The captain’s quarters were not big enough for her to host a dozen people, so when Shepherd had asked about holding dinner for the senior staff, Valance had rather brusquely suggested she block out the Round Table on the schedule and host it there. After, she’d worried if it would feel or look incongruous to have dinner together around what would have to be a very large table in a lounge.

She needn’t have worried. Shepherd had many talents, and it turned out that organising social events was one of them. The Round Table had been cleared of needless seating area, alcoves had been hidden away by judicious use of drapes, and the bar had been turned into a station from which the holographic staff could bring the food and drinks to the table. While the lounge now stretched long and thin, reaching from the door to the far exterior bulkhead with the tall windows Shepherd had decided not to block off, the room did not feel incongruous as a dining space, the art deco style and rearrangements reminding Valance of an establishment like the Foxglove cocktail bar on Gateway.

Against her instincts to be punctual rather than early, Valance made sure she was the first one there once Shep was done with the rearrangements, knowing she should be ready to act as host. ‘This looks good, Commander.’

Shepherd stood by the table, trying to manipulate the lighting from a PADD. ‘Thanks, Cap. I’m trying to get it cosy, but not so cosy we can’t see what we’re eating, y’know?’

‘It’ll be fine.’ Valance looked at the table. ‘Where do you want me?’

‘Ah, see – we’ve got drinks at the bar first. Because when we’re twelve people, you can’t talk to someone down the other end. Then we go to the table when food’s up.’

Valance silently counted. ‘Twelve?’

‘I…’ Shepherd froze. ‘Yeah. I invited Commander Cortez. That was okay, right?’

‘Right.’ Valance blinked. ‘That’s appropriate. Yes.’ She turned to her, eager to not linger on this point. ‘It was good of you to think of this. To organise this.’

‘Well, I figure everyone’s on tenterhooks, especially after the derelict. We could do with unwinding. And the whole team still feels like it’s settling – I know some of you have been together years, but not always in these roles, and there’s some new faces…’

‘And I’m new to the captaincy,’ Valance summarised. ‘And haven’t been making social time for the senior staff.’ Rourke would have, she thought. He just managed to do it so it didn’t feel like it was scheduled or forced. When he’d first come aboard, he’d organised things like a comedy night in the mess hall – open to everyone, but the senior staff knew they were expected to be there. Even with his sometimes grumpy exterior, Rourke knew how to handle people, knew how to handle a crowd.

‘You’ve had a lot on your plate,’ Shepherd allowed graciously.

‘I know this is a step down for you, Commander. Coming aboard as third-in-command when you were once XO here, when you had your own ship out of Gateway…’

‘It’s a thing to adapt to, that’s for sure.’ Finished with the lights, Shepherd put the PADD to one side and dusted her hands. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I want to get stuck in more than I can. I want to be the one leading the away missions. I’m still finding my feet on what I am doing and what I’m not doing. But I’m happy to be here. I wasn’t leading my own ship on Gateway, I was doing paperwork and once in a while taking the Tempest on milk runs.’

‘Would you have left Endeavour if you’d known the squadron was going to turn out like this? You thought you’d be running point on the sorts of operations that are now being handled by the Ranger or even the Swiftsure…’

Shepherd blew out her cheeks and turned to face her. ‘Probably not. But it was your choice, too, and you didn’t ask me to stay. Then you took on K as your XO, which nobody saw coming. Can’t pretend it doesn’t make things awkward for me to now be back, and answering to her.’’

Valance winced. ‘Should we tell her?’

‘Do you think it’d help?’

The unspoken hung between them, and despite having opened the box, Valance was relieved when the doors slid open, and the first of her officers began to arrive. Commander Perrek led the way, enthusiastically jabbering about the implications for Endeavour’s systems by entering the plasma field to an indulgent Cortez and Airex. Cortez only offered a polite, awkward nod towards the command officers, but Airex glanced at Valance, spotting that the tension had preceded them. She shook her head and let the evening begin.

The others arrived shortly after, with Kharth and Logan taking up the rear. They seemed somehow both more at ease and more formal with each other, which Valance decided to take as a sign they were working together successfully. She was doubly relieved when Logan detached from her to swoop down at Kally, the youngest and most junior of the senior staff, rarely daunted by anything so insignificant as social awkwardness if out of her depth, but someone who stirred a protective instinct in Valance nevertheless.

Shepherd advanced to join not just Kharth, but to drag Cortez in her wake, and with a hint of relief, Valance headed for Airex and Perrek. ‘I think Commander Shepherd made the invitations clear on one rule, gentlemen: shop talk is to be kept to a minimum.’ She tried to be as jocular as she was capable.

Even though Perrek was the culprit and she didn’t have a new conversation topic to replace it with, the genial engineer beamed. ‘That’s my free pass,’ he told Airex with delight.

‘Oh, no,’ the Trill groaned.

‘Free pass?’ said Valance.

‘It’s time for first day at the new school pictures.’ Perrek’s grin, if possible, widened, and he pulled out his PADD. ‘Sorkis and Thiala were pretty mad about moving schools again, so the pics are awful, really awful…’ With all the pride of a father knowing how much his children would be horrified and embarrassed, likely enough to sense the occasion over the dozens of light-years, he turned the PADD and began showing off.

