Sun-baked air burned in Kharth’s lungs as she ran as fast as she could through the packed crowds, below the hanging drapes of bright colours, between the narrow stalls of wares selling both delights and necessities. Her shoulders brushed pedestrians, sometimes bumped them, but their shouts of protest were left far behind as she rushed on.

A momentary respite came as she skidded to a halt amid the clamour of tools in the market’s metalworking wing, more shaded under the stacked shipping containers and prefab buildings that made up the maze of Meldesa’s biggest settlement. Here, water was always needed on-hand in case of fire, and the air was cool and soothing after the direct, blazing sun.

But she could only stop for a moment, spinning on the spot before she saw her quarry bolting down one of the makeshift avenues, and again she broke into a sprint.

He would flag before she did, she wagered – but he knew the area, could lose her if she didn’t catch him soon. Straight on for thirty metres, a sharp left, and she could smell the acrid stench of the tanneries ahead. Still he ran, one Romulan among many, and without her uniform she was just as much part of the rush of people too. 

A figure taller than most of the crowd stepped out from around a corner before him. Kharth’s heart lunged into her throat as for a moment she thought he’d reached allies. Then the hooded shape of Commander Valance swept a leg out to send Voritan tumbling to the mud-baked ground, and it was over.

By the time she reached them, Valance had Voritan on his front with a pair of cuffs already applied, and Kharth was huffing to recover her breath. ‘Took – took you long enough,’ she complained.

Valance drove her knee into the protesting Voritan’s back. ‘He had to be heading this way. Best chance of losing you down these workshops, we know he already has friends in this part of town.’

‘Then what did you let me chase him for?’

Commander Valance stood and pushed back the hood of the mantle she’d thrown on to cover up her uniform, somehow austere and dignified even in this dusty backwater market. With merely a straightening of broad shoulders she made Kharth feel not just a sweaty, bedraggled mess after the chase, but highly conscious of her average, wiry, scrappy build next to Endeavour’s XO, who managed to combine the raw strength of her Klingon heritage with a dancer’s grace and precision.

Valance gave one of her whispers of a smile. ‘Who knows where he’d have run if you’d not been after him?’

‘You’re making a mistake,’ Voritan growled, even with his face in the dirt.

‘No,’ huffed Kharth. ‘You’re definitely the guy. Tip for next time – don’t keep using the same bust-up disruptor rifle for us to trace.’

‘I mean,’ he snarled, ‘the Rebirth Movement will have your heads.’

‘The Rebirth Movement already want my head. You can sort out among yourselves who gets a pop at me first.’

‘This exchange of too-cool threats is great,’ said Valance, not sounding like it was great at all, ‘but we should get him back to the magistrate’s office.’ She reached down to haul Voritan to his feet, giving the scrawny Romulan a disinterested look. ‘I suggest you think long and hard on the walk back what you’re going to tell them.’

‘If you think I will sell out my comrades -’

‘Then take the sole blame for the murders and get locked up in a hole for the rest of your life,’ Valance said bluntly. ‘Meldesa’s a growing place. Its prison infrastructure is, shall we say, limited.’

‘If you want to admit to any crimes that might fall under Federation jurisdiction, we can offer you a much nicer cell,’ Kharth chipped in as they headed back down the way they’d come. ‘Otherwise our hands are tied.’

They were much more cheerful about this now. Valance had pointed out the many shortcomings of Meldesa’s justice system, with the settlement barely fifteen years old in the heart of the former Romulan Neutral Zone. Kharth had been forced to bat for the locals, arguing how important it was for them to keep their own peace, maintain their own justice. Starfleet could offer support for a more humane criminal justice system when the biggest obstacle was resources – they could not descend and whisk prisoners away. The message would be too clear and too damaging: that Meldesa, that the Romulans of the old Neutral Zone, were too backwards and barbaric to be allowed justice.

The stern-faced magistrate met them out front of the stitched-together heart of Meldesa’s government, the building cobbled together out of stacked shipping containers, remains of evacuation ships permanently grounded, and whatever had been built from the stone of the hot, dusty world in the past decade and a half. Meldesa had reminded Kharth of Teros when she’d first arrived, but this was a former refugee world that had found enough wealth to prosper and build their own government, their own order and ambition for the future, and an economy to power it.

Meldesa was different. It had the will to keep its people safe, and the capacity. All that had been needed of Endeavour was a helping hand when their local troublemakers were bolstered by the wider network of the Romulan Rebirth Movement.

‘He ran,’ Kharth said with wry cheerfulness as she shoved Voritan into the waiting arms of the guards. ‘But not very fast.’

The magistrate looked at the state of her after a mad-cap chase through the market and arched an eyebrow. ‘I can see that.’ He looked at Voritan with an exhausted air. ‘Do you want to volunteer the names of your associates now?’ Voritan remained silent, and he sighed. ‘Toss him in the cell for now. One step at a time.’

One guard grabbed Voritan by the elbow, but still he twisted to glare back at Kharth. ‘You’re a fuckin’ traitor to your people,’ he sneered, and spat on the dirt.

They were traitors to me first, she thought as he was led away, and without a shift in her expression she turned back to the magistrate. ‘I hope we can talk now about what your prison needs.’

Another stern incline of the head. ‘We’re prepared to consider improvements, Lieutenant. Our system does not thrive on malice. We’ve had more than enough of law used as a tool of oppression from above, not the safety of the people.’

Kharth nodded. ‘Then let’s table some -’

‘It’ll have to wait.’ Somewhere in this Valance had fallen deeper back into the shade of the tottering capital, consulting her PADD. Now she hurried over, straight-backed and intent. ‘Endeavour is leaving.’

‘What? We’re not done here.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Valance said to the magistrate. ‘I can’t explain further, but I expect this will become clear soon. My captain will be talking to the magistrate.’

Kharth gritted her teeth as Valance all but frog-marched her away from the entrance. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Not here.’ Valance hit her combadge. ‘Two to beam up.’

Manifesting in Endeavour’s transporter room was like being dumped in a cold bath after the searing heat of Meldesa’s surface. It was not an entirely pleasant sense, and not with Valance’s arm still on her. Kharth yanked herself free and turned, aware she was shedding dust everywhere. ‘Explain.’

Valance pushed the PADD into her hands – then, inexplicably, hesitated. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, which really worried Kharth. ‘This might be hard.’

Quizzical, Kharth read the PADD. She did not expect to see news that would make her react as she did, though, as after a moment of stunned silence, all she could do was clamp a hand over her mouth and give a stifled guffaw. ‘Oh, no.’

‘I…’ Valance looked like she wasn’t sure to take this. ‘I don’t know if that’s a good sign or if you’ve actually cracked.’

Kharth drew a slow breath, then looked up. ‘I can’t believe I’m about to say this. But it’s actually kind of you to care.’ She shook her head. ‘Still, the Senate of Rator – the bloody would-be Star Empire – means nothing to me. At best, they’re the continuation of a government that left my family to die. At worst, they’re failures who want to be that government.’ She winced. ‘But a military coup. That’s… a problem.’

‘Quite.’ Valance cautiously took back the PADD. ‘We’re heading for the border, awaiting further orders, as one of the closest ships to the Empire. I don’t know if we’re expecting the chaos to spill over or if we’re going to get involved.’

‘In civil war?’ Kharth couldn’t stop cynicism creep into her voice. ‘This sounds like an excellent time for the Prime Directive to tell us to stand on the sidelines and watch the military slaughter people.’ At Valance’s hesitation, she waved a quick, dismissive hand. ‘I don’t expect you to have an answer for that.’

‘I hope you’re wrong,’ Valance said, then straightened. ‘You did good work down there, Lieutenant.’

‘It would be better if we could help Meldesa follow through. They’re one of the shining lights of independent refugee worlds.’ Kharth didn’t want to linger on this, though, and rolled a shoulder. ‘I didn’t get a chance to ask, what with hunting an assassin and all. Have you heard from him?’

If possible, Valance looked even more uncomfortable. This was more management of Kharth’s emotions in one conversation than had possibly ever happened before. ‘I have,’ Valance said delicately. ‘He’s still on leave.’

‘I assumed.’ Kharth raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t expect him to check in with me. It’s okay.’

‘He’s been working with Starfleet Security in and around the Triangle. And a little bit the rimward side of the Neutral Zone. Anywhere that was Lerin’s old stomping ground, where his knowledge of operations can help take down the people who took over after he died.’

Not a million light-years away. Kharth shoved that gently resentful thought to one side. It wouldn’t help. ‘Good,’ she said at last. ‘It’s what he should have done all along.’

‘Perhaps. But he’s doing it now.’

‘He is.’ Kharth shook her head. Even though she’d asked, she no longer wanted to think about Davir Airex and his quest for redemption. ‘It’s just a rough area, and he’s getting his hands dirty in it. Anyway. Thank you, Commander.’

Valance nodded. ‘I’ll report to the captain and see what news we have. You should get your bumps and scrapes seen to.’

‘I won’t,’ said Kharth in a light voice as they left.

It had been a long three months since the Century Storm. A long three months since the two of them had descended through the fractured mind of the joined Trill Davir Airex, and without words emerged with, if not an actual friendship, then a grudging respect that bridged the acrimony long between them. Working together on this mission without sniping, without second-guessing each other, had been, Kharth had to admit, a refreshing change of pace.

But so had working in the old Neutral Zone and actually making a difference, which made her gut all the tighter at the prospect of trouble in the Romulan Star Empire, and Starfleet’s track record of making promises they wouldn’t keep when it came to her people.

Even if she had her own series of broken promises on that score.

For two days the main display in the Round Table, Endeavour’s senior officer’s lounge, had been showing the Federation News Network’s feed on the Romulan Star Empire’s crisis round-the-clock. Thawn thought she would be tired of it by now – stories developed, but all along the same lines.

A catastrophe at Aballava as the local naval commander took over control, reportedly killing the entire civilian government. Another declaration of independence as the Olicana system decided they were better off going their own way. Uprisings in the Velorum Sector, the workers seizing power. The Vertis system swapping sides, pledging allegiance to the Romulan Free State. Everywhere in the falling Romulan Star Empire it was the same: brutal oppression, or slipping between the fingers of a tightening iron grip. 

For two days, Endeavour had stood on the sidelines near the border and waited. But neither the continuous onslaught of miserable news, nor the sense of helplessness her Betazoid senses could feel seeping through the crew, were her biggest problems right then. No, her biggest problem was that she’d not managed to wriggle out from something Elsa Lindgren had, with forced cheer, described as a double-date.

‘At a time like this?’ Thawn had asked as they clocked off their shift.

‘Do you have anything better to do?’ had been Lindgren’s deliberate counter. ‘Petrias has been wound up so tight, and I’m sure Adamant doesn’t like any of this.’

This didn’t convince Thawn to want to be in a booth with Petrias Graelin, Endeavour’s notoriously self-absorbed Chief Science Officer, and the courteous Adamant Rhade, Hazard Team Leader and the man her family expected her to marry regardless of her wishes. But Thawn hadn’t managed to conjure up a good excuse fast enough.

‘The governor of Olicana is a fool,’ Graelin drawled as he sipped his wine and watched the FNN feed. ‘His worlds will be strip-mined by the spinward warlords by the end of the month.’

Thawn could feel Rhade not just shift his weight, but glance at her before he replied. ‘Our intelligence on the region is dated,’ he said at last, deep voice polite and thoughtful regardless of disagreement. ‘We can’t assume things are so obvious from the ground.’

‘Idealism and ideology are powerful blinders,’ said Graelin, leaning back on the booth. Beside him, Lindgren didn’t look away from the feed, a distant look in her eyes. ‘They make us choose what we hope is better, rather than what we know will be better.’

‘We can never know the future,’ Rhade pointed out, leaning into his argument at last. ‘And it’s arrogant of us to believe we know better than the governor in the system itself, making what decision is best for his people.’

Thawn glanced anxiously at Graelin, but if he’d taken Rhade’s words as an accusation, he didn’t show it, instead giving an indulgent smile. ‘Lieutenant, if you think the governor is doing what’s best for his people rather than giving himself the authority to take every scrap of wealth in the system and go on the run, then you’re being terribly naive.’

That’s not what you argued a moment ago, Thawn thought, and felt a similar sentiment slide off Rhade. So she sat forward before either could descend further into the jabs, and looked to Lindgren. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked gently.

‘Hm?’ Lindgren bit her lip as she came back to them. ‘Oh. Yeah, it’s just…’ She sighed. ‘I hope we get orders soon.’

‘We have orders,’ said Graelin in a tone thought pompous even by Thawn, a master of pomposity in her own right. ‘We’re watching the border. Making sure the chaos doesn’t fall onto those for which we’re responsible.’

‘Any intervention,’ Rhade said rather more carefully, ‘will need managing to make sure we do more good than harm. I trust and believe that avenues are being considered.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Lindgren said with a wan smile. ‘Because standing on the side-lines and waiting while people – while this happens… it’s not good.’ She shook her head. ‘I remember what it did to my parents when the evacuation of Romulus was aborted, watching the people try to get out and not being able to do… anything.’

‘It was a difficult time,’ said Graelin, leaning in. ‘But you were eleven. Those of us in the service understood that we had to put the Federation first for once.’

Thank you, Thawn thought dryly, for reminding us you’re sixteen years older than her. I needed that.

‘Of course everyone will do their duty,’ Lindgren said lightly. ‘But I hope our duty doesn’t include standing by again. That’s all. It changed a lot of people, and often not for the better.’

‘We’re not that Starfleet any more.’ Rhade caught her gaze. ‘I truly believe that.’

It took another day before they knew if this faith would pay off. Thawn was this time in the Safe House, Endeavour’s main lounge, because when Lindgren was stressed she wanted to be around people, and had perhaps realised that putting the idealism of Rhade and the cynicism of Graelin in the same place was a bad idea.

‘He just doesn’t seem very… understanding,’ Thawn was saying over coffee, trying as delicately as possible to broach the subject of her best friend’s relationship. She had expected it to burn out quickly, be nothing more than a light and breezy dalliance. Months on, the Chief Science Officer and his interest seemed to be going nowhere.

‘He has certain experiences which give him his own perspective,’ Lindgren said, in a voice Thawn knew full-well meant she was justifying things to herself. ‘I appreciate that perspective. There’s a maturity to it.’

I’m not sure cynicism is automatically more grown-up. Thawn chewed on words, but before she could find something sufficiently diplomatic, Lindgren was pressing on.

‘Besides, I know you find Adamant’s idealism sometimes a bit naive. Should I be cross-examining you on that?’

It wasn’t fair. But then, Thawn hadn’t admitted to Lindgren that it was not strictly her choice to stay committed to the arranged betrothal. From the outside, their stumbling efforts to find and make common ground must have looked just as ill-fitted as she thought Lindgren and Graelin to be. The only person to know the truth was Nate Beckett, illuminated in Thawn’s sobbing moment of immediate weakness.

He was in the Safe House too, over by the bar, stood laughing with Lieutenant Whitaker and a half-smirking, indulgent Lieutenant Arys. For the flicker of a heartbeat she caught his eye, then snapped her gaze back to Lindgren as she felt his attention zone in on the pilots.

‘So long,’ Thawn said distractedly, ‘as you find his perspective comforting.’

‘Well,’ said Lingren, and gave a coy smile. ‘His presence, at least.’

Thawn made herself laugh, because that was what Lindgren wanted, and tried to not pay too much attention as she spotted out of the corner of her eye a new arrival reach the knot of junior officers at the bar.

But Lindgren looked more openly that way, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Athaka looks agitated.’

