The Gill 214 system could have been a fine prospect for the Federation or Romulans alike, with at least one planet capable of sustaining life and signs of rich mineral deposits at the outer rim. With the right investment, it could have flourished as a colony site or an industrial hub, and brought wealth and investment to this fraught frontier. But Gill 214 lay deep within the Synnef Nebula, long a natural border for the two old great powers, and a phenomenon none could enter lightly if they wanted to see through the shadows of sensor interference.

It was into those shadows that the Excalibur fell now. Bussard collectors had drawn in a trace of nebula gases to emit them from their exhaust on the approach, masking their warp signature as nothing but the natural flows and eddies of Synnef. That had seen them past two patrol ships, both light craft that even this Waverider-class could perhaps match – but only if they didn’t call for reinforcements.

‘Dropping out of warp. Hang on,’ called Lindgren, hands tight on the controls. Their options had been to come hard and fast, emerging on top of the fourth planet that housed the illicit research lab, but proclaiming their arrival to everyone – or to slip in at the far side of the sixth planet, a massive gas giant, and approach by stealth. The former took precise navigation under difficult flight conditions. The latter took that same precise navigation, and then a complex series of manoeuvres to approach without being spotted.

The Excalibur slowed to impulse, the gas giant filling the canopy. The moment they were stable, Kharth reached for the controls to kill all non-essential systems, and reduce their sensor profile to next-to-nothing. ‘Running silent,’ called the XO.

‘Letting gravity take over for a bit,’ confirmed Lindgren, the Excalibur falling into a natural orbit.

In the back, Beckett consulted his controls. ‘I’m not picking up any ships in the system. Only signature on sensors are those two patrol boats we passed, and a power signature from the vicinity of the lab.’ Kharth tried to not hold her breath as the young officer continued reading, and knew that silence for several minutes was good news. At length, he said, ‘No signs of movement. Don’t think they’ve spotted us.’

‘This was the easy part,’ Kharth warned.

‘Hell, no,’ said Logan gently. ‘Top flying so far, Elsa. Keep this up, we’ll slip right through the net.’

It was not, Kharth reasoned, completely outrageous to compliment the team on the work they’d done to get to this point, and buoy up their spirits ahead of the next complicated challenge. But it was still also, in her view, premature, and she cleared her throat. ‘Let’s keep moving.’

Logan’s compliments were not, it transpired, misplaced. Under Lindgren’s controls, the Excalibur gently glided around the gas giant, her thrusters modulating her speed with minimal use of engine power. A slingshot around a moon on the far side broke them away, catapulting into open space to soar towards the fourth planet. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been enough to keep them hidden from sensors. But the Synnef Nebula fell like a blanket across all means of detection, and with the lessons Beckett had brought from the Khalagu, they knew how to weave themselves with these shadows.

‘Timing is perfect,’ Lindgren confirmed. ‘We’re coming up on the far side of the planet. If we drop to an atmospheric flight, we can stay low and avoid their sensors as we approach the lab.’

‘And just hope,’ breathed Beckett, ‘that they don’t have an army waiting for us.’

Kharth didn’t chide him for that, because she shared the concern. More pressing for her, however, was the difficult flight coming up for their pilot. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Lindgren, she thought as they began to streak into the upper atmosphere of the rocky M-class planet where the Syndicate’s lab lay. It was that she’d known Lindgren for over two years as a communications officer. It was all very well and good for Valance to let her move to head up flight control as a department head and a bridge officer, with Lindgren qualified as a pilot at the academy. It was another thing entirely for the mission, and their lives, to fall into her inexperienced hands.

But the Excalibur streaked through the upper atmosphere of Gill 215 IV, and though Kharth kept a tight grip on her seat’s handles as the rocky surface came rushing up towards them on the canopy, Lindgren pulled them out of their dive perfectly. Even if ‘perfectly’ meant ‘early enough to not die, so late to keep them as close to the surface as possible.’

Kharth was a little relieved to hear Beckett behind her breathe, ‘Holy shit, Elsa, did you want to shave the surface?’

Lindgren gave a low laugh. ‘You planned this approach, Nate.’

‘It looked a lot less terrifying on paper!’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Logan in the same chiding voice. ‘You’re makin’ this look easy.’

