“How long have they been out there?” Mac asked, swivelling his command chair to face the secondary ops station. He had to keep the smile off his face as he did that, a freedom he knew his former captain would be jealous of but was all his right now.

“Couple of hours,” came the easy response from Lieutenant Catalina Saez as she turned to face him with what he had learned was a trademark near-permanent smirk on her face. “And we did tell them to be sneaky gits so they aren’t going to call back until they’re fairly certain they won’t give the game away.”

“Sneaky gits?” he challenged, watching Catalina’s smirk grow, touching her eyes.

“Follow emission control protocols and remain undetected while undertaking initial scouting of the facility,” Catalina corrected.

“Oh, no, we definitely said to be sneaky gits,” came a follow-up from the rightmost command chair and he caught Sidda winking at Catalina, who shook her head in response. “But we also did say all that other stuff,” Sidda continued as she waved at imaginary smoke, attempting to dismiss any complaints.

“Ladies, please,” Mac found himself saying, trying to bring order to the chaos that was his bridge. His bridge. He’d take the banter and easy attitude if it meant it was on his bridge. And as he’d found over the last few weeks, it was a veneer over robust professionalism.

Catalina, most of her flight of Night Witches even, gave the comfortable, relaxed but competent vibe that he expected of pilots while avoiding any bold and brash overconfidence. And then he had his XO, Sidda Sadovu, who tried her best to radiate charm and approachability with the crew, but she was more focused in private or with the senior officers. She was by far the hardest and easiest for him to read at the same time.

“Sorry Captain,” Catalina answered. “Blunt and Crash know what they’re doing. They should be, by the mission profile, observing the facility right now and should start making their way back here in,” she turned back to her station, checking a clock he couldn’t quite make out across the distance, “sixteen minutes. Two hours to get back to the barn and then we’ll know what the lay of the land is.”

“Assuming no surprises,” Sidda added, playing devil’s advocate.

“Murphy willing,” Catalina pleaded with the unseen chaos deity that plagued all good plans.

Two Valkyrie-class fighters from the USS Republic hung in space a million kilometres from their prey. Over two and a half times the distance between Earth and Luna, but with the right equipment a mere inconvenience of distance. The small dwarf planet that their intelligence had hinted at was barely even that; more an asteroid with pretensions of glory, its gravity not quite enough to round the mass into a sphere but an exaggerated oblate sphere. It had however cleared a decent chunk of its orbital path and area, either absorbing smaller masses into its own or winning the gravitational game and flinging the offending masses onto new orbits far away.

All this meant that space for a handful of millions of kilometres in every direction was as devoid of places to hide as the overwhelming majority of the cosmos. Unless of course you brought a place to hide with you, or if not a place to hide, did everything you possibly could to make yourself as difficult to detect as you could.

The Valkyrie-class A/R fighters were meant for this exact purpose – observing a target while remaining undetected. Advanced, but narrow-focused sensors could pick out exacting details across vast distances with a clarity only matched by dedicated starship sensors. But while a starship could do what they could, better even, it was vastly harder to hide a starship and much, much easier for the wizards of the Corp of Engineers to come up with ways to hide a fighter in plain sight.

As a mission timer finally rolled over the two pilots looked at each other, their craft separated by a handful of metres of hard vacuum. Their ECM systems negated the vast majority of subspace or radio emissions the craft might attempt, forcing them to purely visual forms of communication and comms lasers they had both agreed they wouldn’t use unless absolutely required. There was no point in a stray laser giving their mission away if they could avoid it.

Heads nodded in recognition, a wave between them signalled both knew what the time was, their mission of observation complete. As one, both craft turned away from facing the dwarf planet they had been sent to spy on, far beyond their pilot’s ability to make out against the inky blackness. A careful firing up of their engines and they pulled away, preparing to make the slow and careful jaunt back to where Republic was hiding in the shadow of the system’s most energetic gas giant.

“Nothing,” Lieutenant Sonhi Nagnax, Crash, said as she and T’Kenn made their way into the conference room, escorted by their squadron leader who had received them upon their return.

