“Krem Orbital Control has just sent us another orbital correction,” announced Lieutenant Jenu Trid from her station to the front left of the bridge. “Cardassians being Cardassians I guess.”

“And just what is that meant to mean, Lieutenant?” asked Lieutenant Command Matt Lake, currently seated in the centre seat and still nose-deep into a report he’d been reading, or trying to, for the last hour.

“That they still like to give out pointless orders for the sake of seeing people jump to,” Trid shot out without any hesitation, then winced straight away as what she had said registered. “What I meant sir was –“

“What you meant was what you said Lieutenant,” Matt interrupted her, setting the padd in hand down and looking to the young Bajoran woman as she turned to face him. “And I get that Bajoran cultural views of Cardassians are…negative at best?” He waited a moment, getting an agreeing nod from Trid before he continued. “But ten corrections in the last three hours is getting beyond a joke.” He broke into a smile and offered her a wink, the lesson given and softened with situational understanding.

“Should I make the adjustments then?” asked Willow Beckman at the helm, who’d been sitting there half-bored to death her whole shift, save for the momentary respite of changing the ship’s orbit to comply with the whims and fancy of orbital directors planetside.

“Get us to the orbit they want us in, but do it nice and slow like Lieutenant,” Matt answered after a moment of thought. “Lazy-like and with style,” he added with a wave of his hand.

“Aye sir,” Beckman replied, a touch of hesitation to her words and dragging them out as she turned back to her controls.

“Not to add to the list of issues Commander,” came a half-squeak from Comms, a young Ensign Bartlett responding to a series of demanding beeps from their console. “But I’ve got a priority message from Deep Space 47. For Commander Sadovu.”

“Don’t let me stand in the way of ceremony Ensign,” Matt said, returning to his padd. “She’s no doubt expecting it anyway.”

“Aye sir,” the ensign responded, a short series of key taps forwarding the message along.

“Now, who wants to hear about the latest in post-radiation genetic repair therapies?” Matt asked, his question bringing with it utter silence on the bridge. “Just me? You’re all missing out.”

Sidda and Revin’s shared quarters were only just a sliver above pitch black as she crept out of the bedroom, tugging the dressing gown tight as she slipped out into the common area. With a faint hiss, the door closed and she finally spoke, having been silent since the accursed bleeping of a priority message had woken her.

Someone, somewhere had sold their soul and the souls of all their descendants to master the one sound designed to interrupt an officer’s sleep. And then thought it funny to let others control that sound. Usually some ensign, disturbing the sleep of their seniors.

“Display message,” she’d whispered as she sat down on the cushion at the low table that housed her ‘home computer’. Just like on the Vondem Rose she’d replaced all the furniture with low sitting makes, chairs and couches with a variety of cushions and rugs and blankets. All of it a taste of her upbringing on Vondem.

And thanks to Revin, all of it a glorious and horrific mishmash of styles and colours, but an absolute riot of textures and feels, harkening to the young Romulan woman’s own youth of blindness.

Which also explained why the room was so dark, besides it being nighttime for the couple. Sidda preferred it that way, so that at home she had been more akin to Revin in sense, but then had simply acclimatised to it. Besides, the rest of the day she spent in brightly lit spaces, the difference helped put her mind someplace else.

“Authorisation code required,” the computer unhelpfully announced, its volume way too high for Sidda’s likening and eliciting a flinch from her. No one liked being shouted at when they were still waking up.

“Sidda-Rose-Seven-Six-Baker-Tallyho.”

The computer paused for a few seconds, a mere progress bar coming up on screen as it contemplated her code and then decrypted the message. What started as a crawl leapt to completion in the blink of an eye before disappearing, leaving only a series of numbers on screen punctuated by periods and a couple of colons.

“Queen bitch,” Sidda hissed.

“Seriously?” Mac asked as he looked over the padd he’d just been handed. His ready room had been an island of calm serenity and paperwork, never-ending though it was, then interrupted by the arrival of his XO bearing news.

“Seriously,” Sidda answered. “I got this just a few minutes ago.” A statement corroborated by the fact she was standing before him wearing a silk dressing gown that was in his opinion a little short for running around the ship in. The little art-style starships doing battle all over it though was something that brought a smile to him though.