‘Who said I don’t find it easy?’ said Lindgren lightly, and swerved the Excalibur down into a rocky valley to begin their race across to the next hemisphere.

Kharth blew out her cheeks, her grip on the chair still tight. ‘If you think this is easy, then the next part will just be a breeze.’

They could sneak across light-years by blending with the background of the nebula, slide across a system with expert systems management, and cross a continent by flying so close to the surface the sensors couldn’t pick them up. What the away team could not do, as they approached the pre-fab structural modules, was land a runabout right in front an Orion Syndicate illicit research lab and not, finally, be noticed.

The last new world Kharth had set foot on was in the Koperion System, that garden world of towering trees and deep cerulean lakes. Twigs had crunched underfoot as birds fluttered out of branches, startled, only for peace and serenity to settle around them again. The surface of Gill 214 IV, on the other hand, crunched with scree underfoot, and she heralded her arrival with the blast of a phaser rifle.

It wasn’t that the trio of burly Orion men who’d come running out from the main doors to the facility hadn’t been ready for trouble. Starfleet arriving could only be bad news. But she fancied they hadn’t expected her and Logan to storm down the ramp and immediately open fire with no call for surrender, no call for a warning.

She could fill that paperwork later. Now she had Borg technology to secure.

She’d stunned one of the guards in an instant, but it had taken Logan, on her left flank, hardly a blink longer to shoot two. Then the guards were in the dirt, and all that lay around them was the grey, rocky, barren landscape of the planet, and the hard-worn metal bulkheads of the modular research facility. It would have been flown in piece by piece, facilities landed and added as the needs of the site grew, but it was not, Kharth thought with some relief, very big.

‘We’ve got your back,’ said Beckett and Lindgren, descending the ramp behind them. ‘Let’s hope all welcomes here go so well.’

Kharth did not look over her shoulder as she advanced on the doors and addressed Lindgren. ‘I’d feel better if you stayed with the ship.’

‘We’ve no idea how much resistance we’re about to face. You need numbers,’ came the pilot’s cool, clear point.

The last time you were in a firefight, thought Kharth, the D’Ghor had boarded us. They nearly killed you. That was two years ago. But she was trained like anyone else and, worse, she had a point. They needed numbers.

Logan was by the main doors, which had slid shut behind the guards. He ran his tricorder over them. ‘Picking up two life signs, right on the other side.’

Kharth went to the other side and set her back beside the door controls. ‘Beckett. Flash grenade.’ He’d had Hazard Team training. He knew how to deploy while she and Logan could mop up.

It went like clockwork. The doors sliding open an inch, Beckett’s toss of the grenade. A beat. A thoooom. Then the doors opened and in surged the two security veterans, and once again, burly Orions hit the deck, finished off by precise phaser fire if the grenade hadn’t been enough. As the sound of weapons fire and falling bodies faded to an echo, Kharth paused in the gloom of the long entranceway, and finally took stock of her surroundings.

The problem with these pre-fabs was that they all looked the same, but could be easily reconfigured. Her instincts told her that there’d be offices through the door to her left, but there was no guarantee of any such thing. But the corridor was long and looked like it went through the whole of the facility like a spine, or near enough. Taking up position under the cover of a corridor archway, Kharth gestured for the others to take shelter, and finally called out.

‘Syndicate! This is Starfleet. We’re shutting down this operation. Come out with your hands up!’

For a moment, nothing answered her but the echo of her own voice. Then a door much further down slid open, and a reedy voice answered. ‘I’m coming out! Don’t shoot!’

She was an Orion woman in a lab coat, hands high in the air. And the moment she saw that her guards were down, she told them everything.

The facility was old, dating back to the late-80s, when the Syndicate had first aspired to move into the old Neutral Zone after the Romulan supernova. In that time it had thrived, lying off the beaten track from most of the illicit research labs, many of which had profited off their proximity to the Artifact. Gill 214, on the other hand, had profited by lying far away enough to evade scrutiny.

But two years ago, the Artifact had gone and the biggest players in the Borg tech black market had been taken out. The facility had almost been forgotten about, until the Syndicate had returned to the Synnef Nebula. Even then, the intention had been to repurpose it; shuffle off what goods were left, and then turn it to some other design. Until the Cube. Until the remains of the Wreck had come in.

