‘I don’t like this.’

Lindgren paused at the door to the Excalibur’s berth, bag slung over her shoulder, and turned to Thawn. ‘A mysterious meeting in the far reaches of an impenetrable nebula to talk with a pirate who was friendly to me once? Whatever’s the problem?’

Thawn made a face. Where Lindgren wore the away mission jacket and had her gear for a few days’ travel with her, Thawn was staying behind, and looked like that merely added to her list of complaints. ‘Remember to use the sensor calibration protocols I gave you to bypass the nebula’s interference. I’ve not fully tested it on Starfleet systems, but if it works for the Khalagu…’

‘I’ve got it. I do know my way around navigational systems, Rosara. It’s like I’m a pilot, or something.’ Lindgren adjusted her grip on the bag strap. ‘I know you came with us last time. I’ll make sure Nate doesn’t get into too much trouble.’

Thawn made a face ‘I’m not worried about him,’ she said, and sounded like she meant it. ‘He’ll either keep his head down or do something ridiculous and pull it off. You? You’re sensible. That’s dangerous.’

‘That makes no sense.’

‘You’re sensible,’ Thawn pressed on, ‘and you’re cavorting with pirates. Which isn’t sensible. That’s why I’m worried.’

‘These are people who’ve been out here since Starfleet left,’ Lindgren sighed. ‘They’ve got good reason to not like us and not trust us. This is a chance for us to show the good we do, that we don’t have to be the enemy.’

‘Sure. But these aren’t the refugees, the Romulan people we left. These are Federation citizens. Frontier life might be hard. But they still had a lot of choices before they took to their ships and became pirates. Reach out to them, sure. But don’t pity them.’

‘I can empathise without being blinded,’ Lindgren assured her gently, and was relieved when a change of subject occurred to her. ‘Oh, that thing you asked me to look at…’ She rifled around in her jacket for the PADD. ‘I think you’re right.’

‘You think it looks like a secure transmission?’ Thawn looked apprehensive before she took the PADD. ‘What about the power spike? Breaking through interference?’

Lindgren grimaced. ‘To me? That looks like someone didn’t just transmit a data package, they had to break a firewall. And do it through… the Mesea Storm’s interference.’ At Thawn’s sharp look, she rolled her eyes. ‘What the hell else would you be asking about? This isn’t a hypothetical. Is this something you found in the Ihhliae’s computer records?’

‘Sort of,’ said Thawn, and Lindgren resisted rolling her eyes at the enigmatic response. ‘Is there a reason this wouldn’t show up on comms records?’

‘There are a lot of ways to hide this sort of thing.’ She paused. ‘Is there a reason you’re not talking to Kally?’

For a beat, Thawn paused. Then she said, ‘Kally won’t consider the possibility I’m wrong. And I might be wrong.’

‘Wow. It’s been beautiful watching you grow up these last few years.’

‘I don’t -’

‘Hey, I better go, you know?’ Lindgren grinned, jerking a thumb at the hatch. ‘Don’t want to be late with Kharth on the clock.’

Thawn hugged her before she left, which Lindgren thought a little odd. The two of them had sort of slid into friendship, young women close in age and rank and the most junior of Endeavour’s senior staff upon arrival. Lindgren had always found Thawn standoffish and only the exuberance of Noah Pierce, in those early years, had broken through. They had both found friendship elsewhere, and only after Pierce had died and Endeavour had been thrown into fire after fire had the two women begun to spend much time together.

There had never been a moment where they realised they weren’t just colleagues who socialised because it was easy, but friends with an actual bond. It had just happened. They had still never quite reached the stage of hugging before parting ways.

Until now, apparently. Perhaps Thawn was trying to make up for running away for five weeks.

The rest of the away team joined Lindgren in the Excalibur not long before she finished their pre-flight sequence. Kharth hopped into the co-pilot’s chair while gesturing for Beckett to take science and Logan tactical, and there was minimal chit-chat as they got underway. They all knew the mission. There wasn’t much to discuss.

Endeavour had continued her sprint across the Midgard Sector, running laps like a racehorse, and even though the Excalibur was fast in her own right, they were much closer to Synnef much quicker than they would have been if they’d set off on their own after Gale’s message.

‘This should only be a twelve-hour flight,’ said Lindgren as the Excalibur burst free of her berth, deep in the belly of Endeavour, and broke into open space to tear towards the Synnef Nebula. They were still too far for it to be seen by the naked eye, but she knew it would not be long before they sunk into its purple depths.

