“Lieutenant, sit down before you fall down,” Sidda said as she passed Willow, pointing towards a chair somewhat removed from the collection of dead bodies in the command centre.

“I’m fine ma’am.”

“Lieutenant, when I tell people to sit down, it’s not a suggestion, it’s an order.”

Willow looked like she was going to protest, but opted not to and a second later was retreating from the console she’d been working at to make a much-needed and now mandatory break. As she settled down though she found Lieutenant Levne looming over her, a water bottle outstretched for her. A second, a pondering and then she accepted the bottle for a sip. She and Doctor Pisani had ditched their helmets, but Levne and the Commander were still sporting theirs, now nearly an hour into their investigation of the Cardassian research facility.

“Is this your first time seeing a dead body?” Levne asked, stepping back a half-step.

“No…just…bringing up some bad memories.” Willow’s gaze turned downwards towards the deck. “I mean, honestly, who the fuck does something like this? Just gasses an entire outpost.”

“A sick and twisted individual,” Levne responded. “Or suitably desperate.”

“Or both.” Willow looked up at the security officer, eyes tight. “This is messed up.”

“It is why the Commander is tasked with bringing this Doctor Shreln in after all.” Levne turned to look at the other two in the compartment, then back to Willow. “Sit, take your time. With the computer link to the Republic set up, Lieutenant Commander Lake is likely best suited to finding anything helpful.”

“Anything?” Mac asked as he paced along the back of the bridge, which occasionally granted him the chance to check in on his chief science officer as he trawled through the databases of the Helcta Institute’s clandestine research facility.

“Not since the last time you asked, sir,” Matt Lake responded, with cheer in his voice. It was apparently going to take more than asking five times to start grating on his nerves. “Not to be rude Matt, but you’ve had an hour.”

“And there is a lot of information, as well as some pretty decent encryption on it.” Matt turned, smiling. “And it would go quicker if I wasn’t being interrupted so often.”

“You’re right,” Mac conceded, holding up his hands in surrender as he backstepped, turned and continued his pacing.

He wasn’t enjoying this part – the waiting while others did something. Not but a few months ago it would have been him down there, poking around, fielding calls from Tikva asking him how things were going. He was a doer he’d realised, having been shaken from his rut by Tikva’s appearance in his life a few years ago.

It had been a short command relationship but had changed his life. But he’d never had the chance to learn to sit back and wait. How Tikva had been able to do it, or at least look so calm while doing it, he’d not figured out. Something to remember to ask her next they spoke.

“Jigs up.”

The announcement from the helm had Mac’s attention, the pacing stopping as he stepped between the command seats. Something, anything to break up the monotony of waiting for something to happen. “What’s up Cat?”

The head of the Night Witches, the fighter squadron he’d managed to snag for Republic, had assumed the helm in Beckman’s absence. To get some starship helm time, she’d reasoned with him, to which he couldn’t object, even if it was just flying the ship lazily around an asteroid in the middle of nowhere.

“Galor-class starship just appeared on long-range passives. He’s running fast and true right here at warp nine.” Cat consulted her console for just a moment more. “Give it a few hours before he’s on us.”

“Either someone is coming to check up on us, all the way out here, or Lemec has cracked the database we recovered for him and found these coordinates.” Mac found himself rubbing at the bridge of his nose in quick order. “We’re all friends here.”

“At least until they find us hovering over an outpost of dead Cardassians,” Cat followed up, then shrugged her shoulders at his glare. “Shoot first, ask questions later.”

“And Lemec’s ship has had a recent refit, so could give us a run.” Now came the thinking period, followed by the decision. The Decision. This, this was something he could do. This was something Tikva had let him do and guided him on as well. He dropped his hand from his face. “Get your people ready to launch, but that’s it. We’re guests in the Union, we’ll try talking it out first.”

“Aye sir,” Cat answered, shooting to her feet and the turbolift in quick order.

And then his attention turned to Matt once more. “Anything?”

“No, but still working on it. And yes, I know, before the Cardassians arrive.”

It was an angry-sounding ‘blurp’ from the environmental controls that broke the silence that had settled over the facility’s control room. Shuffling boots followed as Blake checked the screens, then sighed. “Welp, that’s some good news. Scrubbers have finished. You and Levne should be fine now.”

“Goddesses and gods, thank you,” Sidda half-cursed as she broke the seals on her helmet and removed the cumbersome article. “Oh hell, what is that smell?” she immediately asked after taking in a breath.

“Life support only does so much for masking the smell of putrefaction.” Blake didn’t even look up at that, just went back to what she was doing as her part of attempting to get at the truth of what happened here. “Some of this work is straight-up genius. The rest is just…madness.”

“How so?” Sidda asked, pondering putting her helmet back on for a moment before setting it down and stepping up beside Blake, closer than most would have felt comfortable but to which Blake just didn’t notice or care about.

“They’re making great strides on a vaccine for Talorkin Fever. They’ve increased the effectiveness of drug regimes against Grelm Syndrome. But then they’ve been chasing down rabbit holes on a dozen different things for years with no luck.” Blake’s hands pecked at the Cardassian interface, fingers tracing under the wording before tapping certain keys. “Ah, here we go, something from your good doctor.”

“What?” Sidda asked, pressing forward against Blake to get closer to the screen, impatience in her voice.

“It’s just a video. There’s nothing else.” Blake highlighted the total lack of anything else in Shreln’s file repository of the datacore. “We need someone with better computer expertise, but I’d wager she wiped everything and left just this. Hell, it’s not even encrypted, just buried deep.”

“Play it.”

“Yeah yeah, just give me some room,” Blake said, pushing at Sidda with her shoulder as she attempted to do as she’d been asked. “Big screen.”

The large broken curves hanging from the ceiling that framed Cardassian holographic monitors hummed to life, forming a near-mirror of the very compartment. The only thing missing were the current Starfleet officers and what was present on the monitor, including the dead Cardassians, was a somewhat shorter than average and past her prime Andorian woman and a single human-looking man in the background.

“Fuck me,” Sidda hissed just before the video started.

“To whoever is listening to this, you should stop chasing after me,” Doctor T’Halla Shreln said, looking straight at the recorder and now straight at the occupants of the room she’d vacated. “Let what happened here serve as my warning. If you continue to pursue me, if you continue to harass me and impede my work, then I will repeat this on a much larger scale. I don’t want to, but you’re not leaving me a lot of choice.”

Shreln stepped forward, her eyes tightening, emphasising the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Sidda, I know you’re chasing me. Hear you’ve got a promotion now too. Take your prize and leave. Your lover is a scion of one of the families that let innocent Romulans burn. It would be a shame if anything was to happen to her. Stop chasing me.”

And with that, Shreln turned and walked out of frame, leaving just the human male in shot, who stepped forward. He was wearing a long coat, dark in colour, paired with a matching hat that he’d pulled to hide his features. But as he approached the recorder, he pushed it upwards, looking straight at the camera as a slight smile pulled at one side of his face.

“Best be doing as the doc says,” Manfred said with the same easy drawl Sidda had last heard from him the day she’d shot him with a disruptor set way higher than even the Klingons liked. “Wouldn’t want anything untoward to be happening now, would we?”

And then finally the video stopped.

“Okay, so just who was –“ Blake started to ask before being interrupted.

“Fucking Manfred,” Sidda growled the answer out as she grabbed up her EV helmet and stalked out of the room. “We’re leaving. Now.”