Kharth strode into Sickbay, Cortez on her heels, Beckett and Thawn following a short distance behind. Lindgren was running the post-flight sequence on the Excalibur, Airex had headed for the bridge, but Logan had been beamed aboard the moment they’d come into transporter range.

‘Doc!’ Kharth looked around sharply, but the only answer came as Nurse Li exited the surgical theatre. Her heart tightened. ‘Is it that bad…’

‘After what you said, we beamed him in directly. We were worried about brain damage.’ But Li raised her hands. ‘We’ve applied both cortolin and cortical stimulators. He’s responded very well. Doctor Winters is with him.’

‘I want to see him -’

‘We’ve avoided brain-death, Commander, but that’s it. The doctor’s still working.’ There weren’t many people aboard who could say ‘no’ to Saeihr Kharth. Technically, Ed Winters was one of them. Practically, Nurse Li was the one who stood her ground against all-comers so he could work his magic and save lives – and with the other hand, provide essential medical assistance. As Kharth stopped, she turned to the others. ‘He also wants me to check the rest of the missing team. Biobeds, go.’

Cortez squeezed Kharth’s shoulder, but knew better than to argue. She and Thawn headed off, Beckett following but at once being kept at bay by Li. Grinding her teeth, Kharth walked to one of the chairs next to the surgical theatre door, sat, and waited.

Minutes later, Winters emerged. He looked surprised to see her. ‘Are you well, Commander?’

‘Logan.’ She stood. ‘How is he?’ Cortez had been given the all-clear by Li and joined them.

Winters glanced between them. ‘You say he was reconnected with the Collective?’

‘Just on the Diamond,’ said Cortez. ‘He plugged himself in using one of the Queen’s, uh, access ports. I don’t pretend to know how that worked, but he had some – control over the ship. Not complete, it sounded like he couldn’t override major operational priorities like killinf Endeavour or reconnecting to the wider Collective. It’s like he was at least a, I don’t know, a mini-Queen.’

‘And the pathogen.’ Kharth looked at her. ‘You said this Diamond had been wrecked by the neurolytic pathogen. Could that have hurt him?’

‘Maybe,’ said Cortez. ‘And the fact the Diamond was reconnecting to the Collective via the probe.’

Winters piped up quickly. ‘Thank you, Commanders. That’s all I need to know.’ At Kharth’s sharp look, he hesitated. ‘Human minds don’t have the processing power for a whole starship’s systems, especially not a Borg Diamond, especially not one connecting to the Collective. The good news is that, for our purposes, Commander Logan is not wholly human; he still has a significant amount of Borg cybernetics in his brain. But not what I can only presume would be a Queen’s hardware.’

‘You’re doing a lot of dithering around a diagnosis, Doc,’ Kharth said with a warning tone.

He sighed. ‘I was trying to not be too technical. Neuroimaging has revealed widespread synaptic pathway degradation. The stimulators and cortolin have prevented brain death, but there’s still an uphill climb.’

‘What does that mean?’ Kharth snapped.

Winters pressed on with endless patience. ‘Thankfully, I have extensive medical records for the commander. And for other former Borg. And the research from the Artifact. We do have treatment measures for injuries like this. I’m going to implement a multi-phasic neuro-regeneration regimen. It’ll stabilise and repair the damaged synaptic connections. Based on Commander Logan’s history, I’m optimistic.’

‘But?’

Now he winced. ‘The neurolytic pathogen is a concern. It’s a factor I can’t account for. And I won’t know until we begin and we see how he responds.’

‘Nuts and bolts, Doc,’ said Kharth. ‘What’s the worst-case scenario?’

Winters sighed. ‘Neurolytic degradation to the extent he falls into a coma and eventually all brain activity stops.’

‘And the best?’ said Cortez with a wince.

‘Full recovery. I’ll have a better idea within six hours when we see how he initially responds. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should get started.’

Kharth stared at the chair by the theatre door, and again, Cortez put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’d tell you to sleep,’ Cortez said, ‘but I reckon that’s not gonna happen. So sit your ass down, I’ll go report in, and I’ll make sure someone’s getting you coffee.’

‘Yeah.’ Kharth blinked, then looked at her. ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’

Cortez shrugged but, at last, gave a grin. ‘I’m glad you’re stupid enough to come get me.’

On the far side of Sickbay, Beckett practically hopped from foot to foot as he waited for Li to be done. She clearly radiated irritation, asking him to step back twice before she finished her check of Thawn and walked away with an aggravated glare.

At once, he swooped in, hopping up beside her on the biobed. ‘All okay?’

Her expression was bashful, amused, relieved. ‘We weren’t gone for very long. What in the Great Fire did you do to catch up with us?’

Now it was his turn to smile, pleased and guilty all at once. ‘Commander Airex realised that the subspace fractions from the collapse of the initial conduit meant that it would be possible to breach the transwarp threshold, if we exactly followed your path. We modified the deflector array to emit a calibrated tachyon burst to basically reopen the conduit behind you. Endeavour has more power than the probe – we were faster through transwarp than you.’

‘Wow.’ Thawn blinked. ‘We certainly can’t do that back.’ He shook his head, and she frowned at nothing. ‘How did Commander Airex figure out those deflector calibrations that quickly? In hours?’

