‘Captain? The homing signal has gone dead.’

Valance’s heart sank as Airex’s report washed over the bridge. ‘The Ihhliae beat us there?’

‘Impossible to say.’ He hesitated. ‘But likely. If the source had been destroyed by ion storms, we would probably have seen the signal weaken before stopping. This was consistent right until it stopped.’

‘That’s probably,’ said Cortez unhappily, ‘a sign someone got there and killed the power source.’

Endeavour had lost precious hours to the repairs. Even with Perrek and Cortez working flat out, too much time had been spent getting underway again. In open space, they could have beaten the Romulan warbird on speed, but navigating the Mesea Storm was a contest of resilience, not haste. A contest they had lost.

‘We don’t know anything for certain,’ Valance said, even if she didn’t believe it. ‘Proceed to the last known location of the signal.’

‘Aye, Captain. We’re still three hours out,’ warned Lindgren.

Valance stood and headed for the Science console. Hands on the frame, she waited for the bridge to settle down to stop paying attention to her and settle down to work before she leaned towards Airex and dropped her voice. ‘Continue full-spectrum scans of the field. We might as well learn what we can about this phenomenon in case we ever come back.’

Normally, Airex would have been delighted to be given leave to study an anomaly to his heart’s content. But his shoulders stiffened. ‘You’ve given up on finding the signal or the Ihhliae, haven’t you.’

‘I think the odds of us getting anything from this venture are vanishingly small.’

He did not raise his eyes. ‘I apologise for the miscalculation with the ion wave, Captain. I should -’

‘Dav.’ She frowned. He still did not look up. ‘We’ve never been here before. We’re not going to get it right first time. I think we were all a little too comfortable on operations mostly inside Federation territory the last few years.’

While he raised his eyes, he remained dour. ‘There’s no space for learning experiences when we’re hunting the Borg.’

No, Valance thought, but I have no alternative right now, so I’m trying to make lemonade out of these lemons. Rourke would have found the right thing to say, even with the cerebral Trill she was much closer to. ‘Then your options, Commander, are to make the most of this situation to study a new area or to find me the Ihhliae.’ It was not her most supportive command decision, but she was in no position to unpick Airex’s feelings of inadequacy right then.

If not you, then who?

She still had no answer for that hours later, when Lindgren looked up as her console chirruped. ‘We’re at the original location of the homing signal, Captain.’

Airex clicked his tongue. ‘There’s nothing here.’

‘Nothing?’ Valance turned to Cortez, standing near Logan to read his display rather than joining her at the command chairs. ‘Do we have any idea how big this wreckage or device could have been?’

Cortez shrugged. ‘Reports say that even very small devices have turned active to give off homing signals…’

Logan nodded. ‘The Collective is sometimes militant about recovering things it’s lost – especially drones, and especially when dealing with cultures who know less about them. Every drone is capable of sending out those signals.’

Kharth, sat at the XO’s seat, winced. ‘So you’re saying this could have been one drone?’

Cortez shook her head. ‘This was a really powerful signal to punch its way out of the Mesea Storm. Right?’ She glanced at Logan.

‘The homing signals on individual drones are powerful, but they’re pretty reliant on the biomechanical implants functioning. A drone would have to still be alive, which means more wreckage, for the signal to have even a chance of punching out of the Storm,’ Logan agreed.

‘So if there’s wreckage, there doesn’t even have to be a drone,’ mused Cortez. ‘Just systems intact enough to have a power-rig capable of piping out that signal.’

‘And surviving in the Storm,’ Logan said.

Valance raised a hand. ‘I’m asking for your best guess on whether the Ihhliae could beam all the wreckage aboard or if they’d have to tow something.’

Logan hummed, then turned to his console. ‘Let me check something.’

Kharth watched him. ‘Antiprotons from Romulan disruptors?’

‘Yup. Whatever was here had to be big enough that the Ihhliae would need to take it apart to beam it aboard. And that couldn’t have been more than a few hours ago; antiprotons wouldn’t have degraded fully yet…’ Logan’s hands flew across the controls. ‘No sign.’

