The Borg. He hated the Borg. He’d lost half a decade of his life to them, years wasted on menial engineering tasks as he helped the squadron find its way back from the Delta Quadrant. He hated them for that. He hated them too for stripping him of his endowed chair at Daystrom and his membership on the Science Council. After his return, the preeminent astrophysicist had found himself relegated to unimaginative research projects as the research community moved on to the next generation of young scientific minds. At least Admiral Reyes had eventually come calling, but that came with a price too. She was doing her damndest to get them all killed, first with the Lost Fleet and now with the Borg. He particularly hated the Borg.

“Dr. Lockwood, you gonna call it soon?” asked Lieutenant Akil al-Qadir as he started to pack up his things. A particle physicist by trade, Dr. Qadir had spent the evening reviewing their latest scans, searching for any hint of anthropogenic emissions in the graveyard of Wolf 359. The Borg homing beacon had gone missing, and if they couldn’t find it, one possible explanation was that someone had taken it before they arrived. From transwarp wakes to residual tachyons, he’d run through a gamut of possibilities, but so far, nothing had netted out. “It’s getting late, and the debris field isn’t going anywhere.”

“The sooner we find that beacon, the sooner we get out of here,” Dr. Luke Lockwood replied as he glanced out the window. He could see the M-type main-sequence red dwarf of Wolf 359 hanging there in the distance. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not hang out in this graveyard a moment longer than I have to.” He hated the Borg. “Could you shoot me your latest findings before you turn in for the night?”

“Absolutely,” nodded Lieutenant Qadir. He took a moment to route his latest findings over to Dr. Lockwood’s station, and then he stood to depart. “Anything else you need from me before I go?”

“Nope. Have a good night.” Staring at the new data, Dr. Lockwood didn’t even look up as Lieutenant Qadir made his way out of the room. Lieutenant Qadir took no offense though. He knew his colleague was in the zone, and when Dr. Lockwood was in the zone, good things often happened. 

Sure enough, as the hours drew late, Dr. Lockwood made a breakthrough. Interlacing Lieutenant Qadir’s work with his own, he began to see a pattern. It was subtle, but it was there. Trace quantities of matter-antimatter byproducts and minor fluctuations in subspace curvature.

Dr. Lockwood was not the only one still at his desk. Over on the USS Serenity, Captain Jame Lewis sat in his darkened Ready Room, a bottle of Andorian ale sitting between him and Dr. Lisa Hall. “I’m a bit concerned about Jace,” Captain Lewis shared as he helped himself to another generous pour of the chilled liquor.

“Why do you say that?” Dr. Hall asked as she took a sip from her sifter. “He’s loyal to you, and to the team. Even if Drake tries to cut him a deal, he’s not the type to crack.” Whether or not Captain Lewis recognized it, it wasn’t physical aptitude, gun skill, or even calmness under pressure that he selected for first when he picked members of his Hazard Team. It was loyalty. And then he built on it as he trained them. His team learned they could depend on him, always, and that inspired the same from them. That conditioning went far beyond what a JAG officer could offer with a promise of leniency, especially when their captain kept reminding them that the investigation would fail anyways. Now that Dr. Hall thought about it, it was a bit cult-like, and cults could be very effective.

“He was all hung up on the people he killed,” Captain Lewis explained as he kicked his glass back and savored the chilled liquid washing across his palette. “But frankly, what choice did he have? It was him or them.” The math was easy.

“From where you and I sit, that’s self-evident,” Dr. Hall agreed. “But Lieutenant Morgan is not one of us. Not yet. He’s an excellent marksman, a hand-to-hand aficionado, a fitness junkie, and a gifted operations specialist, but before Nasera, I’ll bet he could have counted his total kills between his fingers and toes.” After Nasera and Frontier Day though, she knew that was no longer the case.

“And he kept saying all this weird shit about playing god.”

It wasn’t the first time Dr. Hall had heard such characterizations from someone trying to process the aftermath of battle. “You didn’t think anything of it when you raised your sidearm and pulled the trigger, but consider it from his perspective. We already had the Vorta restrained. It couldn’t do us harm, and killing it was not tactically necessary.”