‘Athaka always looked agitated.’ Despite herself, Thawn glanced over at her deputy, a dutiful and consistently nervous Coridanite. As if perpetually aware of her presence, or keeping an eye out for whatever he could do to please her, the young lieutenant frantically waved them over.

Trying to not visibly brace, Thawn had no choice but to follow when a curious Lindgren grabbed her drink and approached. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Athaka said breathlessly, and Thawn resisted the urge to roll her eyes just as Beckett visibly failed such a temptation. ‘But we just got a priority one communication from Starbase Bravo. Captain Rourke’s taken it in his ready room and asked Commander Valance to join him.’

Whitaker, Endeavour’s lead fighter pilot, gave a short laugh. ‘Perhaps we’re done sitting on the side-lines after all, hm?’

Lieutenant Arys’s lips thinned. ‘There’s no point in speculating. If the captain knew something was coming, he would have told us, so asking Commander Valance to join him is meaningless. It’s probably a situation update.’

‘Bloody nothing has happened on this border since we got here,’ Beckett pointed out. ‘What’re we guarding against? No, we’re waiting for a next move, for sure.’

But Athaka’s eyes were still on Thawn, which within moments drew everyone else’s gaze to her – even Lindgren’s – as the ranking and most seasoned among them. Thawn pursed her lips. ‘I’d recommend against gossip,’ she said at length, and watched Athaka deflate. ‘No good comes of thinking we’re going to take action, only to be disappointed.’

‘So you’d be disappointed,’ Whitaker drawled, ‘if our response to the calamity of a generation is to play watchdog?’

‘I want to help people,’ Thawn said. ‘And I don’t help people by assuming I know better than Command, just because my personal sense of futility is stressful.’

‘Yeah,’ murmured Beckett. ‘Command – any authority figure – automatically knows what’s best, right?’

She met his gaze again, and was spared disentangling herself too pointedly by the chirping of the comm system overhead.

‘All senior staff, report to the conference room.’

Lindgren brightened. ‘That’s a good sign. Right?’

‘Unless the captain wants to make everyone feel better about sitting with our thumbs up our arses,’ sighed Beckett.

‘Come on, Nate,’ Lindgren said gently. ‘Hope a little.’

But it was clear even her own hope was somewhat forced, and she, Arys, and Thawn proceeded to the turbolift in a dour, apprehensive silence which followed them all the way to the conference room.

The other eight senior staff members and First Secretary Hale were already there. For the past three months, staff briefings had usually seen hot drinks and pastries laid out, nothing happening too suddenly or too tragically to stop Rourke or a thoughtful Counsellor Carraway from laying out treats. Now the table was barren of anything but Commander Cortez’s mug of ink-black, rocket-fuel coffee, the Chief Engineer clearly fresh off a shift pattern that made the timing of the meeting inauspicious.

‘I’ve news,’ Captain Rourke said as everyone sat down. Thawn had never found him easy to read; if he wasn’t wearing his masks of smiles and laughs, everyone’s friend over a pint and absolutely nothing of substance, he tended to dourness and sarcasm so much that a report of doom on the horizon would be given with the same rumbling wryness as news of a litter of kittens born in his office. ‘Direct from Fourth Fleet Command.’

‘Is it for me to clean out our bussard collectors because we’re not gonna need ‘em as we sit on the border and watch?’ asked a bleary-eyed Cortez.

‘If we’re to stay,’ said Graelin crisply, ‘we expect all systems ready in case of trouble.’

Cortez opened her mouth for a rebuttal, but a glance from Valance silenced her, and all eyes fell back on the captain. Sombre-faced, he gave a stiff nod. ‘By now you’ll have heard the news from the Velorum Sector. Workers’ uprising, provisional government in place. Some systems there are still in turmoil – nobody knows whose side they’ll fall down on. Most of the ones where the power struggle’s over have aligned themselves with this Resak’s government. And he’s just done the smartest thing he possibly could: ask for the Federation’s help.’

Thawn swallowed what she feared would be a stupid question, and was guiltily relieved when an apprehensive Arys leaned forward. ‘Can we still help anyway? The Prime Directive -’

‘Is nothing but words when the Star Navy, the Free State – any damn pirate or warlord or maybe even the Klingon bloody Empire if they choose to stir themselves – could swoop in and intervene. There’s no way we can call this an internal issue without being rank cowards,’ Rourke interrupted. Over the past days, the captain had kept his counsel on interventionism despite the mumblings and discontent of his crew. Now he spoke with open relish, let off the leash in the changing winds.

First Secretary Hale leaned forward, ever the diplomat, even in this conference room with Rourke’s rough words. ‘The Fourth Fleet is being dispatched to assist the Velorum Sector – keep the region safe from outside interference, help the provisional government establish itself. In systems that have pledged themselves to Resak’s government, that is.’

‘We’re going to the Agarath system.’ Rourke nodded across the table to Dathan. ‘Lieutenant.’

The Bajoran intelligence officer stood, thumbing her PADD to bring up a strategic map of the Velorum Sector. Their destination lit up with a bright blue ring surrounding the dot of the Agarath star, on the Rator side of the region. ‘Velorum was one of the industrial heartlands of the Romulan Star Empire,’ Dathan said smoothly, belying the likelihood she had put this information package together in literal minutes. ‘Even by the standards of the sector, Agarath is a major industrial hub. It has an extensive network of mining, refining, and metalworking facilities on moons and in its asteroid system.

‘Centuries ago, the Empire shattered the fourth planet to plunder its arcybite deposits.’ The screen changed for an image of the broken wreck of half a world barely clinging to its core, shattered remnants of surface in a loose and bewildering orbit. The star of Agarath was visible beyond, and upon the remains of the world were the silhouettes of structures and the shining lights of settlement. ‘They’ve built whole facilities in the remains and on the remains,’ Dathan continued. ‘Nothing on Agarath has a naturally habitable atmosphere. We’re talking surface facilities, orbital platforms, and all that. And with it has come a massive worker population, largely Reman but with some Romulans – it was a popular penal colony for a time. They’ve overthrown the local rulership and pledged to support Resak’s government.’

‘Their supply lines are delicate,’ said Rourke, clasping his hands before him on the desk. ‘They were heavily reliant on food from the sector’s agri-worlds and it’s unclear if they can count on them any more. It’s likely to be chaotic in the system, with the population largely scattered across different facilities. And most important of all, everyone – its new leadership, Resak, and Fourth Fleet Intelligence – agree there’s no way the Star Navy lets Agarath in particular go without a fight.’

Thawn drew a careful breath. ‘Are we to help them? Or protect them?’

Rourke’s lips twisted. ‘Yes.’ He sat up, gaze sweeping up and down the table. ‘Most of you weren’t in service when Starfleet abandoned the evacuation. That was, and remains, a stain on Federation history, and that was so even before we knew the truth about Mars. I promise you, we’re not going to make the same mistake twice.’

But Graelin straightened. ‘Which mistake?’ he asked, tension visible around his eyes. ‘Turning our backs on the Romulan people when they needed help? Or leaving our backs exposed to the Tal Shiar?’

Thawn didn’t need to be a telepath for her gaze to snap immediately to Kharth. The Romulan Chief of Security’s jaw was iron tight as she said, ‘The Tal Shiar are not the Romulan people.’

Graelin gave an incline of the head that implied an acceptance of her point without actually conceding ground. ‘I just mean we better remember: these people might need our help. But we shouldn’t assume they’ll accept it with open arms.’

‘They have a lot to blame us for, after all,’ said Rourke, expression unimpressed. ‘Let’s show them we’ve changed.’

But Graelin didn’t need to do more than tilt his chin up half an inch to convey his response, one simple question: Have they?

‘Agarath produces approximately sixty percent of the Velorum Sector’s arcybite,’ said Graelin, straight-backed before the display screen in the captain’s ready room. ‘It is a cornerstone of the region’s economy.’

Hale, sat next to Valance across from Rourke behind his desk, arched an eyebrow. ‘It also has a population of three hundred thousand people asking for our help.’

‘I doubt all of them want our help,’ said Graelin levelly. ‘You may imply I’m reducing their lives to economic benefit, First Secretary, but I would not be the first. The Star Navy will do that. Every nearby warlord will do that. The Free State will do that. The economic reality makes Agarath a prize for any challenger. It must be recognised if we are to appropriately protect the system.’

‘I wouldn’t imply such a thing, Commander,’ said Hale. ‘If I thought a Starfleet officer was ignoring the plight of thousands, I would speak my mind. My expectation is that Endeavour will have to prioritise what facilities and locations to protect and support. Some of them will be industrial. Some of them will be people’s lives.’

‘Lives,’ said Graelin, ‘that will be made materially worse if they lose either the wealth of Agarath or the means of harnessing it.’

Valance remained judiciously silent as Captain Rourke lifted a hand. ‘We don’t have up-to-date enough reports to start quibbling over if we’ll let a refinery blow up to save a dozen people. I’m not losing myself in hypotheticals. Obviously we’d want to protect everything, but First Secretary Hale has the right of it.’

A muscle at the corner of Graelin’s jaw tightened, and he inclined his head. ‘Then my summary is over, Captain.’

‘Dismissed, Commanders.’ Rourke looked at Hale. ‘First Secretary, a word?’

But the word was lost behind them as first and second officer left the ready room, and again Valance stayed silent until they reached the privacy of the turbolift. She did not have much time for Petrias Graelin, but she was still Endeavour’s XO, and that came with certain responsibilities.

‘He heard you,’ she said as the doors slid shut before them. ‘We can’t just protect Agarath for a few weeks, we have to ensure it has a future.’

Graelin looked up. ‘Computer, halt turbolift.’ He turned to her. ‘That was not the hidden discussion going on in that room, Commander. You’re going to have to be sharper to the politics here.’

Her eyes narrowed at both words and tone. ‘Then enlighten me.’

‘First Secretary Hale has an agenda, and it is not “do what’s best for the poor, beleaguered people of Agarath,”’ Graelin sneered. ‘She would be delighted if the Federation swept into the Velorum Sector – and made it entirely dependent on us long into the future. The Diplomatic Service does not want Velorum to emerge from this catastrophe healthy, hearty, and independent. They want a new Federation protectorate.’

Valance hesitated. ‘You are about to tell me why that is so terrible.’

‘A new protectorate, its government led by Remans who used to be labourers, a mixed population, and a frontier which – well, we have no idea what this border will look like. The die is cast on the fate of the Star Empire, for certain, but where will it land? The Federation becomes committed to helping with internal stability, protection against external threat, its economic and social needs. The Diplomatic Service can crow to the wider galaxy how the Federation has been the most munificent party in the Empire’s collapse, how our hand of friendship is truly open again for the first time in a decade and a half – and it will be Starfleet who has to prop this up. Starfleet lives committed to the task.’

‘You fear,’ she said, ‘we’re about to commit ourselves to a volatile mess for decades. That Velorum becomes a black hole we’re throwing resources and ships and personnel at for years with no end in sight. For politics.’

‘And I am not suggesting,’ said Graelin with a sharp wag of the finger she didn’t massively appreciate, ‘we hang Velorum out to dry. However much Rourke and Hale would love to act as if I’m suggesting we let people get slaughtered by the Star Navy or a warlord, because that way they don’t have to engage with my real argument. I want us to help Velorum achieve independence – and then I want us to leave.’

‘Agarath would be key to that independence,’ Valance continued, following his line of thinking. ‘Because with Agarath’s resources, Velorum is better equipped for protection and for trade.’

‘Precisely.’ He let out a sigh of relief. ‘Obviously I want you as my ally in this, Commander. But what I ask of you is that you at least answer the argument I am making, rather than the one it would be convenient for you to hear. Never, ever doubt that I have the best interests of the Federation at heart.’

Which Federation? Valance wondered. The one that reached out to help the Romulan people before the supernova? Or the one that pulled back to look after itself after Mars?

‘Why does everyone have to jump to the end on these missions?’ Cortez complained when Valance caught her up over dinner in their quarters that evening. ‘We’ve got to help Agarath, we’ll see what it’s like when we get there, we’ll help them to the best of our ability.’

‘I suppose.’ Valance sullenly stabbed a slice of roasted pepper.

Cortez looked up with a frown. ‘Oh. I know what you’re thinking.’

‘You do?’

‘You’re thinking this is why I’m a Chief Engineer and will never make it out of a gold uniform, and you’re a first officer who’s already turned down her own command once.’ But she gave a soft, sad smile. ‘It’s not an accusation. I never want out of the gold. I guess I do look at a situation and figure out how to fix it. Not whether I should.’

‘It’s just… did we worry so much about the big picture politics a year ago?’

‘By “a year ago” do you mean before Hale’s mission, before Graelin came aboard and started speaking with Command’s hand shoved up his ass?’ Cortez winced. ‘Or before we were on a huge-ass explorer, able to change the whole damn fate of a system from the bridge?’

‘You have a point,’ Valance sighed. ‘The galaxy didn’t change. We did.’

‘Still,’ said Cortez, ‘you would have thought Graelin would be more sympathetic.’ At her look, she shrugged. ‘A bunch of oppressed miners rise up against the rule that’s kept them second-class citizens? He’s an Ardanan.’

‘Oh.’ Valance resisted the urge to roll her eyes. ‘Considering Graelin seems to prize order and stability above all, he probably thought the Troglytes should have known their place and kept on labouring. Maybe he’s right about Hale, maybe he’s right about Rourke. But that doesn’t mean he’s right, either.’

‘I don’t know if this is horribly naive advice,’ Cortez admitted, leaning forward. ‘But I say that when we get to Agarath, you find the people we’re going to help. You look them in the eye. And you do what you think is best for them. We’ll figure out the rest later.’

Valance set down her fork and stood, feeling Cortez tense and assume she’d said something too outlandish to be tolerated. But instead Valance walked around the table, leaned down, and kissed her. ‘You’re very smart,’ she whispered.

‘I am.’ Cortez beamed. ‘Smart, cute, a hell of a dancer. You’re very lucky.’ Then she sobered. ‘I know it ain’t as easy as all that. So on top of smart and naive, I’ll be saccharine: I trust your judgement. I trust you to do the right thing.’

‘No pressure,’ Valance mused, and kissed her again.

It was, at least, a night to not think about the challenges and choices to come. And it would prove necessary, as the hydra of the Velorum sector’s turmoils raised their heads as soon as 1000 hours the next morning, when Valance sat in the command seat on the bridge and Kharth made a low, confused, concerned noise from Tactical.

‘Commander, I’m picking up two ships on long-range sensors. One looks like a Romulan freighter, but the other’s a B’rel-class, practically on top of it.’

Valance turned to the tactical arch, eyebrow raised. ‘Escorting? Fighting?’

‘No sign of combat. The power signature of the freighter is incredibly weak, though.’ Kharth glanced over at Lindgren. ‘Any comm chatter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Helm, change course,’ Valance instructed, grip on the armrest tightening. ‘We’re deep into Imperial territory by now. If pirates are deciding to take a bite out of the chaos, we have to send them packing.’

Summons to Rourke had him on the bridge before they reached the two ships, and his scowl deepened the moment Kharth showed him the sensor feed. ‘That’s not a pirate ship,’ he said, and his eyes snapped up to Valance. ‘That’s the Roghtak.’

She hesitated. ‘Torkath’s brother’s ship? What’s the House of K’Var doing this deep over the border? The Klingon Empire hasn’t made any formal moves against the Romulan Star Empire.’ Diplomatic reports suggested there was too much disagreement among the Klingons on how to respond to the crisis, but Valance had feared from the first that belligerent factions would see this as an opportunity for territory and glory.