Because the USS Voyager once made those modifications to their ship, and almost destroyed themselves, and those records were classified. And I handed them over to Airex. They would have failed as Voyager did if it weren’t for the subspace fractures, which meant it took lower tachyon emissions to achieve the same result.

‘He’s very smart,’ Beckett said first, but he saw Thawn’s expression flicker. She was exhausted and emotionally fraught; she had to know he’d just lied. This time it wasn’t pride or a sense of privacy that rose up, however, but shame. He sighed, leaning in against her. ‘No. That’s not it. I got him the data he needed out of Starfleet Intelligence. Out of Captain Faust.’

The corners of her eyes creased. ‘How?’

‘I made a deal.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know my end of the bargain yet. I know this was what you tore strips off me for before you left, I know you’re disappointed…’

Her hand came up to his cheek, and she turned his head to face her. ‘I’m alive. I was angry before, but I don’t want you making decisions that’ll make you miserable, guilty. I know how hard you’ve fought against your father.’

‘This wasn’t about him,’ Beckett said roughly. ‘It wasn’t about the Borg, or Frontier Day, or Faust. There’s a price to pay, and I’ll figure that out. But I…’ He reached up to grasp her hand, kissed the inside of her wrist, and closed his eyes. ‘I didn’t want to figure out the alternative without you. I just got you.’

‘You did. And we’ll figure all of that out.’ She leaned in, their foreheads pressing against each other, and her next words came as a whisper. ‘And you found me.’

‘Yeah, I… didn’t know what I was doing,’ Beckett mumbled. ‘I was desperate. I just concentrated on you and wondered if, I don’t know. You’d sense me, and somehow that’d work both ways.’

She shook her head a little. ‘I didn’t feel you out there. You did this all on your own.’ Only then did he realise her lips weren’t moving, that her voice was in his head. It felt like she’d slid inside him, like she was a warmth that passed through his temples and seeped into his very being.

Beckett frowned. Concentrated. Is that normal?

Again, she pressed her forehead to his. Telepathic bonds with non-telepaths are known to happen. Not often.

‘Huh,’ he mused aloud, because it was still a little uncomfortable to just think sentences and not know if they were heard. ‘I guess I really am special.’

The bridge was still and quiet when Airex stepped out of the turbolift. Already, Valance had stood down some of the officers who’d been pushed to their brink in the encounter, relief crew settling in to assess the damage, take stock. Valance herself was, of course, still in the command chair and stood at the sight of him. For a moment, he thought she didn’t know what to say; then, she braced herself. ‘Good work, Commander.’

‘Yeah,’ chimed in Shepherd at mission control. ‘This flight data coming in off the Excalibur is crazy.’ She sounded, he thought, jealous. Shep did not belong chained to a bridge console.

‘My role was marginal,’ Airex said, lifting his hands as he advanced. ‘Everyone else deserves credit for getting us close enough to beam them out. Doctor Winters is seeing to them. I’m not sure about Commander Logan’s condition, but everyone else is alright.’ He met her gaze, tried to convey everything he needed to with the merest flicker of the eye. She would not thank him for reassuring her about Cortez in public. But she needed it.

Indeed, it looked like a fresh weight had been taken off Valance’s shoulders. She turned to the fore of the ship, and as Airex moved to the central dais, Shepherd joined them. The captain gestured about the bridge. ‘We managed to keep up our hit-and-run routine to distract the Diamond. Power levels are depleted after the hammering our shields took, but no serious damage.’

‘We’re lucky,’ said Shepherd, ‘it happened quick as it did. That thing was getting tougher and tougher all the time. Not the way round you want a fight to go.’

‘The Diamond?’ said Airex.

Valance shook her head. ‘Destroyed. There’s debris scattered everywhere. I’m not minded to investigate. I think we’ve disturbed the dead quite enough for one month.’

A part of Airex strained at that. Starfleet had never pored over a Borg Diamond, even one as damaged as they’d found this one. He was not a man to balk at the idea of discovery, however dangerous. But even he had, perhaps, found his limit. He glanced towards Science, where Lieutenant Turak had taken his post. He asked Valance, ‘Do we have clearer data on our location?’

Shepherd answered, ‘Out past the ass-end of old Romulan space. We’re running off what our deep-space telescopes scanned and what little cartography we picked up off the collapse of the Empire, or off the Klingons.’

‘It’s unclear,’ said Valance, ‘if the Star Empire ever did get this far. Your estimation was correct, though; this is at least a ten-day journey home. That’s if we burn our warp core hot and don’t stop for anything.’

‘And something out here might want us to stop,’ mused Airex, ‘if we’re deep in the territory of Romulan warlords.’

‘So first,’ said Valance, ‘we take stock of the ship. Repair. Send a message back to Gateway, though that’ll still take days to arrive. Then we figure out our next move.’

‘Well, then.’ Airex clicked his tongue. ‘I had better talk to Perrek so we can undo those deflector modifications.’

‘You should sleep, Commander,’ Valance chided.

He looked her in the eye. ‘When will you?’ She didn’t respond. Shepherd laughed, which felt a little like an intrusion, though one he could not begrudge her for.

Even here, on the edge of space, some things didn’t change.