a difference?’

‘I know this is going to sound pretty empty, considering. But I’m not your superiors from Intel, shuffling you off the moment you have a thought because they don’t really trust an xB.’

‘You’re right, that does sound empty, seeing as you’ve doubted me on the first occasion you could.’

She winced, not because of his words, but because of his tone – empty, accepting. He wasn’t angry at her. He was, if anything, disappointed. But he wasn’t surprised. ‘The galaxy’s changing, Logan. Starfleet’s changing. Half the crew are xBs.’

‘It’s not the same, and you know it.’ Now he turned, hand on the lectern, and at last, a gleam of frustration entered his eye. ‘I appreciate you coming down here, Commander, but I don’t know what you want from me.’

‘I’m sorry. Okay? I was wrong to bench you.’ She sighed. ‘We’re not going to beat the Borg if we don’t listen to our expert. The mission made that clear. Whatever comes next, whatever we do, we want you at the heart of it. The captain and me. Not just helping Cortez with the tech, but operational matters. Everything.’

Logan’s expression didn’t shift. ‘Okay.’

He didn’t believe her. The frustration of that made it easier to push forward. ‘But yeah, that does mean we need some things from you. You’ve got to be – I can’t believe I’m saying this – more constructive.’

‘More constructive.’

‘We can’t just not use the AIP,’ Kharth exclaimed. ‘We can’t just not investigate these signals. Because if we leave it all alone, it surely gets worse. You keep talking like you’d rather we ignored everything and hope the Borg come sweep up their tech and maybe leave us alone, and to hell with what this Cube is after.’

He tilted his head, brow furrowing. ‘Even if we find out what this Cube was after, what do we do about it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.’

‘Say Cortez is wrong, and they were looking for a world to assimilate. Do you think the Collective will give up just because this Cube didn’t get there?’ He stepped around the lectern, hand still atop it. ‘You think they won’t just send another? What do we do then?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said hotly. ‘But in that case, knowing ahead of time gives us a chance.’

‘A chance to what?’

‘I don’t know! Hell, evacuate, if you want to take the stance that we can’t do anything!’

‘We can’t.’ Logan shook his head. ‘I don’t want Borg tech falling in the wrong hands. I’m worried that Beckett and Thawn picked up word of it being traded at Sot Thryfar. I got no doubts that signals like the ones we’re after might get chased by all the worst people. But we really can’t kid ourselves, Kharth: we ain’t Picard. We ain’t Janeway. And this ain’t just an enemy we can bullrush through willpower.’

‘This is it,’ said Kharth, pointing at the deck. ‘This is why I was worried about using you. You’ve accepted your helplessness, haven’t you? Because if you’re helpless, completely helpless about the Borg, then it’s not your fault, right?’ He flinched at that, and her chin tilted up. ‘I’m not stupid. I don’t think we fight them and win. I think we find every fine margin, and we scrape every little iota of success wherever we find it. I think we scrap to survive, or to cheat them, or delay them. That’s what we did on Frontier Day, right? Where’s that Jack Logan? Or does he only come out against the Borg when he doesn’t have time to think?’ He was silent, stunned, and that took some of the heat out of her. Her shoulders slumped. ‘Are you okay, Logan?’

He stared. Then he looked away and laughed bitterly. ‘Oh, nobody opened that can of worms yet, Kharth. ‘Course I’m not. But that ain’t the point.’

‘You were just telling your officers that they get through this by sticking together. Was that a lie?’ She took a step forward. ‘Or do you need someone to convince you of it?’

Logan drew a slow, raking breath. ‘Hope, in the face of the Borg,’ he said at length, ‘always sounds a hell of a lot like delusion. I didn’t think I was lying to them. But I maybe was deluded, yeah.’

‘I should have brought you in sooner, if I’m here talking about togetherness,’ Kharth admitted. ‘But the way I see it, you’ve got two options: you keep talking about how we can’t so much as look at the Borg funny, how we’re not Picard or Janeway, how we can’t kid ourselves, and I’ll bench you and put Qadir in your job until this is over. Because if anyone’s earned the right to not saddle up against their demons, it’s you.’

He stiffened at that, the prospect clearly sobering. ‘Or?’

‘Or you’re here. Part of the team. Answering directly to me, directly to Valance. An expert we turn to first, and one we listen to. And you have to at least pretend that there’s hope.’ She watched as he stared at nothing for a moment, his gaze only eventually rising to hers, and she said, ‘Be as kind to yourself as you’re being to your team.’

‘Wow,’ said Logan at length. ‘I know we didn’t meet all that long ago, Kharth, but I never thought you’d be ordering one of your officers to “be kind to themselves.”’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Do we have a deal?’

There was a pause. Then he nodded. ‘Deal.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because if we’re going to beat the Borg, we’ll have to take one trick out of their book – and learn how to adapt. All of us.’