‘This all came in a week ago,’ said the Orion scientist as she led them around a storage room behind the main processing lab. ‘A section of the Cube was found inside the nebula. It’s probably not the only piece. But we’ve been stripping it down for parts.’ She shifted her weight under Kharth’s cool glare. ‘You should know that many of our best buyers are inside Federation territory.’

‘And I’m sure,’ said Kharth sternly, ‘you can tell us all about it.’

‘There was a device being sold at Sot Thryfar,’ said Beckett, and gave a rough date of their acquisition of the AIP. ‘Anything to do with here?’

The scientist, probably smelling a plea bargain in her future, nodded enthusiastically. ‘An old piece. Likely from the Artifact. Kept in storage here. We extracted it, fixed it up. Perfect for your hacking needs.’

‘Yeah,’ growled Logan. He stalked the rows of shelves like a panther, examining every secure crate. In here, there was no sign of Borg technology itself, all of it locked away, sealed, hidden. ‘Perfect if you’re going to dance with the devil.’

The Orion shrugged. ‘Hell bends to the strongest will.’

Logan grunted, and they returned to the main lab. They had plainly not interrupted any work, with everything also carefully stowed, but Kharth recognised the equipment from the sorts of facilities she’d worked with Cortez in. None of this was second-rate, all of the highest quality. The Syndicate had spared no expense on a place like this.

Beckett paused at a corner, and flashed his torch down to a crate lying in shadows. Kharth almost heard him hesitate. ‘This is Republic-issue.’

The Orion gave another shrug. ‘Some borders leak more than others. But I’m not going to talk about that until we’re really trading.’

Beckett rounded on her with a glare. ‘Trading?’

She met his gaze coolly. ‘I’ve shown cooperation so far. Demonstrated goodwill. Once we get out of here, then we discuss what laxity I’m shown in exchange for information. That’s how this works, darling.’

‘You’ll be lucky to -’

‘She’s right,’ said Kharth roughly. ‘Our priority here is to stop this shipment falling into the wrong hands.’

The Orion looked breezily back to the storage room. ‘You’ll struggle to deal with everything in your little runabout.’

Kharth turned to tell her to shut up, but then she saw Logan. He’d approached a door she’d not seen at the rear of the lab, closed with no sign. Something about it had made him tighten his grip on his phaser rifle, and he looked back to them.

‘What’s in here?’ There was a shift to the pitch of his voice she couldn’t place.

Either the Orion knew something or she, too, was picking up on the tension. ‘Empty workspace.’ But it was too smooth an answer. Logan grunted, and opened the door.

He stood in the threshold for a moment, staring into the shadows the others were too far away to see through. Kharth assumed his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, then he stood there a second more. And another. And another. But when he moved, it was as if he used a transporter as he stepped not into the room, but back.

The next thing Kharth knew, Logan had grabbed the Orion scientist and slammed her onto a worktable. ‘Give me one fucking reason why I shouldn’t give you a taste of your own work,’ he snarled. The phaser rifle had been slung over his shoulder, and instead, he reached for a metal cutter on the workbench.

‘Logan!’ Kharth flew forward, but he’d been braced for her, his arm coming out to hold her at bay as she reached him.

The Orion struggled as his forearm clamped across her windpipe. ‘…wasn’t… me…’ she rasped. ‘…not… my area…’

‘Yeah?’ Logan snarled, face in hers. He shoved the cutter under her chin. ‘What did you do instead? Watch? Take notes?’

‘Commander!’ Now Kharth had a grip on his shoulder and yanked him back. ‘That’s enough!’

He rounded on her, broad and muscular and furious in a way she was not accustomed to finding intimidating. Kharth fancied she could hold her own against most people, but knew, in that heartbeat, that if Jack Logan wanted a fight, he would win. ‘Enough,’ he growled. ‘Go look in there and tell me some plea-deal for information where she walks five minutes later is enough.’

Behind her, Lindgren had cautiously padded to the door – and took three steps sharply back, hand coming to her mouth. ‘Oh my God.’

Kharth didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes off Logan. ‘Take a walk, Commander. Go. Now.’ For a moment, the decision hung in the balance. Then he turned on his heel and, like a mountain changing course, stalked back to the gloomy corridor of the facility.