‘It’s not the House of K’Var I’m worried about,’ said Rourke, moving to the centre of the bridge. ‘Dakor is at best a sympathiser of the Mo’Kai. And they won’t wait for the High Command’s say-so if they choose to get involved here.’

Endeavour had dealt directly with Dakor, son of K’Var, only once. Over a year ago he had tried to chase them off from the border with the Klingon Empire, only for his brother Torkath, an old ally and friend of Rourke’s, to intervene. But he had also later held Torkath back from helping when Mo’Kai ships attacked one of Endeavour’s runabouts, not striking directly against Starfleet but still almost getting some of their own killed.

This was not a simple case of checking in with an allied ship, and Valance did not object when Rourke took them to yellow alert.

‘Coming up on the ships now,’ Arys reported at length.

‘I’ve better scans of the freighter,’ said Graelin at Science. ‘It looks like it has been attacked, but from the power levels and nature of the damage, it’s been drifting and derelict for days. There are no life signs. The damage is also not consistent with Klingon weapon systems.’

Lindgren looked up, biting her lip. ‘The Roghtak is hailing us, sir.’

Rourke straightened. ‘On-screen.’

Dakor was burly and square-jawed even by the standards of his people, but a beady and suspicious gaze shifted for amusement after a heartbeat. ‘Different Endeavour, same man. Captain Rourke, brother-of-my-brother. What happened to your ship?’

Valance saw Rourke consider his answer, before simply saying, ‘We grew. Dakor, son of K’Var, brother-of-my-brother. What brings you here? High Command hasn’t been stirred by the Romulans’ plight, has it?’

‘You mean, am I here to feast on our ancient foes? Did I fall upon this helpless ship, steal its cargo, murder its crew?’ Dakor chuckled. ‘We have not been here long. We found the vessel and were wondering of its fate. Do not concern yourself, Rourke – my Empire continues to chase its tail, unable to agree on what should be plain to see.’

‘And what is so plain to see?’

‘The Star Empire is dying, and this is the time to strike. No, the Council remains embroiled in arguments, High Command sends Defence Force ships to the border and not one light-year beyond. And I?’ Dakor leaned back and raised his hands, all casual innocence. ‘My House’s borders are close. My father wanted to be sure there was no threat to us. This is a scouting exercise, and nothing more.’

‘I would believe that,’ said Rourke gruffly. ‘Except I know your father is in no state to be giving such instructions. And last time you crossed paths with my crew, you were fighting your brother so your friends in the Mo’Kai were free to kill them. You don’t get the benefit of the doubt, Dakor.’

At once, Dakor’s face closed in on the viewscreen, blocking out the gloom of his bridge. ‘I come here out of duty to my family – a target for any Romulan dogs affronted by my presence – and you accuse me of collaborating with traitors and spies? You speak of my father in such a way?’

‘I do,’ Rourke snapped. ‘And you’ll not do a damned thing about it, because you’re not going to pick a fight with a Starfleet ship unless you’re sure you can kill us quick and shove it under the carpet.’

‘And what,’ Dakor growled, ‘will you do about my presence? Or did you come here merely to show your forked tongue?’

The captain gave a tight smile. ‘We gave up on “brother-of-my-brother” really quick today, didn’t we.’

Lindgren pressed a finger to her earpiece. ‘Captain.’ At Rourke’s nod, she muted the feed to the Roghtak. ‘We’re picking up a distress call on subspace – it’s from Agarath. They’re reporting they’re under attack by Star Navy ships.’

Rourke’s gaze turned thunderous. At his gesture she restored the comms link and he looked back to the viewscreen. ‘I’m cutting this short, Dakor. Do as you will. Get in the way of me and my people, and we’ll see how far my bond with Torkath extends.’

Dakor’s lip curled. ‘Likewise. Go, become the plaything of Romulans.’

The screen went dead, and for a moment Rourke stared at it, jaw tight. Then he drew a sharp breath. ‘Resume heading for Agarath, Mr Arys. Maximum warp.’

‘Aye, sir. We’re an hour out at top speed.’

Valance stepped closer to Rourke as the bridge flew into the hustle and bustle of preparation, the buzz around them giving her more freedom to speak. ‘No intelligence reports suggest the Klingon Empire is getting involved in the region any time soon. There’s too much internal dispute. Do you think he was lying?’

‘Yes,’ said Rourke simply. ‘But no, I don’t know what that lie’s hiding. Hawkish groups in the Klingon Empire would benefit from fresh reports on how weak and defenceless the Star Empire’s territories are. So would the Mo’Kai.’

‘For what it’s worth, sir, I think his outrage at your accusation was sincere,’ Valance said carefully. ‘But he’s the younger son of a minor house with skin in the game if it comes to trouble from Romulan space. Even if he’s working with the Mo’Kai, he might be justifying this as the best thing for his family – for his father.’

‘I know,’ came the captain’s grumpy sigh. ‘Klingon honour can twist a warrior in the wind with self-justification. I suppose it doesn’t matter if we’re not going to run into Dakor again – and I don’t know what one bird-of-prey would do about a major system like Agarath.’

‘No,’ said Valance, eager for the question of Klingon involvement to be left far behind. ‘We should look to what the Star Navy is about to do.’

Rourke looked at her for a moment, a gleam entering his eye. ‘I know what the Star Navy is about to do,’ he said, and took the captain’s chair. ‘Be sent packing.’

Like a horse at a gallop, Endeavour thundered to its destination at such a speed Rourke could feel the deck humming under him. With his hands curling around the armrests of his command chair, he leaned back and tried to keep his voice light, yet controlled. ‘All stations, report in.’

‘Weapons systems fully operational, torpedo tubes loaded, deflector shields operating at maximum efficiency,’ came Kharth’s crisp, level voice.

‘All internal systems are fully on-line,’ said Thawn. ‘System response times are within combat parameters.’

‘Agarath defence forces have been notified of our arrival.’ Lindgren’s finger was still at her earpiece. ‘Ready to synchronise tactical data sharing once we’re range.’

‘Sensors are showing five Star Navy frigates, seven Agarath Guard destroyers,’ Graelin reported. ‘Defenders are outgunned but the extent of defensive platforms and facilities is unclear.’

‘We are three minutes out,’ Lieutenant Arys said at last, a faint edge to his voice.

Valance leaned in towards Rourke. ‘We’re ready,’ she said quietly.

They were, he knew it. But this was also the first time they’d taken this Endeavour into combat, the first time they’d brace to receive enemy fire and take on an opponent in battle. Drills were all very good, but Rourke knew it took time to truly know a ship, to sense her every shift and change.

And he had never commanded a ship as mighty as Endeavour in battle before. Right then, he felt the burden rather than the power. Rourke drew a deep breath. ‘You know the drill, people. You know the ship, you know and trust everyone around you, you know and trust yourselves. Let’s save the day.’

Minutes later, Endeavour fell out of warp and into a firefight.

The Agarath system stretched out before them, but it was as if the sun was blocked by a swarm of flies. Its riches came in debris: the shattered hulk of the huge fourth planet, broken open so its insides could be feasted on; the massive asteroid belt further out, protecting that precious core of riches, sensors showing the defensive platforms dotted on the planetoids, the small maintenance station on the outer perimeter.

And here, in the outer ring of the system, dotted with mining platforms and orbital refineries in the scattered reaches, a raging battle.

‘Assigning designations to Star Navy frigates, Alpha through Echo…’

‘Receiving tactical data from Agarath Guard; one of their destroyers is already drifting without power…’

‘Head to reinforce them,’ Rourke instructed crisply, sifting through the sea of reports from his staff and the scrawling sensor data. ‘Focus all fire on enemy frigate Bravo; at the least chase them off.’

It was a rolling scrap, the Star Navy frigates in a tight formation and set upon by the Agarath Guard as they tried to rush for the asteroid belt. Rourke could see the defenders’ ships had once been Star Navy themselves, but bore combat wounds that had not yet been repaired. They had the numbers, but their attackers had the firepower and were fresh to the fight.

But no Star Navy frigate was a challenger to an Obena-class explorer.

The viewscreen lit up with the firefight as Kharth launched torpedoes, then reported a moment later, ‘Bravo has broken off from its attack run on the destroyer. It’s returning to the formation.’

‘Stay on them. We’ll come up on their tail.’ Rourke straightened. ‘Give me an open comm channel,’ he told Lindgren, before drawing a deep breath. ‘All ships, this is Captain Rourke of the Federation starship Endeavour. The Agarath system is under Starfleet protection. Vessels of the Romulan Navy: turn back, or we will defend these people.’

There was a beat, and Lindgren gave a good-natured roll of the eyes. ‘No response from the Star Navy, but we’re being hailed by the lead ship of the Guard.’

‘On screen.’

The bridge of what had once been a Romulan Star Navy destroyer was not in great condition; lighting flickered, and Rourke could see smoke hissing from a console at the aft. But the young Romulan man before him was bright-eyed and eager, in a military uniform stripped of any insignia. ‘The famous Starfleet timing! You must run on watches set by your miracle-worker engineers.’

‘I like to make an entrance,’ Rourke said without missing a beat. The levity helped, an energy that kept shadows of battle at bay. ‘Pull your damaged ships back; we can take the brunt of this beating.’

‘They’re here to test us,’ the young Romulan laughed. ‘Bloody their noses and they’ll run like dogs.’ He reached to a panel off-screen and tapped something. ‘Instructing my fighting ships to form up on you, Endeavour. Call the shots.’

The momentary regrouping of defenders let the Star Navy ships tighten their formation, break away to sprint at the asteroid belt. Rourke suspected they hoped to get into the deep network of tight spaces, magnetic interference, and cloak or otherwise lose their pursuers in the belt.

But they did not get far. Endeavour and the Agarath Guard ships took the formation in the side like a spear to the flank, the destroyers’ disruptor fire a concentrated burst making short words of the shields of one frigate, while Endeavour’s torpedoes tore apart its engine systems.

‘Tell the Guard to break off on Charlie; they’re helpless and they’re going to run,’ Rourke said as the enemy frigate tumbled out of formation. ‘We’re not here to kill people we don’t have to.’

‘I’m not sure the people of Agarath will see it that way,’ Kharth murmured – then she swore. ‘Frigate Delta’s broken off. It’s heading… damn it, what’re they doing?’

‘There’s a refinery orbiting a moon of the eighth planet,’ Graelin said, head snapping up. ‘That’s their heading. Twenty life-signs.’

‘Trying to draw us off.’ Rourke scratched his beard. ‘Launch the Black Knights. Elsa, get the Guard to send their best destroyer after them, and have Lieutenant Whitaker bring his fighters to act as gunships.’ Starfighters had specific uses, especially when up against bigger craft. He’d made sure to outfit the Black Knight’s Valkyries with the heaviest loadout of microtorpedoes, and with their speed they could harass a Romulan frigate well enough with backup.

Beside him, Valance rose to take up position at the mission control panel behind Graelin, and his chest eased at that – there she could supervise the wider action, keep an eye on Whitaker to give him necessary commands, keep an eye on anything that wasn’t Endeavour’s immediate needs.

‘They didn’t like that,’ Kharth warned. ‘Three remaining enemy frigates are coming about. I think they want a slugging match.’

‘I think they’re going to lose it. Direct our friends to fall back and put all power to forward shields. Smother them with phaser fire, Lieutenant Kharth – give them a hell of a time with their targeting, and make us the devil to get a lock on, Mr Arys.’

There was a brief pause from Kharth. ‘We’re huge, sir. Hitting us isn’t going to be hard.’

That was a tactic which would have worked on a Manticore, back when he had Lieutenant Drake making a small, fast ship bristling with firepower dance. But the old Endeavour was dead, Drake was dead, and he had a hammer now, not a back-alley shiv.

Rourke cleared his throat. He did not particularly like a straight fight. ‘Then all power to the forward shields. Pick one to make an example of, Kharth, and Arys – stay the course. They’ll break before we do.’

It was, indeed, a hammer blow. The frigates had relied on their numbers, but Kharth’s focused fire meant Endeavour’s weapons crashed into the lead ship as the two forces came rushing together, sending it spinning, losing control as much as breaking off from the assault.

But Endeavour’s volley was not unanswered. ‘Brace!’ Rourke called at the sight of torpedoes streaking in, and the mighty ship shuddered under the impact. Lights flickered, an emergency klaxon went off before Kharth killed it with a muttered oath, and the deck bucked like the ship would rather be somewhere else.

He hadn’t quite hardened her to battle yet.

‘Shields down to sixty percent!’ Kharth called.

‘Allocating emergency power; all systems operational,’ came Thawn’s brisk reassurance and response.

Rourke leaned heavily against his armrest and looked to his sensors. The two forces had come together and the defenders had the better of it, only two frigates still standing against them from this onslaught. ‘Have the Guard finish off Bravo,’ he called, and coughed. It was a while since he’d been jostled like that, and adrenaline coursed through him a vicious buzz with nowhere to go when all his body needed to do was stay in this seat.

‘They’re on them,’ Valance confirmed.

‘Cover them with phaser fire,’ Rourke continued, ‘but get our shields back up.’ There was a breather between an impact like that, a moment where everyone reeled, and with his additional ships he didn’t have to force Endeavour to keep moving. They could rally.

But a heartbeat later came Graelin’s smug announcement: ‘Captain, enemy frigates are coming about. They’re fleeing.’

Rourke sank back on his chair and let his eyes close for a moment. ‘Let them go. Tell the Agarath Guard to do the same. Thawn, get me a full damage report. Good work, everyone.’

Just as he thought the adrenaline was fading, just as he thought the Star Navy ships had to be ready to jump to warp and go, just as he was starting to dig deep within himself to deal with whatever came next, there was a chirrup on the comm system, their direct line to the Black Knights.

‘Endeavour, this is Black Knight Leader; we have a situation here.’ Lieutenant Whitaker’s voice sounded clipped, more officious than Rourke normally heard the cocky young pilot. ‘Frigate Delta is drifting; they can’t run and this Agarath Guard destroyer wants to blow them out of the stars.’

Rourke’s breath caught. ‘Understood, Black Knights. Form up on Delta; do not let them kill those people.’ He looked at Lindgren. ‘Get me the lead Guard ship.’

That same young Romulan captain appeared on the viewscreen moments later, eyebrows raised. ‘Captain! It’s a good day, isn’t it? But, ah – what’re your pilots doing?’

‘Stopping you from committing a war crime.’ Rourke gripped the armrest hard. ‘Stand your soldiers down. It’s over. You don’t have to destroy every last ship.’

To his surprise, the Romulan gave an airy, dismissive sigh, and made a quick gesture off-screen. ‘If you must be so by-the-book about it, Endeavour. You know they’ll just come back to try to kill us later.’

A quick glance over to Valance confirmed that the situation was diffusing, and Rourke’s chest eased at the knowledge he didn’t have to keep putting his crew as a barrier to protect enemies against friends. He looked back to the viewscreen. ‘There are always more. We don’t end this by killing them all, we end this by convincing them to stop.’

‘Then I assume you won’t be so charmingly idealistic to stop us from seizing that frigate and taking its crew into custody, Rourke?’

‘That you can do. But you’ve got me at a disadvantage, Captain.’

‘Commander Relekor,’ said the young Romulan with a somewhat smug emphasis. ‘Formerly of the Star Navy myself – I know how determined they can be. Now the head of the Agarath Guard. And we’re thoroughly grateful for your assistance, Endeavour – enough of our ships are still in for repairs after the uprising that even a heavy scout force like that was going to either rip us up fighting out here, or run riot on our outer rim facilities before coming up against our weapon emplacements by the belt.’