Valance considered herself to have the maternal instincts of a hamster, but Perrek was the right mixture of proud and self-aware to make sharing his family endearing rather than tiresome. She also knew it was hard for the engineer, who’d moved from an Odyssey-class assignment where he could keep his whole family together to come to the Midgard Sector, leave his husband and wife and children at Gateway, and board Endeavour, where he might go weeks without seeing them.

‘I’m sure you miss them,’ she said kindly as Perrek finished an anecdote of Sorkis’s rebellion against moving assignments.

‘Always,’ said Perrek lightly. ‘But Kyran wasn’t with us on the Sirius. That’s the perk of triad parenting, Dav, Captain.’

‘What,’ said Airex with a hint of humour, ‘you can tag out for a year or so?’

‘Exactly!’ Perrek beamed.

Valance smiled, allowing her attention to drift from the two men to the rest of the crowd. They’d started in their comfortable knots of friendship – Lindgren and Thawn, Winters and Beckett, Cortez and Kharth and Shepherd – but already had begun to shift and mingle when Shepherd eventually clapped her hands and said, ‘Right, grub’s up.’

It was ostensibly a snub of etiquette to not have Cortez, as a senior officer and valued guest, seated to Valance’s left at the table. But Shepherd was smarter than that, throwing any formal seating plan out of the window. She’d allocated places on what Valance suspected she would describe only as ‘vibes,’ which meant Cortez was halfway down the table with Lindgren – the most neutral of people to sit her with – and Valance was flanked by Winters and Logan at the top.

Does Shep think I need to know these two better? she wondered, but had little time to linger on the thought because Winters – perhaps sufficiently anxious he’d prepared for senior staff dinner like it was a final medical examination – took only one mouthful of food before looking at Logan and saying, ‘So, Commander, I hear you like… horses?’

Logan, wine glass halfway to his lips, paused at that. ‘I like horses. I grew up around horses. Horses don’t like me so much these days.’

Valance blinked. ‘Horses react to your implants?’

‘Damned if I know. I love ‘em, but they’ve got huge muscles and walnut-sized brains. Might be I smell funny, might be they think this -’ He tapped his ocular implant, ‘-is just too shiny to be trusted.’

Winters looked horrified that his conversation topic had backfired. ‘I’m sorry.’

Logan shrugged. ‘It ain’t like I’ve had much chance to be around ‘em lately, so maybe I had a foul couple experiences. The ones on the holodeck behave. If I got home, maybe had a creature to bond with, it’d be different.’

Aware she was on delicate ground, Valance stabbed a potato and said, ‘Where’s home, Commander?’

‘Kentucky. Hence, I figure, the Doc’s guess I’m a horse sorta man?’ Logan gave Winters a lopsided smile.

‘That, and you made a riding analogy of some sort before our Koperion landing party set off,’ Winters explained apologetically.

Logan nodded, tucking into his food and glancing at Valance. ‘You’re from Cantelle, right, Captain?’

‘Cantelle Colony. Yes.’

Winters frowned. ‘That’s near the Klingon border?’

‘Bit of a wilderness, ain’t it?’ Logan’s brow furrowed in recollection. ‘Rough place to grow up.’

‘I didn’t spend my whole childhood there.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Winters jumped in. ‘How is Gov?’

‘My brother,’ she explained for Logan’s benefit. ‘Happy, I think, to be able to serve Klingon-Federation relations without needing to be in a Starfleet uniform. Unhappy, I think, to be somewhat benched at Gateway.’

‘I would think the Empire would want a rep out here,’ Logan mused. ‘They don’t want Borg tech getting out of hand.’

‘Careful, Commander,’ Valance said wryly. ‘You’ll break Shep’s rule about talking shop.’

But he grinned and changed the subject. At first meeting, Valance had thought him surprisingly gregarious for an xB, always willing to reach out to people, always knowing what to say. Further exposure suggested two things: he worked hard so other people did the bulk of the talking, listening actively but letting them speak about themselves, always a reliable trick in putting people at ease. And he was working very hard – and very consciously – to keep conversations flowing, not falling into awkward topics, not letting himself be awkward. Perhaps it had once come naturally, but now, if she looked closely, she could see navigating social movement was like tensing a muscle. She recognised it in him because, while he was smoother, more discreet about it, she did the same. And more so since becoming captain.

Dinner gave way to drinks and a return to mingling, though Valance kept herself at the top of the table so others could join her, rather than butting in. When Airex sat with her first, she didn’t think much of it; they had long been friends. Lindgren joining in for a time similarly did not impact her; the young officer was one of the most socially capable and relaxed of the whole staff.

But as people moved in and out of conversations, and as the evening began to wind down, Valance realised that almost everyone had sat and talked with her, if only a little, and none had acted as if this was an obligation. Thawn had been awkward until Beckett had swept in with jokes to save her, but Thawn was always awkward with superiors. Kally had enthused about her Academy days when Valance had politely asked, and Shep had even adjudicated when Kharth had sat there and they had, for lack of better topics, discussed combat workouts. In a crowd like this, it would have been easy for anyone to not go over, but her crew had spoken with her and shared the space with her like it was natural.