‘He can’t help it, Commander,’ rasped the Orion, rubbing her throat as she got to her feet. ‘It’s in his nature.’

‘Shut up,’ Kharth snapped, storming towards the mysterious door. ‘Beckett, watch her.’ Beckett was wide-eyed, gaze flickering from door to Lindgren to where Logan had disappeared, but at her instruction, he nodded, and adjusted his rifle. He looked as off-balance as the rest, and she wondered if he needed sterner words to get him to settle down.

Then she reached the door, and Beckett’s composure became a lot less important than her own.

She’d tasted the metal tang in the air when Logan had opened the door. But the main lab stank of oil and chemicals, and that had given her all the excuse she needed to pretend she didn’t know what she could smell. There was no disguising, now, the taste of blood on her tongue, the stench filling her nostrils. Stood in a workshop to take apart and analyse equipment, technology, she needed to take only one step through a doorway to enter not another research facility, but an abattoir.

‘XBs,’ she heard Lindgren say from behind her, and it was unclear if she was speaking aloud for the benefit of Beckett, an accusation against the Orion, or to exorcise what she’d seen. ‘They’ve been murdering xBs.’

There was not much left. A storage rack for extracted cybernetics. Equipment bearing all the signs of being well-used. A table used for autopsies.

No, thought Kharth as a memory came at her, old reports from years ago, roiling in from recollection as if the here and now was a million light-years away from anything else she’d ever known. Autopsies are for the dead. They need the cybernetics fully functional until the last possible second before they extract them. This was vivisection.

When she walked back into the main lab and sealed the door behind her, she felt very cold. She looked at the Orion, whose impassive veneer looked dented by more than Logan’s manhandling of her. ‘I do hope someone else was responsible for the work in there,’ Kharth told her blandly. ‘Because you’re going to need a bigger fish to sell out.’

It wasn’t discipline that meant she hadn’t reacted like Logan. It probably had a lot to do with the fact he was an xB, but that made him angrier; it didn’t make her calmer. She kept her cool and did her job not, in that moment, because of commitment to the Federation’s higher ideals. But simply because what she had seen was so horrific that she didn’t know how to respond. In the absence of anything else, there was the job.

At last, the Orion rolled her eyes. ‘Starfleet sanctimony,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t you get it? They’re already dead. The Borg already killed them.’

Somewhere in the galaxy, Kharth thought, there would be a theological interpretation to back that up. When she heard the thudding footsteps of Logan rushing back in, she thought, implausibly, he’d overheard and was coming back for a second round. But, wild-haired and furious as the xB looked, he was also looking at her, not the Orion.

‘Shuttles are breakin’ atmo,’ he said, chest heaving. ‘We got company.’

Lindgren blinked into action, then, pushing away from the bulkhead to lift her tricorder, synched with the Excalibur’s sensors. She swore. ‘There’s a Syndicate scout ship in orbit.’

The Orion laughed, her relief audible. ‘Of course I didn’t just lock the doors and hope for the best the second a Starfleet ship set down. I called for reinforcements.’

Kharth looked at her. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

Sometimes, the galaxy did her a favour. Amidst Borg wreck and near-assimilation and slaughterhouses of hunted and murdered xBs, the scale tipped back a micron as Lindgren’s tricorder bleeped again, and the pilot called out, ‘The USS Tempest has dropped out of warp!’

‘What do you know?’ Kharth snapped her fingers. ‘I did think of that.’

Mere minutes later, her combadge beeped. ‘Tempest to Excalibur team. Heard you called for some cavalry?’ came the bold, confident voice of Commander Harrian Cal.

Normally, Kharth would have given a wicked grin at such an auspicious chain of events. Now she could barely managed a weak smile. ‘You’ve got great timing, Commander. We’ve got detainees and evidence galore down here.’

‘So I see. There’s a scout in orbit we just disabled. A couple of shuttles breaking atmo we’ll run down. Then we’ll send some assistance. See you in a few, Kharth. Tempest out.’

Kharth turned to the Orion, whose smugness had evaporated. ‘You’re about to get,’ she said, her tight smile intact, ‘a lot more intimate with Starfleet sanctimony.’