Rourke’s eyebrows raised. ‘That was some scout force, heavy or not.’

Relekor lifted his hands, amused smile not shifting. ‘Welcome to Agarath, Captain. We’re one of Velorum’s crown jewels; they won’t let us go easy. But we can worry about a clash for the ages later. Let me escort you to the Husk. I’d best introduce you to who and what you’ve come to fight for, Endeavour.’

The Agarath system was split in half by the asteroid belt. Beyond it lay the outer reaches, the mining and refining facilities that had been so particularly threatened by the Star Navy’s scouting operation; within it, the beating heart of the system’s life and wealth that was the shattered remains of the fourth planet, to which most industry and habitation clung.

But the belt was more than a barrier, Rourke thought, watching the drifting rocks as his captain’s yacht slid through the designated flight routes. For certain, a series of defensive platforms had been constructed here over the years – and some rather more frantically and recently, by his eye – making any assault on the core of the system rife with danger. But the belt boasted its own wealth, too, with mining infrastructure built into a series of asteroids. At its outer edges hung the small maintenance yard that had once housed the Star Navy’s garrison, bristling with a series of broken hulks and damaged vessels.

‘They can’t keep all these ships operational,’ Kharth said, her gaze not on the view through the canopy but the sensor feed at the Prydwen’s weapons station. ‘Repairing even a quarter of them looks like it’s beyond this maintenance yard. At least within any kind of reasonable time-frame.’

Rourke leaned over, checking the feed. ‘Something Cortez could help with?’

‘There are a million things in this system Isa could help with,’ she pointed out. ‘Are we defending these people? Are we fixing their industry? Improving their living conditions?’

‘One step at a time,’ said Hale softly from a seat at the rear of the cockpit. ‘For now, we make a good first impression. Then we demonstrate why a close relationship with the Federation is a key to a long future.’

Rourke glanced back at her, brow furrowing. ‘I didn’t know we were flying the recruitment flag on this mission of mercy.’

Her expression didn’t shift. ‘We’re always flying the recruitment flag, Captain. Isn’t that the purpose of the Federation?’

‘Liberty and peace, I thought. Not a shakedown.’

She shifted. ‘I didn’t think you needed to take me so literally. What I mean is that as a diplomat, I’m always putting the Federation’s best foot forward. Maybe it won’t bring Velorum closer to us – but the eyes of anyone even thinking about joining will be on us this week. Sometimes, the flag’s for them.’

‘I’m here to do whatever’s best for these people,’ Rourke said simply. ‘My orders didn’t include press-ganging them into a protectorate pact.’

‘I’m not press-ganging anyone. But my orders are not your orders, Captain,’ was Hale’s gentle but pointed response.

An awkward Kharth cleared her throat. ‘Are you sure bringing me along is good for making a positive first impression? I know this Commander Relekor is a Romulan, but Agarath is a primarily Reman population.’

‘You’re my Chief of Security,’ Rourke said flatly. ‘And I had just about enough of that from Valance.’ His XO had rather pointedly suggested she stay aboard Endeavour, and sounded like she intended on doing so, if possible, for the duration of the mission. Rourke had only agreed because for the moment he wanted to see the new governor of Agarath himself, and could have the argument later. But so far as he was concerned, old grievances between Romulans and Klingons were bad enough without bringing in the internal upsets of the fallen Star Empire.

Any further dispute was interrupted by Ensign Harkon at the helm, glancing back from her controls and saying, ‘We’re coming up on the Husk now.’

‘The Husk’ was what Relekor and their nav data alike now called the remains of Agarath IV. With the planet itself split apart, remains of the surface were strewn in a loose orbit of the sun, while other chunks were still caught in the gravitic pull of the core. The Empire had not merely splintered the world but built a magnetic containment field at the core so large stretches of its shattered remains, including perhaps a quarter of the crust, still hung together. It could not keep an atmosphere, it could not sustain life, but it could keep the hunks of rock with their valuable mineral deposits in one single clutch of shards.

It was to that shred of a surface, the only remnant of Agarath IV’s crust that still looked like it had once been part of a world, that the Prydwen headed, escorted by Relekor’s ship. Without an atmosphere to shroud their view, they could see the bright lights of the facilities on the surface shining. Most of it was a self-contained network of metal, though one stretch reached under a habitation dome that offered perhaps the only hint of greenery in the system.

Relekor’s ship hung in a high orbit as the Prydwen descended for the surface structures, Harkon following their flight route to bring them to a vast metal tower nestled on the rocky surface between the habitation dome and an extensive network of surface mines. It loomed higher than anything else on the Husk, and Rourke suspected this was intentional, if this was the seat of government on Agarath – that the only thing on the horizon of this broken world of labourers was the spear-tip of its rulers’ authority.

They landed in a dingy brown bay towards the top of the tower. A magnetic field sealed the Prydwen in, for beyond the metal structure was nothing but the cold vacuum, and Rourke made Harkon check twice that atmospheric containment was secure before he headed with Kharth and Hale to the landing ramp.

Relekor himself waited in the bay, accompanied by a pair of Romulans in similarly stripped-down naval uniforms. ‘Captain.’ The rangy commander bounded forward with clear delight, and looked like he had to consciously remember to extend a hand for a shake. ‘Let me be the first to welcome you to the Husk – and take you to Hiran.’

The heart of Agarath’s leadership was not an office, but a control centre. Taking up a whole floor of the tower, its wall-length windows granted a gut-dropping view of the expanse of surface miners, the habitation dome, and, above, the glinting lights of the facilities on other shattered remnants of this broken world. Most of the displays were non-functioning and the centre was staffed, to Rourke’s eyes, with a skeleton crew of primarily Remans.

In the centre was a chair, set high above to overlook all proceedings, but it was at the base of it, on a battered old storage locker, that a stooped-shouldered Reman sat. Rourke had no particular talent of gauging the age of the species, but there was a weariness to this man’s movements as he stood, belied by the sharpness of his eyes as they locked on the three Federation representatives.

‘So you’re the man who drove off the Star Navy, Captain Rourke.’ He stood and stepped towards them, closer to the shadowed edges of the control centre. ‘My name is Hiran. I’m in charge here now.’

As Hiran approached, Kharth leaned in to Rourke. ‘That’s a Reman Commando uniform,’ she breathed.

‘A lot of us,’ said Hiran in a slightly louder voice, ‘were military until Resak gave his call to arms. It became time to choose.’ His gaze flickered to Relekor. ‘A lot of us have been here for over a decade. Agarath is now more home than anywhere else in the galaxy. We had to decide if we’d break it for superiors who never cared for us.’

Rourke looked Hiran up and down. The husky Reman did indeed have a metal breastplate under the wrecked cloak wrapped around him, but it was battered and scuffed and, like Relekor’s uniform, bore no insignia. ‘Reports said Agarath had a significant permanent garrison. That’s all Guard, now?’

‘Not everyone agreed,’ Hiran rumbled. ‘Workers took action and many of us sided with them. But protection for the mines and refineries was from private security guards, not the military, and they fought. There was a moment it was unclear what the local task group would do.’ He glanced at Relekor again. ‘Then there was a change in command.’

Kharth looked to the other Romulan, and her eyebrow quirked. ‘You weren’t the commander. You were a Centurion.’

Relekor gave an easy shrug and an easier smile. ‘Times change. I’m a commander now, Hiran is the governor instead of a commando team leader – and you, Lieutenant, are Starfleet.’

‘I’m not the governor,’ Hiran said quickly. ‘The governor fled after the navy didn’t back him.’

Hale pursed her lips. ‘And other civilians?’

He shrugged. ‘Anyone who didn’t want to be part of an independent Agarath was allowed to leave, pack up their belongings and go. There was very little blood.’ His craggy face sank. ‘Yet.’

‘Your pledge to Resak’s provisional government included a warning that the Star Navy wouldn’t let Agarath go without a proper fight,’ said Rourke. ‘You think the force we just drove off doesn’t qualify?’

‘It is my hope,’ said Hiran, ‘that your USS Endeavour will be needed for little more than an assessment of our industry, our manpower, and support in streamlining our processes. We are prepared and happy to provide the Velorum Sector with the resources they need, but people will be paid fairly for their labour, and all of Agarath will benefit from the wealth our riches can bring in.’

‘A ship as impressive as Endeavour,’ said Relekor lightly, ‘is likely to make the Star Navy think twice. My flotilla is in need of significant repairs, refits, and maintenance – I don’t have the personnel to man them all, for starters. It’s one thing for Galae Command to pick a fight with that. Another entirely for them to pick a fight with a Starfleet battleship.’

‘She’s an explorer,’ Rourke said automatically. ‘The Star Navy was prepared to slaughter the Senate of Rator, to replace them with their puppets, and now bring every seceding system back under their control by force. I don’t think anything so conventional as old treaties or the firepower under my command will hold them back.’

‘From the perspective of Rator,’ said Hale, ‘Starfleet and the Federation are in violation of our treaties by getting involved. I’m sorry, Mister Hiran; our flag is of little protection.’

‘You’ll have to settle for our phasers,’ chipped in Kharth wryly.

‘We’ll need them,’ a voice at the door boomed.

They turned to see another Reman, younger and bigger than Hiran, dressed in the jumpsuit of a labourer and a tattered cloth mantle, stomping in through heavy security doors. At his waist was the gleaming utility belt of a Romulan naval officer, a disruptor holstered at his side, and he gripped a datapad.

Hiran lifted a hand with, Rourke thought, a hint of apprehension. ‘Captain, First Secretary – this is Foreman Korsk.’

‘Foreman no more,’ snapped Korsk. ‘The workers listen to me because I speak sense, which means most of the people of Agarath listen to me. And I hope you’re ready to get bloody for the people, Starfleet. Because it’s going to take more than our flotilla’s fine words to keep us safe.’ This was said with a faint sneer towards Relekor, who merely gave a genteel smile.

Rourke drew a slow breath as he absorbed the tensions between the three men. ‘We’re here to help with whatever your people want. If that means fighting for your freedom, then you have my ship.’

‘I asked Korsk,’ Hiran pressed on, ‘to deal with the naval frigate that was disabled in the fight.’

‘The frigate can become Relekor’s plaything,’ Korsk growled, brandishing the datapad. ‘I cared about the commander. It didn’t take him long to talk.’

Kharth tensed. ‘What did you do?’

It was as if he’d noticed her for the first time, and the Reman’s gaze became, if possible, more dismissive. ‘Asked him nicely, with pretty words, Starfleet.’

‘So, tortured. That’s not how we’re going to do things,’ Kharth pressed.

Gut twisting, Rourke lifted a hand to her and looked at Korsk. ‘I understand you’ve been fighting for your freedom. I’m not here to lecture you. But my officers, their training, and resources, can give you choices of a different way.’

Korsk didn’t look at him, eyes locked on Kharth. ‘When those nice choices give me answers in minutes, we’ll see.’ His eyes snapped back to Hiran, and there was at least more respect there. ‘He didn’t say much we didn’t guess. A scout force sent by Naval Command, instructed to assess our defences and, if possible, cause some chaos on our facilities in the outer planets. They know our zenite mines are particularly vulnerable. But the commander did give me access to the comms records. Eventually.’

Relekor rolled his eyes. ‘Have you tried not applying brute force to a problem, Korsk?’

‘I find directness works. Dance around all you please, Centurion. It won’t help us when your old masters are here.’

‘Korsk, Relekor.’ Hiran sounded tired. ‘Please, explain.’

With a curt nod, Korsk stomped to one of the control panels and plugged his datapad in. ‘There’s a lot to go through. He didn’t give me all the encryptions. But he gave me enough for this. Half of it’s that briefing, so I’ll skip to the good bit.’

At the jab of a button, the screen above the panel flickered to life to show a recorded message, and Rourke’s throat tightened like a vice as he saw the Romulan officer speaking.

‘At a minimum, commanders, bring me a full scan and assessment of the Agarath system’s defences. I will not embark on this campaign blindly. But be assured – Rator is committed to bringing the Velorum Sector to heel, and to bringing Agarath back under our control. Six days, commanders, and the task group will be assembled. From there we proceed to this nest of upstarts and not merely restore order – we set an example. The Empire stands. Forever.’

Korsk’s lip curled. ‘Based on when this was sent, based on indicated rendezvous points, preparation time, travel time, I say we’ve got a full-scale strike force busting in on us in, oh -’

‘Seven days,’ said Relekor. Somehow his airy smile had not faded.

Korsk nodded, and unplugged the datapad to toss it to Kharth. ‘Set your smartest to decrypt the rest, Starfleet. Might be you can give us an inkling of what we’re up against. So we know just how bad it’s going to be.’

But Hiran was watching Rourke, and when he spoke his voice was soft. ‘You know that officer.’

Rourke swallowed. ‘I know him,’ he agreed.

It was Hale who spoke, and though all she did was lean in, he could feel her presence extend towards him. He did not know if it was reassuring, or like blowing cold air on his skin when already his fight-or-flight instincts were prickling. ‘We’ve crossed paths with Commander Lotharn of the Star Navy before. And he knows us.’

Korsk scoffed anew. ‘Glad Agarath can be the little reunion.’

Relekor winced. ‘If we have all of a week until a strike force comes to kill us all,’ he said, ‘then the flotilla will need repairing, the outer defences restoring…’

‘We will need a thousand things doing,’ Hiran agreed, ‘and will have the time to do maybe a hundred.’ He sighed and looked at Korsk. ‘We will need the lady Zaviss’s help.’

A scowl. ‘We cannot trust her.’

‘We need her influence over the people. We need her guards.’ Hiran turned back to the Federation representatives. ‘I’m sorry. This is about to be more than we expected.’

The prickling sense on the back of Rourke’s neck was easing, but he could feel both Hale and Kharth look at him. So he did what he normally did when his back was up against the wall and there was nothing clever to do: smirk, and say something pithy.

‘It normally is.’

Chief Engineer’s log, stardate 77441.25. Agarath’s exactly the kind of mess we thought it would be. An uprising doesn’t do any industrial system’s infrastructure any good – there’s damage, there’s neglect, there’s a whole lot of facilities you can’t just push the “off” switch on. There are living facilities with low power, faulty air filters, malfunctioning supply systems. Defence platforms which need bringing on-line, old Star Navy ships which need repairing – and crewing, thankfully that’s not my job. Oh, and all of this has to get done in about a week, because then a strike force is going to show up and all hell will break loose.

‘You might have, what, a score of ships,’ said Cortez, gesturing to the display of what could boldly be called the Agarath Guard’s manifest. ‘But do you have the crew for them?’

Commander Relekor gave an easy smile, as if manpower was something he could charm into being. ‘I will once Foreman Korsk kicks his labourers into shape and they report for basic training.’

In a week? Cortez banished that question. This wasn’t her job. She stepped around the central ring in Endeavour’s CIC and waggled her PADD at the holo-projection. ‘We gotta prioritise. I’ve only got so many engineers.’

Relekor shrugged. ‘What’s more important than getting the flotilla online?’

‘Defence platforms,’ said Dathan, terse even by her standards. ‘Stopping the zenite mining shafts from collapsing. Making sure the air filtration systems on Habitat Hub D on the Husk are functioning -’

‘Strategic concerns.’ Relekor opened his hands, shoulders relaxing. ‘This meeting is about solutions, not planning, yes? Your captain is discussing all of those prioritisation issues with Governor Hiran?’

‘My captain listens to me,’ said Cortez, and made herself sound apologetic because a fight wouldn’t help. ‘If I say the priority list needs changing, it’ll change.’