“That is not entirely correct,” the Vulcan corrected as he followed in the shorter Trill woman’s wake. “We did compare our scans while in transit and it is safe to say that there is something on the surface of the dwarf planet, large enough to hold the purported research facility and staff, but we didn’t detect any activity.”

“So, nothing,” Sonhi reiterated as she sat herself down in a chair. She and T’Kenn both were still in their flight suits, having barely landed before being dragged before the ship’s command staff.

Cat stepped up behind the woman, resting a single hand on her shoulder and Sonhi stiffened, then her shoulders slumped slightly. “Sorry, long day,” she said towards Mac and Sidda. The message from her superior, Be a bit more professional, had been received.

“Quiet alright Lieutenant,” Mac replied. “But let’s work on it, yes?” He waited for her to nod in understanding, accepting she wasn’t being obliterated by a ship’s captain for her attitude, just merely told to try harder, then continued himself. “No activity at all?”

“No subspace signals, no active sensors, no traffic in or around the dwarf planet or facility. We would have detected anyone outside on a space walk.” T’Kenn had remained standing, settling into a relaxed stance for a Vulcan which wouldn’t have looked out of a place on a parade ground receiving a high dignitary or some other notable visitor.

“Well that makes our job easier,” Sidda spoke up, sitting up from her comfortable slouch in her chair and leaning over the table, her smile growing predatory in nature. “Get Republic in nice and close, cutting out course to use the dwarf planet as cover until we come over the horizon for them and by the time they can see us we’ll be literally the only thing in their skies.”

“Cardassian space and we’re not the police,” Mac objected immediately.

Sidda looked like she wanted to object, and would have most likely, if not for the junior officers in the room. But then she took in a breath and settled herself. “What about a friendly visit from a visiting Starfleet crew then? We look about, see if we can’t find anything that might indicate if she’s actually been here or not. And if we find anything, we liaise with Gul Lemec to sort out jurisdictional issues.”

“It’s pushing the boundaries,” Mac replied but cut off any protest with a raised finger. “Pushing, not crossing. Four-person away team and you’re taking Dr Pisani with you.” He saw the question on Sidda’s face. “Medical facility. Be weird not to bring a doctor with you on a surprise visit and she’s best placed to possibly spot anything truly out of place.”

“Levne and Beckman then,” Sidda answered. The chief of security and their helmswoman. A lot of seniority on one team. But Starfleet seemed intent on reverting to patterns of yesteryear, who was he to object to the same in away team protocol? If only Sidda hadn’t read him the regulations about captain’s going on away missions directly from the books, a tactic he knew she’d used to cement her role at the head of such excursions.

Something he’d have to talk to Tikva about. He was never like that as her XO. Never.

Because he’d had Commander Gantzmann to pull such regulations out for him.

He nodded in acquiescence and then looked to his two returned pilots. “Look forward to seeing your sensor logs Lieutenants. Good work out there. I’ll let you return to Lieutenant Saez’s mercies.”

“Shower you two,” Cat said straight away. “Then meet me in the Pnyx for a working dinner and debrief.”

As Sonhi stood, she looked not to Cat, but to Sidda. “Is she working there tonight?” And suddenly all attention turned to Sidda. Was Revin working? Were there going to be baked delights waiting for them?

“Yes and no,” she answered. “She’s not done any baking. She’s practising making cocktails. Dr Pisani is assisting.”

“We’re all going to die,” Mac blurted out, looking defeated. “Liver failure, the whole crew. Even the non-drinkers.” Then he shook his head and waved the fighter pilots out of the conference room. “Get us to that facility Commander and get over there. We could have a Cardassian ship on us at any moment after all and best we make sure Shreln doesn’t get disappeared if we can avoid it.”

“Damn right.” Sidda pushed herself to her feet, that predatory smile growing just a touch. “Small warp jump.”

“No,” he answered.

“Just a tiny one,” she shot back as she walked around the table and toward the door to the bridge. She held up her right hand, finger and thumb held together to emphasise her point.

“Commander,” he said flatly, the single word enough.

“Full impulse, careful course,” she said, utterly serious as the doors opened. “We’ll be there as fast as Beckman can cut that course I suggested.”