‘Thank you all for coming,’ she said when she checked the time and found it late. ‘You should all get a good night’s sleep. And thank you, Commander Shepherd, for organising this.’

‘I just wanted a fancy shindig; next time, it’s dress uniforms,’ Shep threatened with a grin, and the evening began to wind down.

Even though it was Shepherd’s occasion, Valance thought she should see everyone out. Then, with half the staff gone, she realised Cortez was among the last, finishing up drinks with Shepherd, and when Valance made awkward but intentional eye contact, the engineer lingered. Shep must have spotted this, saying something about needing to wash her carpet before she exited the lounge and left the two of them alone.

Cutlery clattered as Valance needlessly piled up her plate to set it to one side and got to her feet. ‘I appreciate you joining us, Commander,’ she said, words feeling too big for her mouth, like her tongue was numb. ‘I know a lot of the staff appreciate having you around -’

Cortez winced. ‘Can, uh, can we not, Karana?’ She stood at the foot of the table, hands on the back of the chair Kharth had been sitting at. ‘Nobody else is here.’

Valance’s hand dropped. ‘Alright,’ she said, and didn’t know where to look. Or what to say. At length, she added, ‘How’ve you been?’

A short, toneless laugh answered her. Valance knew it was at the situation, not her, but it still stung. ‘Rebuilding Deneb. Retrieving Breen captives with the Ranger. And you…’ She waved a hand across the table, then softened. ‘Congratulations. Captain. This is what you really wanted, after all, isn’t it? Ever since MacCallister went.’

‘That was a long time ago.’ Valance shifted her feet. ‘Congratulations on your promotion, too. It was overdue.’ But only silence met her words, and she drew a deep breath. ‘I thought we should talk.’

Cortez blinked at that, stiffening. ‘Alright. What do you want to talk about?’

Valance blinked. ‘I don’t know. You’re on my ship. We have a job to do. We’re both professionals and grown-ups. I thought we should… check in.’

A pause. ‘Is that it?’

‘Is that what?’

‘Two years, and then we’re back here, and when you say you want to talk, all you have is “we have a job to do?”’

‘What else should I be saying?’ Valance gestured down the table. ‘What do you want to say?’

‘You wanted this conversation. The great thing about us not being together any more, Karana, is that I don’t have to do the emotional heavy lifting for you. You can’t just start the conversation and wait for me to fill in the blanks. You have to actually do something.’

Valance tensed. ‘You’re still angry at me for leaving.’

‘You’re damn right I am! And now you’re just… back!’ Cortez waved a hand. ‘Shooting off to Pathfinder, and then you’re captain of Endeavour…’

‘Nobody could have predicted this was how it’d turn out!’

‘No,’ Cortez allowed. ‘But it’s funny how you make your choices and get everything you want.’ In the silence that followed, she sighed. ‘I know how to do my job. We’re both capable of being professional when we work together. I’m not here to make things weird. But beyond that? I’m not here to emotionally hold your hand through the hard stuff.’

Valance swallowed. I wanted to abandon the battle plan and race across the Izar system to rescue the Triumph when I knew you were in trouble. I wanted to ram the Borg derelict with this ship if it would have saved you. But those were all big things, and the big things weren’t what brought them down. Everything else was a murky soup of emotions, complicated and blending together, and she didn’t know what was guilt and what was sincerity. Counsellor Carraway had once pointed out that learning to speak about your feelings was like learning another language; you had to develop the vocabulary to encapsulate what you meant.

Only she wasn’t sure what she meant, and she knew she was deeply, deeply out of practice.

‘You’ve got an SCE Team,’ Valance said eventually. ‘Freedom to work across a sector, across a squadron. You’re the foremost engineering authority in one of the most important formations of the quadrant, of the fleet. That’s rather good, isn’t it?’

It was perhaps for the best that her commbadge chirruped before Cortez could reply, from the flash of anger in her eye. ‘Bridge to Captain Valance.’

Athaka always sounded apologetic, but on this occasion, he was probably right. Valance caught Cortez rolling her eyes as she immediately went to answer and pretended not to notice. ‘Go ahead.’

‘There’s a Romulan ship approaching on long-range sensors – we’ve ID’d it as Republic. They’ve hailed us.’ Athaka hesitated. ‘Their commander’s asking us to back down from the plasma field. They say the Borg wreckage inside is theirs.’

Valance brought a hand to her temple and sighed. ‘I’ll be right there.’ She looked back at Cortez as the comm went dead. ‘I have to answer this.’

Despite all the frustration – and, as Valance felt, irrationality of Cortez so far in the conversation – the engineer had sobered and focused up. ‘Of course you do,’ she said, without a shred of passive aggression. ‘After all, it’s time.’

‘Time?’ Valance headed for the door and was faintly relieved when Cortez fell into step beside her.

‘Sure,’ said Cortez. ‘Time for the Midgard Sector to explode into a rat race for technology nobody is equipped to handle.’