“Yeah, well it made me feel better,” Captain Lewis chuckled darkly. He’d watched it execute Petty Officer Atwood as a sick show to control the people of Nasera, and both Lieutenant Commander Jordan and Ryssehl Th’zathol had died to stop its reign of terror. So had nine hundred and thirty two other officers and crew from the squadron. “And it deserved it.”

“I don’t disagree,” Dr. Hall nodded. “But that’s not how we teach these kids to think. From Lieutenant Morgan’s perspective, you acted as judge, jury and executioner over a living thing.”

“Living? It was a fucking Vorta.”

“Oh, believe me, I couldn’t have given one fuck,” Dr. Hall replied coldly as she finished the last drop from her sifter. She slid it across the table for a refill. “But I’d guess that’s where he comes from when he says he doesn’t think we should play god.”

“Do you believe in god, doctor?” Captain Lewis asked as he poured her another stiff one.

“If gods ever existed, they were killed or gave up on this universe long ago,” Dr. Hall replied darkly. No one was watching out for them, and the universe didn’t care what they did. In the end, the outcome was predetermined. A cold death for each and every one of them, and someday a cold death for the universe itself. “But that doesn’t change how he’s feeling. If it was just Nasera, this probably wouldn’t even be a thing, but I’m sure this is all mixed up with the guilt he’s feeling over Frontier Day. You saw the after-action on what he did with Ayala and Tom aboard the ship.”

“I did,” Captain Lewis nodded proudly. When the Borg had remotely assimilated the fleet, Lieutenant J.G. Morgan, Chief Shafir and Dr. Brooks had fought their way across the USS Serenity. Their plan had been to detonate the warp core in the middle of Fleet Formation, and they would have succeeded if Admiral Picard hadn’t stopped the signal when he did. “It was exactly what they needed to do.” He slid her glass back across the table.

“While it might have been right, it doesn’t change the fact he killed over a dozen Starfleet officers,” Dr. Hall pointed out as the sliding sifter came to a rest in front of her. “And that he was preparing to kill thousands more.” She lifted the sifter to her mouth and took another sip.

The captain’s combadge beeped, pulling them from their conversation.

“Lewis, go.”

“Captain, I know it’s late,” apologized the officer of the watch. “But Commander Lockwood has requested a remote briefing with all members of the squadron’s command staff.”

At least it was remote so he didn’t have to rush his drink. “Put him through.” The pair adjusted their chairs so they had a better view of the monitor as they waited for it to connect. “I wonder what the lab rat has found this time that’s so urgent as to drag everyone out of bed.”

“Wasn’t it a temporally-desynced star nursery last time?” Dr. Hall asked. As a passive observer, she had to admit that one had actually been worth getting out of bed for as they watched stars be born in a handful of hours rather than millions of years.

“Maybe… or was that the time before last?” Captain Lewis laughed. The research lead from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity had a very different perspective on what was critically important than Captain Lewis, and this would hardly be the second, third, or even fourth time he’d done this.

“Meh, who knows,” shrugged Dr. Hall as she took another sip from the sifter. “But we’ll find out soon enough.”

A moment later, the seal of the United Federation of Planets was replaced by a multicast of Polaris Squadron’s command staff. Fleet Captain Gérard Devreux, the Squadron XO, looked to have just climbed out of bed, while Captain Dorian Vox, the Squadron Strategic Operations Officer, appeared to have found a terminal in the Diligent’s bar. Meanwhile, Commanders James Henderson, Robert Drake, and Luke Lockwood, the Medical, JAG and Science Officers for the squadron respectively, were each still in their offices. There were two notable absences, the Squadron CO and Engineering Officer, but that was to be expected. Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes and Commander Cora Lee had gone to Beta Serpentis III aboard the USS Ingenuity, and for reasons yet unknown, they’d lost contact with the ship earlier in the day.