‘I was hoping,’ he sighed, ‘we could make some progress before he meets with Zaviss.’ At the blank looks, he shook his head. ‘She was – is? – the governor’s wife. He fled. She didn’t. A selection of the high-ranking civilians stayed with her. She’s the closest thing to a leader those sympathetic to the old… administration… have. But they have guards and they have facilities and resources, and Hiran is intent on keeping them a part of our new happy family if they’re to stay in Agarath.’

‘And she’ll want something else?’ Cortez’s eyes raised. ‘For me to fix the energy fence ringing in her ponies, that sort of thing?’

Relekor chuckled. ‘That sort of thing. So I was hoping, Commander, you could at least assign some people to my ships and have them spoken for before she comes asking.’

Cortez leaned on the display and scrubbed her face with her hands. She was already tired of this. ‘Automated platforms, especially in and around the asteroid belt, are a better choice for defence. I don’t know what happened with your little defection, but you didn’t bring enough officers, Commander.’

‘Turning my back on the Star Navy to throw my lot in with a band of renegade commandos and a labourers’ uprising was not the most popular thing I could have done,’ Relekor allowed – then shrugged like it was no big deal. ‘I know how keeping the uniform would have ended. Blood on my hands, and we wouldn’t even have peace and order at the end of it. Not all my colleagues had such foresight.’

‘So your wisdom on the future aside,’ Cortez drawled, ‘let’s think of what we can do for you now.’ She jabbed her stylus at the display. ‘I’m going to decommission three of those Malem-class warbirds.’

Relekor made a pained noise. ‘The automated platforms protect the asteroid belt; if I’m going to protect the outer reaches, I need ships -’

‘Automated platforms at the outer facilities will protect those – yes, only temporarily.’ She lifted a hand. ‘Easy there, tiger. The good news is coming. Because if I decommission those warbirds, I’ve got enough spare parts to get this baby back online.’

His breath caught as she changed the view. ‘The Valdore.’

‘Give you a flagship, Commander. Fewer, tougher ships is the way to go here – with this online and Endeavour, automated defence systems can protect anywhere long enough for one of us to get there and give them a hand.’

But Dathan was frowning. ‘There are only two Malems to decommission, Commander.’

Cortez turned, head tilting. ‘One from the battle, two in the refit station…’

‘One in the refit station.’ Dathan looked up from her panel and shrugged. ‘One was already ripped apart. Apparently for repairs to the station.’

‘Then I guess we’ll make do.’ With a sigh, Cortez looked at Relekor and managed a smile. ‘A minor setback. I’ll have my assistant, Lieutenant Adupon, crawling all over this.’

Relekor grinned. ‘You sound regretful. Have you had much chance to examine fine Romulan engineering before?’

‘I was hoping for the opportunity,’ Cortez admitted. ‘But someone has to oversee the technological needs of an entire system.’

Dathan made a small noise, and Cortez couldn’t help but look suspicious. ‘The supervisor at the zenite facilities has raised his priority level. No way of knowing if he’s just anxious.’

‘Oh, for -’ She tried to not swear. These people had been through enough, they deserved a little anxiety. ‘I can’t spare Chief Lann right now, he’s dealing with keeping the habitat dome on the Husk online. Do we have anyone with experience of this kind of equipment we can spare?’

‘I don’t…’ Dathan sounded like she was about to profess ignorance of the engineering team, then an apprehensive look entered her eyes. ‘…Commander Graelin is apparently qualified.’

‘Graelin?’ Cortez made a face. ‘…I’ll get Karana to manage sending him off to deal with former labourers. He’ll probably be rude as hell about it.’

‘If there is one thing for which the people of Agarath have a high tolerance,’ Relekor said wryly, ‘it’s rudeness. It’s the least of offences against them.’

Cortez hesitated at the them, then decided she didn’t want to stick her nose in. She could get Graelin sent off, get Adupon sent off, and look at what was next for the billion needs of Agarath’s survival – both in fending off an oncoming strike force, and in surviving long enough to see them arrive. ‘Then Commander Graelin will do fine.’

When she brought this to Valance in her office a half-hour later, the XO looked like this was what would finally make her abandon professional propriety in private. ‘You want me to send Petrias Graelin to manage a situation in a zenite mine. Is this because I broke that wine glass?’

‘Now that you mention it, I should use that as fodder against you,’ Cortez mused. ‘But no. The mine needs some small refitting of its systems and mostly it needs adjustments to its shift pattern, as a whole bunch of labourers have left or, uh, died. I can send a couple of specialists with him, but this needs someone with a bit more management know-how with these kinds of facilities. Graelin’s records say he’s helped on these kinds of projects before on relief missions.’

‘I’m going to send Lindgren with him,’ said Valance after a moment’s thought, ‘to – blast it.’

Cortez raised her eyebrows. ‘Remembered they’re sleeping together so she can’t be the diplomat?’

‘No, she can be the diplomat.’ Valance rubbed her temples. ‘I trust her. We do need someone dealing with the outer planets facilities, after all. Agarath doesn’t want to shut them down.’

‘Most of them need constant supervision even if they’re operating at minimum capacity; you can’t just switch half of these systems off,’ Cortez sighed. ‘Look on the bright side, it keeps Graelin off the ship while you hold down the fort?’

‘This whole system is a fort.’

Cortez winced. ‘That was me trying to gently sidle up to the fact you seem to have restricted yourself to the ship and let the captain do the running around.’

‘You mean, because I’m a Klingon?’ Valance shook her head. ‘I’m not agonising over this, Isa. It’s an exercise in self-flagellation. I’m most useful here, and Rourke can take point on discussions and getting his hands dirty with the people.’

‘And Hale.’ Cortez waggled her eyebrows.

‘Enough of that.’ Valance did a bad job of smothering a smirk. ‘You can’t make up gossip, Isa, just because you’re the one who plays poker with Hale.’

‘That makes me an excellent person to make up gossip. People assume I have the inside track instead of just trying to enjoy myself.’

‘You realise,’ said Valance as Cortez headed back for the door, ‘you cause trouble with inventing gossip and you’re not the one who has to deal with the fallout if the captain hears and is terribly embarrassed?’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’

Chief Engineer’s log, supplemental: It could be worse. I could have to deal with politics. Off or on the ship.

A&A officer’s log, stardate 77441.59. Normally, this wouldn’t be a top mission for the boys in blue – we’ve got to prepare defences on every inch of this damn system before the strike force gets here, put all these mining facilities back together so they don’t blow up if left unattended or something – oh, and stop the oppressors and the oppressed now living together from killing each other. I think someone in planetology is poking the Husk and how it got blown up and how it’s still in a few coherent pieces? But this isn’t really our deal.

Except that whole “oppressors and oppressed now living together” is going to make for the greatest, if shortest, anthropological study.

‘Is this the most important thing you could be doing?’ said Arys as he guided the shuttle Lancelot down towards the shuttleport tower jutting out from the Husk’s habitation dome. ‘An ethnography in the middle of a crisis?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Beckett wasn’t sorry at all, and did not take his feet off the co-pilot’s deactivated control panel. ‘Should I only be building things with my own two hands? Can only hard sciences provide a solution when we have to protect a really messed-up population in an unprecedented situation? Studies like this can help us plan future projects, and also this is more access to Remans than I think we’ve ever had…’

Arys shook his head. ‘Fine. Fine.’

‘What’re you going to do, Helmsman? Fly this shuttle overhead inspiringly…’

‘I am here to assist Lieutenant Thawn,’ came the terse response, ‘overseeing the needs, support, and population management of the Husk in general and the habitat dome in particular.’

Beckett lowered his feet. ‘I thought Graelin was running point down here. With Doctor Sadek.’

‘Commander Graelin’s needed at the zenite mines on the outer rim,’ Arys sighed. ‘So Thawn has operational command, because Doctor Sadek is…’ He paused and frowned out the canopy, thinking. ‘I guess she’s doing the opposite of pulling rank. Exploiting the fact she hasn’t yet got her results from the bridge officer’s exam, so she can justify sticking with the medical station’s expansion and oversight.’

‘I have to admire Sadek’s skill when it comes to dodging responsibility,’ Beckett mused. ‘But wouldn’t she be the most-qualified person for this still?’

‘Lieutenant Thawn can manage perfectly well,’ said Arys, with a dogged loyalty for Endeavour’s Chief of Operations born of being the bridge officer stationed physically closest to her. ‘Besides, if you want to get your hands dirty and look people in the eye and all of that, you’ll probably be with Rhade or Kowalski on the streets.’

‘Rhade and Thawn working together on a planet fraught with local politics. That was fun last time,’ Beckett grumbled.

‘Months ago!’ Arys reminded him. ‘They’re getting on much better now, I see them…’

His voice trailed off, and Beckett leaned over. ‘Go on, Tar’lek. Use your words. You won’t catch fire if you gossip.’

Arys squirmed and tried to avoid answering by focusing on the landing protocol, but Beckett’s unwavering gaze bore into him. He sighed. ‘They do lunch most days in the Round Table. I know you complained about them fighting all the time on Whixby, but this is different.’

Beckett at last shifted his gaze out of the shuttle canopy as the Lancelot sank into one of the landing bays, the habitat dome disappearing from view as they sacrificed tumbling rock, open void, and a hint of green for the continuous brown-grey hues of the hulking structures on this shard of a planet. ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. ‘This is different.’

The habitat dome was split into two parts. The centre had been built and developed for the houses and families of the leaders of Agarath, with the quality to match – a holographic matrix over the dome to emulate blue skies, green stretches along the wide streets, buildings made to evoke the glory of Romulus.

But that was not where Arys and Beckett headed. The outer half of the habitat had been built originally for the workers on the Husk itself, but over the centuries the population had only grown. Labourers and their families crowded into tight rooms in viciously functionalist buildings, with no green in their streets and nothing but a criss-cross of metal overhead to show a perpetual dark sky of the void beyond the habitat.

While the boundaries between leaders and workers had been formally crushed by the uprising, the physical distance between them was not so easy to overcome. Acting-Governor Hiran had reportedly refused to forcibly strip the Upper District of their homes and resources, and though the sight of the shining jewel on the curving horizon of the habitat dome wound a tight knot in Beckett’s chest, he understood. It would have become a battlefield soaked with the blood of civilians.

Instead, the Lower Streets had flooded with the labourers from beyond the Husk who had overthrown their supervisors, come rushing to the heart of the system to remove the leadership, and not yet returned to the facilities from which they had come. Mostly Remans, they benefited from the one mercy of a habitat dome like this, which was that rough living did not at least mean suffering through cold temperatures or vicious weather. The streets had become more like a shanty town, with Starfleet deliveries of supplies and equipment dispatched on hover-sleds capable of shuttling storage crates metres over the heads of those pressed to live in these crowded walkways.

‘So what’s your plan?’ Arys asked as they shouldered through the crowd of hollow-faced Remans and Romulans, their uniforms giving them some buffer. ‘Walk the streets and ask people questions?’

‘Kind of,’ Beckett admitted. ‘I’ll come to base camp and figure out what’s what, but then I want to immerse myself a bit in the situation here. If I can get time with some participants in the uprising, get their stories, that’ll be great, but I need to understand the now first.’

Arys nodded, then gave him an awkward glance. ‘Hey. Sorry I sounded dismissive earlier. I didn’t think about a project like this, that’s all.’

Beckett made himself give the airy, toothy smile that helped people think there was nothing but sawdust in his head. ‘It’s okay. I don’t expect you meathead redshirts to think, Tar’lek.’ Arys rolled his eyes good-naturedly and led on.

The base for support from Starfleet in the habitat dome was a large building that looked much like the others, but with lights strapped to its exterior to make it a blinding beacon. The lack of any attempt at emulating natural sunlight meant the streets were perpetually night-clad, and Beckett had noticed that these well-lit hubs seemed more populated by Romulans than Remans, who stuck to the darker corners and roadways. A part of him wondered if the lack of a false sky, while doubtless a cost-cutting measure for Romulan overseers, had been an inadvertent kindness to the nocturnal Reman workforce.

Arys had to lead him by the elbow through this last part of the crowd, because he was too busy scribbling notes into his journal.

‘You know PADDs exist,’ the Andorian growled.

‘Using a pen contributes to the reflexivity of -’

‘What are you doing here?’

The building had once, Beckett realised, been a guard hub. The main room stretched from floor to ceiling, several levels up, with walkways on the upper storeys so guards could look down on the lobby. But instead of armed guards as the faceless force of the Romulan Star Empire, it was Lieutenant Thawn looking down with a horrified expression.

‘I’m like a bad penny,’ he said cheerfully. Despite the throng of officers and civilians on the ground floor, she had still from the next level up spotted him and become instantly affronted. ‘I just show up places. You get me instead of Graelin.’

Thawn’s lips set to a thin line and she swept to the stairs to join them on the dingy ground floor. Storage crates and tables for officers had been set up, the place turned a combination planning hub and distribution venue for essential goods. ‘Commander Graelin was supposed to be running this operation.’

‘I’m running it instead. You answer to me now.’

‘He’s doing an anthropological study of the situation here on the Husk,’ Arys sighed.

‘You ruin all my fun, Tar’lek.’

‘An anthropological study.’ Thawn arched an eyebrow. ‘Just don’t get in the way.’

‘Oh no, I’ll be here to watch. Silent as a shadow. You’re the centre of operations here, you’re the perfect place for me to start and learn the situation on the ground, get the pulse of the beating heart of this whole support operation…’

‘It’s a Starfleet relief mission, Beckett, you know perfectly bloody well what it looks like. And I will not have you getting underfoot, undermining me by… asking questions.’

Beckett tapped his pen against his chin. ‘That’s very insecure of you, Lieutenant. Questions are an excellent vehicle for learning -’

‘Where are we at, Lieutenant?’ Arys interrupted.

Thawn gave Beckett one last glare before turning. ‘A whole swathe of the labourers who used to live and work on the other facilities came here for, and after, the fighting. Because this place might be rotten but it’s better than an over-crowded mining platform. We’re trying to assess if we have space for them, get their basic needs seen to, and I’ve got Lieutenant Athaka assessing those other facilities to see which are in the best condition to become additional residential platforms.’

‘How can I help?’ said Arys.

Four PADDs were at once shoved into his hands. ‘Supply allocation. We’ve got people assessing the needs of those here in the Lower Streets. Make sure it’s going out. I’d like to get food and basic medical support to those in the slums, and for the people congregating around the Guardhouse here to realise they don’t need to gather if they want things.’

He nodded, then turned to Beckett. ‘Remember that people who’ve just been traumatised don’t always need you to be funny.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Beckett drawled, then staggered as Arys clapped him hard on the shoulder before heading off. He turned back to Thawn. ‘What crawled up your arse?’

Her expression pinched. ‘I have a lot to get on with here. Commander Graelin was supposed to -’

‘You can do supply allocation on a project like this in your sleep.’ He tapped his pen on the journal. ‘Is it that different here?’

Her gaze flickered down. ‘Are you researching me?’

He lifted his hand innocently. ‘You’ve got a big project on, this is an unprecedented situation, and I’m just asking! Or have you decided we’re not friends today?’

That guarded look entered her eye, but before she could respond there was a flurry of movement at the door, and they turned to see Rhade head in with Chief Kowalski. He spotted them at once and approached with his usual bright, politely cheerful expression.

‘Lieutenant, glad you could join us.’ Beckett got a slightly-less passive-aggressively hard clap on the shoulder from Rhade, but it didn’t rock him any less than Arys’s had. ‘Have you come down to bolster patrols?’

Beckett blinked. ‘Patrols?’