“Lemec still hasn’t gotten back to us, despite telling us it would only be a few hours.” A few hours that had dragged into most of a day now. “Still think he’s dragging us along?”

“I’m starting to rethink my earlier position, save that a little math tells me the Commodore likely only had our transmission for about fifteen minutes before she sent that gem along.” Sidda moved to take a seat, settling herself down, and readjusting her dressing gown briefly. “Lemec is running decryption, she had a key.”

“How the hell does Starfleet Intelligence have a decryption key for a Cardassian medical research institute?” He waved any attempt at an answer away before it could be given. There wasn’t a soul aboard the ship that would likely be able to guess anywhere near the right answer. “These coordinates, aren’t they…” he trailed off as he tried to mentally place them, drawing a blank.

“In the middle of nowhere,” Sidda finished the sentence for him. “Literal nowhere. Nothing out there at all. But, if you remove forty-seven degrees from each set, you actually do get something.” She smiled at him, a whole-face affair, before continuing. “System CX-489-D in the Cardassian cartography catalogue we have. A mere seventeen lightyears away.”

“Forty-seven?” he asked, feeling his own eyebrow raise.

“Regulation 46A. And to be fair I first looked up those exact coordinates and was highly confused by the total lack of anything. But rotation cyphers are some of the first and most primitive encryption one can come up with.”

“Still haven’t explained how you got to forty-seven as the answer though,” he continued.

“Task Force Forty-Seven.” She shrugged. “Second number I tried. Right there on my desktop screen.”

It was only a few moments after that the two of them entered the bridge, Matt Lake quickly rising from the centre seat as they did so, his gaze quickly going over the XO in her current state of dress before flashing back to him. “Captain, hope nothing is wrong.”

“No, nothing,” he answered. “Engineering hasn’t stood down have they?”

“No, though Evan has asked twice now if we’re actually going to be going somewhere, or if we’re just keeping the engines hot for fun.” Matt’s delivery of that was likely far more polite and softer than the engineer’s question would have been directly from him.

“Oh, we’re going somewhere alright,” Sidda said as she walked barefoot across the bridge, handing the padd, with adjusted coordinates on it this time, over to Lieutenant Beckman, who merely glanced at it before entering them into her station, bringing up star charts, checking sensors and plotting a course. “Got it, Lieutenant?”

“Aye, ma’am. Seventeen point one lightyears,” Beckman answered.

“Good,” Mac said. “Break orbit and take us there at maximum warp. And don’t ask permission to depart, just do it.” He turned back to the turbolift, Sidda already heading back herself. “And if Gul Lemec hails, take a message.”

With a round of ‘Aye sir’ he stepped into the turbolift, the doors closing on him and Sidda. “And as for you XO, go back to bed. I can do math and it’s still going to take us just under nineteen hours.”

“Same to you then Boss,” she shot back. “But yes, I plan on going right back to bed. And then getting ready to raid whatever deathtrap Shreln has left behind.”

“That dressing gown was a bit interesting,” Matt said after the captain and commander had left. The stars on the viewscreen slid away to one side as Beckman broke the ship from orbit promptly.

“Oh?” Trid asked, turning to face him. “Find something you like about it?” she continued, teasing tone to her voice.

“It was covered in lots of little starships,” he answered as he sat back down, crossing his arms. “I have the utmost respect for the XO after all.”

“Oh, that old thing,” Trid commented, turning back to her station. “More surprised she was wearing a dressing gown. Honestly, you haven’t worked for her until you’ve fought off raiders with her standing in the middle of the bridge shouting orders while clutching a bedsheet around herself for modesty.”

“That really happened?” Beckman asked incredulously. “Seriously?”

“She was more pissed off they had interrupted her sleep than that they were shooting at her ship,” Trid said with a wink. “I’ll tell you about it later. Heck, she’ll tell you about it if you buy her a drink.”

“Alright ladies,” Matt chimed in. “Lieutenant Beckman, if you please, could you kindly make all classical physicists cry and take us to warp?”