“A little over a week ago, Starfleet Communications detected a Borg homing signal coming from Wolf 359,” Dr. Lockwood jumped straight in without any pleasantries. “As we’re all acutely aware, that signal disappeared shortly before we arrived, and we’ve been searching the debris field for it ever since. We’re not going to find it though because the beacon is no longer here.”

“How do you know?” Captain Vox asked, his demeanor split between curiosity and a desire to get back to his drink in the Diligent’s bar.

“Because I know where it went,” Dr. Lockwood replied. “Although our prevailing assumption has been that the beacon just went dormant again, another explanation was that it vanished because it moved. I tasked my team with exploring this possibility.”

“And you found something?” Captain Vox seemed almost excited by the prospect. Sure, it would mean they had a situation on their hands, but at least they wouldn’t just be sitting on their hands anymore. A week spent staring at forty year old rubble and debris wasn’t his idea of a good time.

“I did.”

Captain Lewis sat up straight. Now the physicist had his attention. 

“First, we identified trace byproducts from matter-antimatter reactions that have half lives incongruous with our time of arrival,” Dr. Lockwood continued. “And then we managed to find the ripples of a faint subspace wake departing the system about a week ago.” The astrophysicist pulled up the relevant telemetry.

“How the hell did you spot that wake?” Captain Vox asked incredulously as he looked over the telemetry. Even his best sensor operators wouldn’t have been able to pick out those variations against the background radiation. “That couldn’t have been caused by anything larger than a runabout.”

“It would not have been possible to spot without knowing where to look,” Dr. Lockwood replied with a twinkle in his eye. “But I had a hunch.”

“Where?” asked Captain Lewis warily.

“Bearing one four four mark fourteen,” Dr. Lockwood reported as he shifted the screenshare from a sensor display to a starchart that plotted a vector originating from Wolf 359 with a red line. “Terminating 1.64 light years from here in the Beta Serpentis system.” This had been the late night breakthrough he’d had after Lieutenant Qadir left the lab. They’d received a distress call from the colony there, and the Ingenuity had gone missing there, so the confluence of strange events made it a prime place to check, and sure enough, it had netted out.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Captain Lewis said as he rose from his chair. He’d told Admiral Reyes that she shouldn’t have taken the USS Ingenuity there without backup! He’d fucking warned her! Fuck! “We need to go, and we need to go now!” He looked at the Squadron Strategic Operations Officer, who also happened to be the CO of the Alita-class USS Diligent. “Dorian, Diligent and Serenity are fastest. We need to turn and burn for Beta Serpentis.”

Captain Vox agreed, and nodded as such.

“Not so fast,” came the sharp voice of Commander Drake. “You’re under strict orders. You are not to separate from the Polaris until this investigation is over!” The last time Jake Lewis had bolted away with the Serenity, he’d disappeared for over a month. That would not be happening again.

“Serenity and Diligent can cover the distance in two and a half hours,” Captain Vox pointed out, coming to his fellow captain’s aid. The math was easy for the former fighter pilot to do in his head. It would take 2.54 hours for the light cruiser and the heavy escort to cover the 1.64 light years to Beta Serpentis at warp 9.98. “The Polaris will take over an hour longer to get there.” The whale could only make warp 9.96.

“We go together, or we don’t go at all,” Commander Drake insisted. “I mean, let’s be real… What the hell will the difference of an hour really make?”

“It could make all the difference!” Captain Lewis countered aggressively. He couldn’t believe they were even having this debate. Commander Drake needed to come off his high horse. The Borg homing beacon had been taken to the same place where they’d received a mysterious distress call, and the same place Admiral Reyes and the USS Ingenuity had gone incommunicado nearly twelve hours prior. That was too much to be a coincidence. Something might be very wrong. The JAG Officer’s ivory tower bullshit needed to wait.

Commander Drake opened his mouth to snap back, but before he could, Fleet Captain Devreux jumped in: “Enough, both of you! The call is mine to make, and I’m making it.” The firmness in his tone caught everyone off guard. Devreux was known to be an understated leader, and he rarely wielded the authority of his position. “Captains Lewis and Vox will take the Serenity and Diligent and make best speed for Beta Serpentis, and we’ll give chase with the Polaris as best we can.”