‘Lieutenant Rhade is supervising local safety and security. Which includes a little first-response support if they find any problems,’ Thawn said. Then she brightened. ‘You wanted to study what it’s like on the Husk right now, Beckett.’

Rhade looked him up and down, and brightened. ‘Oh, you’re here as A&A, not one of my Hazard Team?’

‘Take him with you,’ Thawn said before Beckett could comment. ‘It’s just logistical affairs here, I’m trying to stop too many of the locals flooding in. The streets don’t have the infrastructure for everyone to come here; I need to get things out to them.’

‘Then we’ll carry on with door-to-door, assessments, checkups,’ said Rhade with a firm nod. His hand returned to Beckett’s shoulder. ‘It’ll be the best way for you to see what’s going on here, Lieutenant.’

Beckett blinked at Thawn. ‘You got rid of me fast.’

But Rhade was pressing on, looking to her. ‘I left Bekk at the residential block on grid Gamma-4; he should have a full report coming your way. Four hundred people, full needs assessment, and we’re clearing routes that way. We also cleared out the main roads to the hospital facility so people who really need help can get there. Ensign Zherul is on standby for rapid medical response if we can’t move someone.’

Beckett watched as the faint knot in Thawn’s brow faded. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Those walkways to the road have been giving me a headache all afternoon.’ She turned back to Beckett, and it was perhaps worse that she no longer had that condescending edge she used whenever he’d particularly wound her up when she said, ‘Go with Rhade and ask your questions, Lieutenant.’

‘It’s an anthropological study.’ It was hard to not sound like he was whining, and harder still when Thawn simply left and all he could do was follow Rhade back out the door and into the humming crowds of the dispossessed former labourers and inhabitants of the Lower Streets, lurking below the shining jewel of the Upper District.

A&A officer’s log, supplemental: There may, of course, be downsides to sitting around taking notes while other people save the bloody day.

Captain’s log, stardate 77441.93. My officers are seeing to not just the defence of the Agarath System, but its rebuilding. I envy them, frankly, because for all the challenges before us, these are straightforward tasks. Meanwhile, my duty is to help First Secretary Hale with something altogether more messy: the politics and future of Agarath.

It was a peculiar false sun that shone down on the Upper District of the Husk’s habitat ring. Rourke only had to turn slightly to the left for the balcony’s view of sun-soaked streets and comfortable housing to be broken at the edge, like night was a blanket thrown over the horizon. And under that night, the rough stretches of the Lower Streets.

‘This place is a bit sick,’ he mumbled, turning back to where Hale sat at the table overlooking the view. ‘And what’re we doing here, waiting like she’s trying to make a statement?’

‘Because she is making a statement. Our time is her time,’ said Hale, rather more relaxed. ‘We’ve come unannounced to the most senior member of Romulan society in the city. She won’t drop everything for us.’

Rourke tried to not bristle. It had been his idea to head as directly as possible to see this Zaviss, the wife of the former governor, in her comfortable home in the opulent district of the Husk. Instead they had been shown inside, offered refreshments by Romulan serving staff, and waited for fifteen minutes now.

‘I didn’t expect her to,’ he said, attempting to smother indignation. ‘But it’s still a point about her control.’

Their eyes met, and he could see her assembling a response. By now he knew what it looked like when she didn’t want to be rude, when she wanted to manage someone, and he knew he was about to be managed.

So it was doubly a relief for the doors to the balcony to swing open at the arrival of the mysterious Zaviss – and the sight of her knocked any apprehensions about his working relationship with Sophia Hale from his head.

‘I’m sorry about making you wait, Captain, First Secretary.’ Her voice was gruff as she padded over, grimy in a jumpsuit, wiping her hands on a fresh cloth from one of her staff. Crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes made her age even more fathomless than Rourke normally found Romulans. ‘I was helping down at the air filtration systems.’

‘Helping…’ Rourke worked his jaw.

‘Parys, get us more drinks.’ Zaviss’s instructions were brisk but polite, and her staff hurried back into the building. ‘And yes. I’m a qualified engineer, Captain. Not a lady of leisure.’ Her gaze swept around the balcony, at all of the luxury before her of the Upper District. ‘Not any more.’

Hale was rather more studied as she stood, at once approaching for a cordial handshake with a calculated assumption the Romulan would accept the gesture as intended. ‘Governor Hiran didn’t mention you were involved in the recovery work here.’

‘So you assumed I was sitting on my balcony sunning myself while the people of Agarath put everything back together around me?’ Zaviss’s eyebrows raised, then she shook her head. ‘There is a reason I did not depart with my husband, First Secretary.’

Rourke frowned. ‘Can I ask the reason?’

She gave a gentle scoff. ‘Do not mistake me. I am hardly thrilled that it has come to this, for Agarath to have to strike out on its own, for the labourers to have to overthrow the overseers. But the Star Empire is dead, and my husband too narrow-minded to see there can be a place for him in the future of this system. He fled rather than risk judgement be something he disliked.’ Her lip curled. ‘But I’ve lived here for fifteen years. I gave up one home, and I will not be driven from another.’

Her staff arrived then with a tray of fresh, cold drinks, and Rourke could not quite place the flavour when he accepted a glass; somewhere between mint and vanilla, and refreshing with the fizz of it. He smacked his lips. ‘So you’re helping out in spite of the new government.’

‘Is that what Korsk said?’ Zaviss rolled her eyes. ‘He thinks I’m waiting to invite the Star Empire back. I can’t blame him for his suspicion, but all I can do about that is keep working. And without me, neither he nor Hiran can count on the other families of the Upper District to cooperate. They don’t want to leave, but they’re not about to submit to Hiran stripping everyone of their belongings.’

‘He hasn’t shown any inclination to do that,’ said Hale carefully.

‘Korsk and the other labourers want him to. But Hiran’s military service has given him a better understanding of the bigger picture, of politics. It is best you make sure he remains on top of the pile that is Agarath once this is over.’ Zaviss sipped her drink. ‘He’s probably the only one who can bridge the gaps.’

Rourke drew a slow breath, rather feeling like this woman and everything about her were shifting the foundations on which he stood. ‘Agarath can hardly have a future if the Upper District remains the home of those old families, while the people who labour here and keep its resources flowing are still pushed into slums.’

‘I agree,’ said Zaviss, ‘but if people don’t want to give up their homes here, what will you do? Send in Hiran’s commandos? Korsk’s rebel force? And when those families here with private guards resist, how many people will die just so you can tear down a symbol? Don’t we have slightly more important things to worry about in the meantime – like functioning air filtration systems, and this incoming strike force?’

As Rourke hesitated, Hale gave one of her enigmatic smiles. ‘I agree nobody is going to be forced into anything,’ she said. ‘It’s our intention to help Hiran put together a new ruling council to determine the future of Agarath – as well as ensure that future is possible. We know that would involve you, which is why we’re here.’

‘Give me a plan,’ said Zaviss, ‘or a meeting, and I’ll be there.’ She dismissively clunked her glass down on her staffer’s tray. ‘Otherwise I will work and help, whether Korsk wants me to or not.’

‘Then may I suggest,’ Hale pressed on, ‘you help me speak with the other families of the Upper District, and we can see how they can all help? Make sure everyone has a role and a stake in building this future for Agarath?’

‘And,’ Zaviss drawled, ‘see if there are any now-empty houses or buildings that maybe we can expand the slums into? Break down some boundaries? I see how this works, First Secretary.’

Hale’s smile didn’t fade. ‘One step at a time. Let’s start with a conversation. I’m delighted to see that you’re as invested in the future of Agarath as any, though. I agree that it’s best if we can make sure this is a future for everyone.’

Rourke shifted his feet. ‘Can my staff help you if you’re dealing with maintenance duties?’

‘On the contrary,’ said Zaviss. ‘Can I help your staff? I have access to most of the records and systems information about the habitat dome. I’ve focused my personal efforts on the Upper District mostly to not provoke a response, but there’s doubtless others who need the help more.’

His eyebrows raised. ‘I’ll send my operations manager to see you. Especially if you and Ms Hale are going to see what other families can help.’

Hale pursed her lips. ‘How was the uprising here? In the Upper District?’

Zaviss shook her head. ‘The uprising started in the mines. As word of it got out, the refineries and facilities on the other shards of the Husk broke into resistance. What kept the habitation safe was Hiran – when we stood on the knife-edge of whether the people living in the Lower Streets would start their own uprising, Hiran chose to take his soldiers and side with the rebellion. At that point, the families of the Upper District locked down with their guards – and made themselves less of a target. From there, the fighting fled to the spire and the industrial command centres.’

‘People went for the actual physical spaces – and figures – of power,’ Rourke finished, ‘and left their houses alone. That’s a little surprising, if you’ll forgive me.’

‘Hiran managed to focus their anger. Either out of some softness or some practicality – tearing us out of our homes would not help Agarath make a future for everyone.’ Zaviss shrugged.

‘You mentioned guards,’ Rourke added pointedly.

‘The military either sided with Hiran, like young Centurion – sorry, Commander – Relekor, or they were driven away. Otherwise, safety and protection for Agarath was from hired security. The line between them and military was thin, I grant you, but they manned the mines, guarded the overseers – and provided protection for the houses of the Upper Districts. The first two sets of guards fled. The latter?’ Zaviss grimaced. ‘Some of these compounds still have armed guards. As I warned you, seizing these houses would be bloody indeed.’

‘And what’s the chance,’ said Rourke, ‘that some of these families don’t want Hiran to win, would really like the Star Empire back, and would love to deploy their guards to help a Star Navy strike force when it arrives.’

There was a long pause. At length, Zaviss inclined her head. ‘There is a chance.’

Hale drew a slow breath. ‘Then it sounds as if we have a lot to talk about.’

When they left Zaviss’s compound later and walked the sun-soaked streets of the Upper District, heading for the Lower Streets and Lieutenant Thawn’s setup in the old guardhouse, Hale said, ‘I don’t want you to put Security up here.’

He scowled. ‘Sending Security teams to these streets sounds like exactly what I should do.’

‘Let me at least talk to these families first,’ Hale pressed. ‘Before Starfleet show up outside their houses to make them feel like criminals.’

‘Starfleet are already outside the houses of the labourers and their families in the Lower Streets,’ Rourke pointed out. ‘We’re not here to make them feel like criminals, either, but it might be what happens. Does that not count?’

‘Communities like these are delicate,’ said Hale. ‘They -’

‘It’s not really a community if the labourers were basically slaves – some of them literally here on penal service, none of them really free to live and work as they chose – and the inhabitants of the Upper District profited from that. I don’t much care about their feelings.’

‘Do you care,’ said Hale carefully, ‘if they try to overthrow Hiran, or use their guards to drive your officers off, or decide that there is no future for them in Agarath?’

‘If they ultimately leave? Not really.’ He stopped in the street, aware that though the roads were empty there were houses and windows and possible eyes and ears, and not caring. ‘I’m not here for the rich Romulans who don’t want to give up their comfy way of life. They’ll end up on top; they did when Starfleet pulled out of the evacuation, and they will now. I care about the people in the margins who are going to get squeezed. Right now we could give forty Remans more comfortable living conditions, but we’re not doing it because we don’t want to piss off five rich Romulans.’

‘And as Zaviss asked,’ Hale replied levelly, ‘how many people do you want to shoot to make that happen?’ As he hesitated, she shook her head. ‘I know you see this as a chance for us to make right what we did wrong fifteen years ago…’

‘As should you,’ Rourke snapped. ‘You were here, you were in the Diplomatic Service when the Federation turned their backs on -’

‘A decision I and my superiors opposed vehemently.’ Hale had gone rather tight. ‘And our careers suffered for it, and I’ve spent all of my work since on these frontiers. If we’re going to wield our pasts against each other to justify our anger, Captain, you were running a security team on a different border at the time. You didn’t see and turn your back on the Romulan people.’

‘No. I just spent years seeing how everyone who fell through the cracks was abused and exploited and left behind,’ he sneered.

Hale hesitated. ‘We don’t disagree, Matthew,’ she said at length. ‘Let me talk to the families. If we’re not forcing them out, they have to be a part of Agarath. Let me try to make them a part of Agarath before we treat them as a potential threat.’

‘And if they are a potential threat? One company of private guards…’

‘I know.’

He ground his teeth together. ‘If you won’t accept Starfleet on the streets, will you at least accept a personal guard?’

‘So long as they have a hand-phaser and not a rifle. And only if it will make you feel better,’ she said, not without a certain sweetness.

Rourke drew a slow, rumbling breath. ‘Nothing about this situation,’ he complained, ‘is about to feel any better.’

Captain’s log, supplemental: As ever, you can’t look to the future without overcoming the past.

Chief Tactical Officer’s log, stardate 77443.64. I need to be everywhere at once – on the streets of the Husk, in every facility in the system, working on every defensive platform we’re rebuilding, and on Endeavour’s bridge. But in all of those places, I could only fix what’s in front of me, so I have to be the place where I can – how’d the captain put it? Teach a man to fish. So I’m working with the Reman labourers who overthrew their masters and the Romulan naval officers who used to serve them, and trying to get them to cooperate in making the Agarath Guard able to defend this whole wretched system.

Obviously this will be very easy for a natural diplomat like me.

‘I think I’ll call her Steeltalon,’ Commander Relekor said with a sweep of the hand to trace an imaginary sign.

The Reman Korsk didn’t look up from his control panel in the command centre of Agarath’s refit station. Beyond them was the smattering of personnel supervising the station’s systems themselves, and behind them the tall windows showing the refit yards, husks of ships they hoped to become operational hanging in the repair bays. ‘It’s not made of steel.’

‘She,’ Relekor chided. ‘And Arcybitetalon sounds very silly.’

‘Steeltalon doesn’t?’

Kharth cleared her throat. ‘Gentlemen.’

Korsk looked up at her, thick brow raising. ‘Don’t think anyone here is one of them. Not here to mind my p’s and q’s, Lieutenant.’ He jerked a thumb at Relekor. ‘The centurion might fancy himself an officer and a dignitary and all of…’

‘Commander,’ Relekor corrected, finally terse. ‘I’m not a centurion of the Romulan Star Navy any more. I proved that when I directed the task group to turn on the commander’s ship. Which, I’d like to remind you, stopped the navy from bombarding the Husk into even more rubble.’

‘So you didn’t obey orders to slaughter two hundred thousand people,’ rumbled Korsk. ‘That don’t make you a hero, Centurion.’

‘Whose bright idea was it for you two to work together?’ Kharth snapped at last, hands on her hips. ‘Or to even be in the same room?’

Korsk’s jaw tightened at the interruption. ‘I will not surrender the whole of Agarath’s defence to a naval officer.’

‘And I,’ said Relekor, rolling his eyes, ‘am the only person qualified to oversee the flotilla. What’s the alternative, Korsk – you and your miners try to fly warships into battle?’

‘I didn’t know you and the sheer handful of officers you have left could man enough vessels for us to fight this strike force,’ Korsk sneered back.

‘Fine,’ said Kharth, ‘you’re both right – which means you have to work together. Which means you can both shut up and listen to an officer who has more experience of starship combat than, I bet, either of you put together.’ This was said with a warning look at Relekor, whose record she did not fully know – but by all accounts, he had been a very minor officer indeed before all of this. ‘We’ll be able to plan more once Cortez knows how many ships she can bring online. But I need a brutal assessment from you both on how many people you can send to the flotilla.’

‘My workers are prepared to defend -’

‘I’m talking skills,’ Kharth told Korsk flatly. ‘People who can, with a crash course, perform basic operations on a starship. And they’ll be doing it under officers who, yes, used to serve in the Star Navy.’ She rounded on Relekor. ‘Officers who need to be able to follow the orders of you, or me, and who aren’t going to turn their noses up at working with Remans.’