Kharth nodded. ‘Do we have more on our destination than “some rock in Synnef?”’

‘I reached out to the Khalagu,’ said Beckett. ‘Only got an answer this morning – comms into and out of the nebula aren’t great, and we were a ways out. The system only has a designation, and they’ve no interest in it. Narien reports no inhabitable worlds, no signs of useful minerals or gases. It’s just one of those places in the cosmos that only an astrophysicist would love.’

‘If we run into trouble there,’ said Logan, ‘the interference of the nebula will delay our comms to Endeavour. We get in a ruck, an’ we’re gonna have to get ourselves out of it.’

‘Don’t worry. I know how we’ll stay out of danger.’ Kharth gave a wicked grin. ‘Charm.’

Beckett cleared his throat. ‘Commander, we -’

‘I meant Lindgren’s charm,’ said Kharth, rolling her eyes. ‘But your opinion is noted, Beckett.’

Lindgren laughed. ‘Oldest trap in the book, Nate. And you fell right into it.’

Logan laughed, too, and Lindgren felt her chest lighten as she accelerated the Excalibur to warp and plunged them into the cosmic unknown.

In open space, they would have arrived within eight hours. It did not take long, however, before the violet coils of the Synnef Nebula opened their arms to embrace the Excalibur. If flying in the Mesea Storm was like sailing into a cyclone, then forging into the Synnef Nebula was like sinking into tar.

‘These sensor recalibrations are workin’ a treat,’ said Logan, openly impressed, once they were two hours in. ‘Couldn’t see a damn thing even at these outskirts when we came in with Endeavour last month. It’s like someone wiped the canopy and it’s all clear now.’

‘It’s not perfect,’ Beckett warned. ‘The Khalagu don’t have particularly sophisticated navigational sensors to begin with.’

‘But they spent years figurin’ how to punch through the interference. Now we have that knowledge, and all our fancy tech. This is a game-changer, Nate.’ Logan looked over his shoulder at the young officer. ‘Good job getting this intel.’

‘And,’ said Lindgren, ‘making us those friends.’

‘I just hope we don’t need them,’ Kharth sighed, unbuckling her chair and standing. ‘Right, I don’t want anyone arriving tired. We’ve got six hours ‘til we get there; Lindgren, you and me are taking a three-hour break. Logan, Beckett, you’re up until then.’

Logan glanced up. ‘I won’t need a break.’

‘I don’t want -’

‘Commander, I ain’t being stubborn or nothing.’ His expression was open, almost apologetic. ‘I can go a lot longer than you without sleep or rest.’

Kharth clicked her tongue. ‘Your regeneration is also more efficient. If you bunk down for three hours with your mobile node, you’ll wake up fresh as anything when we get there. I say rest, you rest.’

Lindgren couldn’t help but look at Beckett as she stood, who wore the same wide-eyed, ‘the senior officers are fight-flirting’ expression she was trying to hide. To her relief, Logan merely lifted his hands and acquiesced, moving to the co-pilot’s spot as Beckett took the pilot chair.

‘This pirate of yours,’ muttered Kharth as they left the cockpit, ‘had better be worth it.’ As not only a trained pilot but a seasoned communications officer, Lindgren fell back on her diplomatic training and said nothing.

One hour out from their destination, Kharth had them drop a small sensor buoy. Lindgren didn’t understand why, but didn’t ask questions. An hour later, they exited warp at the periphery of their destination system, which from an initial glance at their sensors indeed looked like one of the many unremarkable clusters of rocks and gas littering the universe.

‘Can you still read the buoy?’ asked Kharth.

Beckett leaned over his console. ‘Loud and clear, Commander. Our sensors are punching through the nebula’s interference okay.’

Kharth nodded with satisfaction. ‘So we know that what we see is what we get. What do we see?’

Logan glanced up. ‘Only one ship in sensor range. An old Kaplan F17 in orbit of the sixth planet. Designated the Fool’s Errand.’

There was a chirrup of comm systems, and Kharth looked to the controls near her. But it was not coming through on the Excalibur’s main channel, and Lindgren gave an apologetic grimace as she reached for her station. ‘That’s coming in on my frequency.’ It was only a message, same origin as Gale’s original transmission, and was very short: Your turn to host.

‘It’s him,’ she confirmed with a sigh. ‘He’s requesting docking permission.

Kharth gave a gentle scoff. ‘At least that puts us on home turf. Let’s see what he wants.’