Cortez snapped her fingers. ‘No promises, Captain, but I’d say odds are good they’ve had to kill the signal, then haul something out of here.’

‘I think you’re right, Cortez.’ That was Airex, and when Valance looked back at him, the spark was back in his eyes. ‘I’m picking up dissipating fields of gravitons, bearing three-seven mark one-five-three. Could be a tractor beam.’

‘Romulan warbird, that age, that condition, keeping a tractor beam up on decent-sized haulage, at warp in these conditions…’ Cortez’s lips moved silently as she calculated. ‘They’ll be doing well to beat warp three.’

‘And,’ added Airex, ‘they’ll have to give any ion storms a wide berth. They’re hauling likely-delicate wreckage under perilous circumstances. They can do this fast, or they can do this right.’

‘Well,’ said Cortez. ‘They can do this slow, or they can do this slow as hell but right.’

Kharth made an impatient sound. ‘Do we have a trail to follow?’

‘We have a heading,’ said Airex. ‘I’ll keep scanning for gravitons. It’s not easy amidst the storm’s interference, but the good news is that it’ll get easier the closer we get.’

Valance waved a finger towards the fore. ‘Take us out, Lindgren. Fast as you can safely manage. We’re not out of this race yet.’

Endeavour swung around through the bronze maelstrom of clouds, and Valance felt her chest lighten as they accelerated to a low warp. There was still a chance.

It did not take long for Kharth to dampen that enthusiasm as she shifted over and leaned in. ‘What do we do when we catch up?’ she muttered. ‘Ask nicely?’

Valance’s jaw tightened. ‘One step at a time.’

‘You don’t know?’

Valance shot her a look. ‘I’m open to suggestions.’ But there were, of course, none coming. Valance knew that whatever Kharth said, the shadow of Teros – of the Erem – loomed large over them. With the stakes this high, nobody who remembered that day could completely trust it wouldn’t repeat itself. Valance knew she had no intentions of condemning the crew of the Ihhliae to death just to get her hands on the Borg wreckage, but there were a lot of lines she could still cross before it got that far. Deep in the Mesea Storm, there was nobody to see her actions. Diplomacy died in the darkness, where the only truth was whatever tale was told on the outside.

But she, of course, could see her own actions. As could her crew.

Hours later, she was still no closer to a conclusion when there was a chirrup from comms, and Kally gave a small, surprised squeak. She spun in her chair, finger pressed to her earpiece. ‘Captain, I’m picking up a distress signal – it’s from the Ihhliae!’

Valance’s head snapped around. ‘What’ve we got?’

‘They’re reporting…’ Kally paused a beat to listen. ‘…a cascading failure in their computer network? Something’s gone wrong, and they’ve lost control of the ship’s systems. Captain, it sounds like they’re drifting.’

Kharth sat up. ‘If they’ve lost control of flight systems, deflectors, in the middle of the storm…’

‘Then an ionic wave could tear them apart.’ Valance’s grip on the armrest tightened. ‘Yellow alert. Tell them we’re on our way, Kally. Lindgren, set a course. Maximum possible speed. I want emergency power rerouted to navigational deflectors.’ The deck rumbled as Endeavour surged forward, accelerating into the choppy waters of these storm-wracked seas of the plasma field.

But still, Kharth looked towards Cortez and asked the question they were all thinking. ‘Isa, what might cause what sounds like a systems collapse out here?’

Cortez shrugged. ‘It could be damage. We don’t know much.’

‘Yeah,’ said Kharth. ‘But…’

‘It could be Borg,’ Logan said, jaw tight. ‘If something survived on that wreck, a drone or a system, and managed to transmit something aboard.’ He looked about the bridge. ‘Don’t everyone go panicking at once, I know you was already thinking it. It could be anything. But yeah. The worst case scenario is possible.’

Valance’s throat tightened, but she leaned back in her chair. ‘We focus on what we know,’ she said at last. ‘And what we know is there’s a ship out there that needs our help.’

A ship out there that has the prize we want.