‘If they were going to be snobs,’ said Relekor, ‘they wouldn’t have rebelled, or they’d have left after. But the Remans had best remember their place here and obey -’

‘Our place?’ Korsk jerked upright to his full height, impressive and towering over both of them.

‘Enough!’ Kharth’s hands rose as her voice did. ‘Damn it, I’ve been here for less than a day and you two can’t help but jump on each other’s words. Do you hate each other more, or the Star Navy?’

‘I hate,’ rumbled Korsk, ‘anyone who will stand in the way of my people’s freedom. That includes not helping.’ Now his dark eyes landed on Kharth. ‘Do not act like an outsider, Romulan. You’ve come here to lecture us as if our old scars and distrust are an inconvenience, not hard-won lessons.’

Kharth walked around the console to his side, looking up to meet his blazing gaze. ‘I’m not an outsider,’ she agreed, voice low and tense. ‘Because I know the harshness of the Star Navy, of the Imperial Senate; I know who they’ll leave behind and let fall between the cracks. It happened to me, it happened to my family -’

‘Was your family,’ Korsk interrupted, ‘evacuated to a different mine where they would be worked to death? I assure you, Romulan, in the places where my families were sent, there was no path to Starfleet.’

Kharth swallowed anger. ‘I am here because I am lucky, not because I am privileged. I was lucky to get on an evacuation ship, I was lucky to get off a refugee world – don’t pretend that those places are for the fortunate.’

‘They are more fortunate than those the Star Empire didn’t evacuate because they were beneath their notice, or their enemies,’ Korsk pointed out. ‘And how did you – so beleaguered and unlucky as you are – secure the support for an application to Starfleet?’

She hesitated. ‘A Starfleet captain sponsored me.’

The gaps in her response made his brow furrow deeper. ‘And why did this captain know you to sponsor you?’

Silence hung between them as their eyes stayed locked together, and she knew she had lost this. Kharth drew a slow breath. ‘Yes, my mother was Star Navy. She met Starfleet officers in the war. As I said, I am luckier than most. But she was also left to die because she supported the evacuation effort and her comrades turned on her for greed -’

‘You say this as if I should pity you, or consider her a woman of duty – because she would have escorted the prison ships that took me to a new form of enslavement.’ Korsk shook his head. 

‘Is all that suffering your justification, then? Why you were so hard done-by you just had to torture that naval captain we took prisoner?’ Words she shouldn’t have said roiled in her, too fiery to suppress any more.

‘I did what I had -’

‘To do, right. That’s what a lot of people say when they have power over the powerless and abuse it.’

Korsk’s expression, if possible, sank even more. ‘Imply to me again that I am the same as my oppressors and I will put you through this console, Romulan.’

She stood her ground. ‘Imply I’m like your oppressors who left me to die, too, and you can try your damn luck.’

He spat on the deck. ‘We are not the same.’

‘Maybe not,’ Kharth allowed at last. ‘But I’m still a Starfleet officer, a tactical officer, and I’m still the most qualified person in this damn room when it comes to bringing you bickering assholes together to complete the Agarath Guard. Do you want to be right, or do you want to live to enjoy this freedom, Korsk?’

Relekor gave a low chuckle in the pause. ‘Well said, Lieutenant -’

She rounded on him. ‘Don’t give me that, Commander. He’s right that refusing to commit an act of mass murder doesn’t earn you a pat on the back. You want to be one of the good guys? Stick your neck out instead of jumping onto a higher pillar.’ In the silence that followed, she walked further around the control panel to reach the controls for the holographic projector. ‘Starfleet isn’t here to fix your problems -’

‘We don’t want that,’ Korsk snapped.

She glared at his interruption. ‘We’re here to give you better choices. It’s down to you if you take them.’

‘Not at all patronising,’ Relekor drawled.

She shrugged. ‘Now that you both hate me equally, let’s get to work.’

Relekor sighed. ‘This was merely the warm-up act? Charming.’

‘I’m very charming,’ Kharth said, bringing the display to life with a tactical map of the system. ‘And with my charm I’ve identified the key weak spots in this system, and they’re the areas we need to reinforce with defensive platforms – these will be great places for Korsk to send the former labourers, as it’s largely automated but they can supervise them, and free up slightly more technically-trained naval deserters to serve on the starships. For our ships, we’re going to have fewer than we might like – so the defensive platforms will have to hold the line, and the ships act in rapid response…’

Chief Tactical Officer’s log, supplemental: Diplomacy is going well.

Chief Communications Officer’s Log, stardate 77444.33. With the depth of the Agarath system’s needs, it makes sense for the senior staff to be dispersed widely. We have the skills to supervise all manner of phenomena, including those outside our personal areas of expertise. Normally, I would chafe – as Endeavour’s expert on protocol and linguistics in a volatile scenario – at being sent to a zenite mine; there’s a lot more I can do.

But it sounds like these people are in need of help. And even if I can’t help them myself, I can make sure Commander Graelin gives them the help they need. And gets the help he needs.

Stepping out from the rear compartment of the shuttle, Lindgren adjusted her thick, padded jumpsuit. ‘I’m ready,’ she said, and wished her voice didn’t sound so small in the cockpit.

Graelin didn’t look around as he monitored the shuttle’s autopilot bringing the Agravain in towards the facility on the surface of one of the seventh planet’s moons. ‘Triple-check the seal on your mask.’

‘I did.’ She tried to sound gentle. ‘It’s more than within parameters for a zenite mine; contact isn’t a -’

‘Lieutenant.’

She straightened an inch. ‘Don’t give me that, like you have to pull rank.’ She spoke with a determination she didn’t quite feel, unsure how he’d react to the challenge, unable to accept his simple dismissal. ‘I understand what’s going on.’

Now he cast a glance over his shoulder. ‘Don’t make presumptions.’

That twisted a blade in her, and she advanced to take the co-pilot’s chair, swinging it to face him. ‘Petrias, I’ve read your record. I know where you grew up, I know the Ardanan history with zenite mining and the impact it had on your people. You don’t have to pretend this isn’t personal.’

Graelin turned his eyes back to his controls and drew a slow breath. ‘It is personal in that I am familiar with the vast measures necessary to mine zenite safely.’

‘All we need,’ said Lindgren carefully, ‘are gas filters, surely -’

‘Which must be acquired in sufficient quantities, which must be made to and maintain a certain standard of functionality. That requires resources, and that necessitates staff trained to check and repair these masks. Ideally, every worker should be trained to a level where they can perform a safety check on their own equipment…’ Graelin stopped and shook his head as if to banish the rest of his reel of a report. ‘It is not as simple as everyone pretends.’

She bit her lip as she watched him, and said nothing while the Agravain sank into the landing bay of the mine’s surface facilities. The moon beyond was nothing more than a barren rock. Those extracting the ores from the depths of the mine shafts would be in full containment suits with the lack of atmosphere, but even within the structures built around them, equipped with life support, anywhere near unprocessed zenite everyone needed filtration masks.

‘Petrias,’ she tried again as their shuttle gently landed. ‘You can talk to me.’

He gave her a look like she’d sprouted a second head. ‘I know. That’s why you’re here. But don’t mistake my observation of the challenges here as personal. Personal means I understand what’s at stake.’ He finished the post-flight sequence and stood. ‘Let’s meet the foreman.’

Lindgren wasn’t the most experienced when it came to mining systems. She’d agreed to come partly because these workers, who couldn’t abandon their facilities without leaving volatile material and dangerous equipment unattended, were the most likely people to be overlooked in the system. She couldn’t help them with matters of industry, but she could make sure their other needs were seen to – including reminding them they were not forgotten.

Graelin checked twice to make sure both their masks were secure before lowering the landing ramp on the shuttle. His tricorder was in-hand to check the air filtration systems, and by the time they met one of the Reman miners who’d been spared to greet them, his nose was deeper in his sensor readings than any conversation.

While she’d come for several reasons, Lindgren knew this was one of them. She could greet the burly miner in his own language, explain that they were there to assess what resources were needed, get him to talk about what he felt they needed.

‘More workers,’ the miner grunted. ‘Two score left to fight. We’re barely keeping systems functioning. You shut these down, it’ll take a month to restart it again. Then where’s Agarath if we can’t ship this stuff out?’

Graelin looked at him, looked at his bare mouth, and took a step forward. ‘Where’s Agarath if you’re a drooling vegetable?’ He ran his tricorder over the Reman.

‘I -’

‘Even in these sections, you should be wearing a mask,’ Graelin all but snapped. ‘Your life support systems aren’t calibrated properly to filter out the zenite.’

The miner shifted his stance. ‘We’re Reman. We’re a bit more resilient than you humans.’

Graelin snapped his tricorder shut. ‘I’m not human.’

Lindgren slid sideways between them. ‘The Commander is here to assess your facilities. If we can’t bring in more labourers, we’ll support making what you do have more efficient.’

‘It’ll be inefficient if you’re all poisoned,’ Graelin complained, but followed them as the miner led the two officers deeper into the facility.

They did not go down the mine shaft. It was not offered, and Graelin did not ask. Lindgren assumed that if miners could survive in the vacuum beyond the surface structures, they were hardly at risk of exposure to zenite. But they walked the administrative offices, through the dingy metal corridors of this facility built by the lowest bidder, past corridors leading to habitation wings and through gloomy, stained, acrid-smelling chambers where most of these miners lived, worked, and died.

The main ore processing centre was a chamber filled with the cacophony of metal on metal, of rock on rock, of voices and machinery and labour. Lindgren realised only here that their guide was nothing but a simple miner himself, as the supervisors – Remans she suspected only recently elevated to run these facilities – worked the processing wing’s floor.

This time she stood by as Graelin spoke, cross-examining them like a prosecutor seeking a defendant’s guilt in the slightest gap in their words. The work shifts, the safety precautions. Here and there he instructed people to put on masks, then demanded to see the equipment storage, see the masks and the other safety gear itself. Lindgren was just beginning to wryly think of her parents hard at work supervising the yards at Providence when Graelin looked down one more corridor and said, sharply, ‘That habitation wing. Are there families here?’

Their guide gave a broad shrug. ‘We work here, we live here. Families happen.’

Graelin stopped and turned to Lindgren. ‘Lieutenant, I want you to do a full systems assessment of the main communications of this facility. I need to be confident that if an emergency happens, the mine can send word back to the Husk within moments.’

That was six hours’ work. Six hours sweating in her breathing mask, sat in a dingy control centre, running diagnostic after diagnostic on each point of communication across each section of the zenite mining facility, both labour and recreational. Four times she had to flag up a problem, and four times was assured by the supervisors it would be seen to. Each time she made a note on her PADD about sending staff back here, because she was not confident these people had the expertise to manage it themselves.

‘How long have you been running safety systems here?’ she asked the rangy young Reman woman at last.

‘Three weeks.’

Lindgren hesitated. ‘Romulan supervisors used to manage this?’

A toothy smile. ‘They’re gone now.’

Lindgren could not imagine living and dying within the bulkheads of this facility, and she had spent her life in space, grew up on a starship. But this was a far cry from a Federation craft, the air slick with the sweat of workers, and even through the filter she fancied she could taste the closeness of everyone. But here, as they spoke of their work, they sounded proud. Satisfied.

If she couldn’t imagine living here now, she did not want to try to imagine living here as a worker who was as good as a slave.

Though she had checked her tricorder all along, at no point was there a summons from Graelin to return to the shuttle. So she worked until she was done, until she felt the most efficient solution would be to send a small communications engineering team down here to correct the errors she was finding, give these workers some basic training to maintain this themselves, and was not that surprised to find him already sat in the pilot’s seat on the Agravaine when she made it back to the shuttle.

‘Did you see to it all?’ was all Graelin said, and he did not remove his own filtration mask until the hatch had been sealed and life support had done a complete cycle.

‘All I could do,’ she said quietly. Now she stood in the gloom of the cockpit, staring at the back of his head as he began the pre-flight sequence, and still he did not look at her. ‘I’ll be sending back a comms team to make some repairs, streamline some of this, teach some of them…’

‘A waste of time,’ Graelin grunted, and the Agravaine lurched as he commanded an ungainly launch.

Grabbing a hold, she hauled herself to the co-pilot’s chair. ‘These people need help -’

‘These people have been using sub-par equipment for years,’ he snapped. ‘Perhaps Remans are resilient, but they only use semi-functional breathers in work spaces. Their living spaces have inadequate air cycling processes and in there, nobody wears masks. Many of these people are plainly suffering from at least a mild level of zenite poisoning.’

‘Then we can work on that,’ she said quietly. ‘Repair their equipment -’

‘The comms systems alone.’ As the Agravaine rose from the turgid brown dark of the zenite mine facilities, the vacuum of space felt like a cold, cleansing, but ultimately lonely bath. ‘How much work will that take to bring it up to safety standards?’ As she hesitated, his eyes snapped up to her. ‘And do these people have the technical training to maintain it?’

‘I can make sure they’re given crash-courses…’

‘They killed the people who were keeping them half-alive,’ Graelin snapped.

‘Because those people were also keeping them enslaved.’

‘Both things can be true. Both truths can be monstrous,’ was his level reply. ‘This entire facility needs overhauling. The civilians need relocating. Transport infrastructure is needed so nobody is living here long-term. Equipment needs replacing. Comms and safety systems need upgrading. And everyone using it needs to be fully trained in inspecting, repairing, and maintaining every technical process.’ Graelin rolled a shoulder. ‘We will be here for weeks at best. Can you do it within weeks?’

‘I can -’

‘And in every other corner of this system? This sector?’ His voice grated now. ‘We’ve come here to help. This is months of work. Years of a commitment. Starfleet has been so busy feeling guilty that it’s sleep-walked into being embedded in the Velorum Sector for years.’

Lindgren looked down at her hands. ‘Would you rather we left them to die?’

‘I would rather,’ he sneered, ‘we stopped lying to ourselves about the scale of commitment. And acknowledge that Starfleet lives will be spent here, working in these conditions – and fighting when the Star Navy comes back. People deserve the truth.’

She let out a slow breath, watching him focus far too much on the simple shuttle ride back to Endeavour. ‘Then what did you see down in the habitation section, Petrias? Children affected by zenite, their development stunted? This can be hard because it’s horrid, not just because of – of vast duties.’

His gaze only flickered to her. ‘Because it is horrid, we will stay here. And because of that, people will die. And all we will do is say that it’s duty. And not shifting horrors from one person to someone else.’

‘I can’t imagine what it’s like as an Ardanan to -’

‘You cannot imagine, Lieutenant.’ His voice turned to ice, and his eyes were fixed on the canopy. ‘I do not invite you to.’

And with the door slammed on her face, Lindgren sank back onto the seat, pulled off the sweat-slicked breathing mask, and watched a man she’d been warned against becoming involved in slip further and further from her grasp.

Chief Communications Officer’s log, supplemental: With my observations complete, my assessment is, admittedly, grim. It will take weeks, if not months of work, to make the mining facilities of Agarath safely self-manageable.

‘Here.’ Beckett slid onto the packing crate next to Thawn and passed her one of the foil juice packets. ‘I made sure to bring treats from Endeavour. You look like you need it.’

She looked up from her PADD to assess it with a beady gaze, before tearing off a corner with her teeth and having a quick gulp. ‘I always feel a bit guilty, having nice things like this when we’re giving out the barest essentials.’

‘You need resupplying, too,’ he pointed out, eyes sweeping across the main lobby of the old guardhouse that remained Starfleet’s relief hub in the Husk’s habitation dome. The past few days had seen success in decentralising their efforts; while logistics were run from here, their supply lines had improved to identify buildings and districts which needed support, and ship them out. It made the guardhouse a quieter, humming centre of largely Starfleet efforts, instead of the writhing heart of desperation it had been when he arrived. ‘You’ve still got to run all of this.’

‘It’s actually going pretty well,’ said Thawn, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. ‘We’ve got material and power to their matter resequencers, we’re looking at converting some of the lesser mining facilities on the Husk and the interior of the asteroid belt into housing. Someone else can worry about the long-term economic plan for Agarath, but I think we can give the people here at least sustainable living conditions.’

‘Wow. Sustainable. You paint a picture of Federation utopia.’

But he was grinning, and she swatted him on the arm with the look of indignation he knew, by now, was part of the game. ‘One step at a time. How’s asking everyone about their feelings been doing to improve their lot in life?’

‘Oh, you mean giving a voice to the voiceless for a professional in a Starfleet uniform to want to hear their story and learn from their experiences? You mean that improvement?’

‘I don’t know, talking to you about my feelings isn’t improving my day…’

‘And yet you’re still here.’

‘I was here first; I refuse to sacrifice this held ground of a comfy packing crate because of your mischievous invasion -’

They were too deep in the banter to notice the Reman child until he was right in front of them, a sorry-looking waif in ragged clothes. In truth, Beckett thought the Reman children were a bit nightmarish, like something that might wait under his bed and slash at his ankles, and it took all of his higher empathy and professional training to remind himself they were dispossessed little ones and not folk-lore horror monsters.

This one still had dark eyes that might have not looked amiss in something coming to eat him while he slept, but the voice was surprisingly high-pitched when the child falteringly said, ‘I – I’m lost.’

Thawn looked at the Reman child like he had just threatened her life, but Beckett suspected she would have been exactly the same with any infant. ‘This is the guardhouse. This is where Starfleet is helping people.’

‘I know, I’m looking for my family, I got lost…’

‘He knows where he is, Thawn.’ Rolling his eyes, Beckett hopped off the crate to hunker down to be on the child’s level, and gave a wide and, he hoped, winning grin. ‘Don’t mind her. She’s not good with you if you’re not numbers or computers. My name’s Nate, what’s yours?’

‘Sorin. I came back where my father was staying, and he’s not there, so I came here…’

The threat of tears in the eyes and wavering voice were enough to banish any concept of the boy as anything other than a scared child, and Beckett reached to put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Alright, Sorin, don’t you worry. Lots of people are being moved around, and if you let my friend Rosara here check the records, we can see where your folks ended up.’ He glanced up at Thawn, who looked like she’d rather phase through the wall than deal with a child. ‘Right?’

‘Right.’ Thawn awkwardly stood and brought up her PADD. ‘So. Sorin. What’s your father’s full name and what was your last known address?’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Beckett stared at her. ‘We’re going to have to dig deep into your feelings and figure out how to help this kid, you and me -’

But before he could help her pivot, another figure came pushing through the crowd, big and burly and familiar, and the bright, clear voice of Adamant Rhade boomed, ‘Sorin!’ in relieved, cheerful tones. As Beckett watched, Sorin’s gaze brightened in recognition, and the child giggled delightedly when Rhade rushed over to swoop him off his feet. ‘We were looking for you!’

Thawn visibly relaxed. ‘Adamant, you know the child?’ Her relief was near-palpable.

‘We can help this kid,’ Beckett breathed to himself, ‘or Captain Starfleet can save the day.’ He didn’t know why this was so annoying.

‘He got separated from his family when we relocated them to somewhere bigger in District Bravo-7,’ Rhade explained, having swung a delighted Sorin around before putting him back on his feet. ‘But the good lad followed instructions, it seems, and came here rather than wander the streets. We can get you back in no time, Sorin.’

‘Thank you,’ Thawn sighed. ‘There are so many people in different places here and -’

‘It’s no trouble.’ Rhade lifted a reassuring hand with a ready smile, and Beckett wondered if he was just glad he was providing solutions to her problems this mission. Then he wondered if that was an uncharitable thought about a man who’d just figured out how to reunite a scared child with his family. Before he could digest that, Rhade’s eyes were on him. ‘You should come with us, Lieutenant. We’ve got an excellent setup in that habitation block. You should see the work we’re doing.’

‘I’d rather talk to the people than crow about our own work,’ Beckett said before he could stop himself.

But Rhade just smiled, inclined by nature to read the best in people, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s a great attitude. We can learn a lot about what we’re doing from how they feel about it. I’m glad you’re watching our backs in all of this.’

Of course, Rhade had a spare chocolate bar for Sorin to munch on as the three of them walked the streets. And of course Sorin, who had been scared and fretful even under Beckett’s good manner, was chatty and happy as he walked hand-in-hand with the big Betazoid officer, still in his away team jacket and gear and happy and eager to transform Sorin’s wanderings from a traumatic experience to an exciting adventure of all he’d seen of the new streets of the Husk.

‘You should do my job,’ Beckett said to Rhade in a spare moment, and tried to not sound abrasive about it.

‘You’ve got a better way with people,’ was Rhade calm response. ‘You make them laugh and lighten their load in a way I can’t. That puts them at ease and gets them to talk. I know I end up focusing them too much on their problems.’

‘Because you’re solving their problems.’

‘And what about when I can’t solve them? Then I need you, Lieutenant, to help them guide me to what they really need, instead of what I think they need.’ Rhade gave him a ready smile. ‘You’ve grown a lot since coming aboard, you know. From self-doubting Ensign to running your own research projects – this, the Koderex, all you did on Whixby, the Hazard Team…’

‘We’ve never really deployed as a Hazard Team since I joined,’ Beckett pointed out.

He almost made a comment about seeing action soon, which would have been a terrible thing to say, because a split second later they heard the sound of disruptor fire echo through the streets.

At once Rhade had them in the shelter of a building, Sorin bundled behind cover, the big Betazoid officer’s phaser in his hand. A heartbeat later both their combadges were blaring with the voice of Chief Kowalski, more gunfire audible in the background.

‘All teams, this is Delta; we’ve got a situation at the main power relay on the Lower Streets! A unit, maybe eight contacts, military-grade weapons and armour, bust in through the outer gates and are trying to take the main building.’

Beckett winced as he swept his eyes up and down the street; all he could see from here were the fleeing civilians. ‘How many do we have in Delta Team?’

‘Four,’ came Rhade’s grim response, before he tapped his combadge. ‘All units, this is Rhade. I’m heading for the relay; anyone nearby report in and rendezvous at Third and Psi.’ He turned to Beckett. ‘Get the boy -’

‘Sorin can hunker down here or get back to the Guardhouse,’ Beckett said hotly, rising to stand beside Rhade. ‘You need people, or if someone takes out the power relay we could have a lot of dead people real quick. I’ve got your back, Lieutenant.’ Memories of Jhorkesh, of events almost a year ago, flooded through him; where he’d struggled to protect Captain Rourke and froze after he’d shot someone, probably killed them.

He didn’t know if Rhade was thinking of that day, some other apprehension, or genuinely wanted the child looked after, but with a moment’s consideration, he gave a stern nod. ‘Alright. Sorin – get back to the Guardhouse. You armed, Lieutenant?’

‘Uh…’ Beckett looked sheepish as he accepted the spare sidearm from Rhade. ‘It didn’t help me talking to people.’

‘Let’s hope talking gets us through whatever’s going on. Follow me.’

It felt odd to be running the opposite way to the panicking civilians, running towards the gunfire. Starfleet or not, this wasn’t Beckett’s usual tactic. He let Rhade clear the way, the big and burly officer able to get people to move in a way he couldn’t, and they were at the last corner before he found thought and breath enough to say, ‘What do we think this is? Military?’

‘Kowalski would have said if they were uniforms.’ Rhade slid to a wall to check the next corner. ‘No. I expect this is one of those private guard units reportedly still based out of the Upper District.’

‘You think a rich family finally decided to snap?’

‘I think that a loyalist to the Star Empire could set back our defences by hitting here.’ Rhade made a low noise of frustration. ‘I see the gates. They’re through on the inner courtyard. Kowalski and the others can hold them off, but only for so long. They have to know that if we come up on the gates they’re stuck between us; they’ll move fast.’

Thudding footsteps almost made Beckett have a heart attack, but he turned in time to see Lieutenant Arys skidding to take a knee across the junction from Rhade, phaser pistol in hand. The young Andorian gave them a stern nod, chest heaving. ‘Came as quick as I could, sir.’

Rhade returned the nod. ‘Anyone with you?’ Arys shook his head, and he sighed. ‘Then it’ll have to be the three of us.’

‘Against eight? With hand-phasers?’ Beckett made a face. ‘There’ll be another unit -’

‘We have to catch them in open ground before they breach the building, hurt our people, and take control of the power systems in the habitation dome. They could kill literally everyone in the dome if they want to from there.’

‘Not quickly,’ Beckett pointed out, then caught Rhade’s eye and gave an awkward nod. ‘Alright, alright; following your lead, Lieutenant.’

‘Let’s see what we’re facing.’ Back to the wall, Rhade tapped his combadge again. ‘Rhade to Kowalski. I’ve a small team of reinforcements on the south side. Give me the sitrep.’

* * * * * *

In the command centre of the refit yards, the first Kharth knew of anything being wrong was a young Reman at a console sitting up, frowning, and saying, ‘Oh,’ softly.

That was enough to have Korsk’s head snap around. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’ve – oh, no.’

‘Words, boy.’

‘A Malem-class has just decloaked on the inner ring of the asteroid belt and destroyed one of our weapons emplacements,’ the Reman reported somewhat breathlessly. Then, as if anticipating Korsk’s question, said, ‘It’s not a Star Navy ship. Not a new one. It’s the Jontu.’

‘The Jontu was dismantled to repair the other ships,’ Relekor said, scowling for the first time since Kharth had met him.

Korsk turned. ‘You keep good track of your ships, Centurion?’

Kharth stepped in at this, hands up to them both. ‘Blame later, fix this first. They’re targeting our weapon emplacements?’

‘Yes, Lieutenant; they’ve engaged the next sequence…’

Kharth drew a sharp breath, thinking. Endeavour was at in the outer half of the system, nobody expecting an attack from within. A ship of her size would take some time to navigate the asteroid belt. Her eyes fell on the breakdown of ship repair and refit in the station beyond them, and she turned to Relekor. ‘Tell the Idaro they’re launching and going after the Jontu.’

Relekor hesitated. ‘The Idaro doesn’t have a command staff yet.’

Kharth pointed between the three of them. ‘She does now,’ she said without missing a beat, and waved a hand at the Reman at the control systems. ‘Notify Endeavour, and request backup from the Black Knights. We’re going in.’

‘Remove docking clamps and get us underway!’ Relekor called the moment the three of them arrived on the Idaro’s bridge, then he looked at Kharth. ‘Would you do me the courtesy of taking Tactical, Lieutenant? You’re the most-qualified person here.’

Korsk looked like he might blow a gasket at being under Relekor’s command, but they didn’t have time for that. Kharth nodded and swept to the station, and gestured the Reman to follow. ‘I’ll appreciate your help with your knowledge of the system,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Don’t patronise me,’ Korsk growled, but he didn’t object further, and joined her at Tactical. The deck hummed under them as the Idaro pulled away from the refit station, and Relekor stood in the centre, listening as the calls came in from all stations – often slower than Kharth would like – confirming they were operational. Sufficiently operational.

He looked small, she thought. Uncertain.

‘Plot us a course through the asteroid belt,’ Relekor said at last. ‘Quick as we can.’

The main display flashed to life with a flight route, and Kharth felt Korsk at once tense beside her. ‘You can do better,’ the Reman said gruffly, and at her gesture he took a section of the control panel, tapping in commands. ‘There’s a stretch through section Venta-4.’

Relekor looked back. ‘That’s not on our -’

‘There’s a lot we didn’t tell the navy about the asteroid field. You think our rebellion came out of nowhere?’

‘Save people now, argue later,’ Kharth cut them off. ‘This is the kind of intel our enemy probably doesn’t have. Exploit it.’

Relekor hesitated, then turned to helm. ‘Follow the course.’

As impulse engines surged the Idaro forward, Kharth reached for her own access to comms. ‘Idaro to the Black Knights. Whitaker, you there?’

‘There in a jiffy, Lieutenant. Patch us your flight route and we’ll catch up – or find our own shortcut.’

Whitaker sounded like he was enjoying the idea of punching his own hole through an asteroid belt a little too much, but Kharth decided she had too many things to worry about on her own side to borrow trouble. ‘If you beat us there, engage only to harry them until we get there. Let’s not assume anything about this ship’s condition.’

As the Idaro slipped between the swirling rocks of the belt, Korsk stepped back to Kharth and dropped his voice. ‘Whoever they are, they got their hands on a Malem-class which was formally listed as decommissioned.’

‘I know,’ she breathed, trying to not look at him, trying to focus on her sensor readings.

‘That means someone on the refit station was tricked or lied -’

‘I know.’ Her eyes snapped up to his. ‘I’m not defending anyone. But we fight one battle at a time. And this battle is against whoever’s on that ship.’

‘It matters to figure out who’s aboard,’ Korsk pressed, ‘because then we know how they fight. Or does a Romulan not need insights in fighting Romulans?’

She bit back a response as her sensors shifted. ‘The Jontu is moving on to the next weapon emplacement,’ she said as she read. ‘We have to change course to intercept.’

‘Korsk, do it,’ said Relekor, and for a tense moment neither man moved – but then the Reman did, glowering, go to the station to punch in a new route. The Romulan gave a slightly too-satisfied grin, which he turned on Kharth. ‘Welcome to Romulan technology, Lieutenant. It’s time for our special move.’

She sucked her teeth. ‘Our power systems aren’t fully refitted; if we can’t maintain the cloak…’

‘We can maintain the cloak if they can. Activate it before we take Korsk’s new course. They won’t know where we’re coming from.’

‘And neither,’ said Kharth tautly, ‘will the Black Knights, and we can’t communicate with them -’

‘Your pilots will be fine.’

Swallowing, Kharth tilted her head before reaching for the cloak controls. Never could she remember travelling on a cloaked ship, and certainly never under Starfleet service. It should have made little difference; changed, perhaps, the slightest hum in the deck as the power allocation adapted. It should, if anything, have felt louder inside the ship. Not quieter.

But the psychology of the stealthing technology was powerful, and everyone aboard found themselves speaking softer as the lights dimmed and the Idaro faded from view.

‘Good,’ said Relekor with a nod. ‘We’ll intercept them as they’re finishing off this weapons platform. It would be hell to protect it; let’s sacrifice it entirely to lull them into a false sense of security and fight them on our terms.’

‘I want,’ said Kharth carefully, ‘to disable rather than destroy this ship. We need answers from those aboard.’

‘I can tell you who they are right now. They’ll be the guards and staff of the rich families of the Husk, and maybe some surviving military officers they sheltered after the revolution. Trying to cause chaos and pave the way for our incoming strike force.’

‘So much,’ rumbled Korsk, ‘for the Lady Zaviss being on our side.’

‘Or keeping the other jilted patricians in-line, at least,’ Kharth muttered, and for the first time the two looked at each other with something resembling camaraderie, bonded by their joint cynicism.

Then something squawked on her sensors, and her spine tensed. ‘Black Knights have reached the Jontu. They’re – damn it, Whitaker, what are you doing?’

‘Can I get answers instead of swearing about your pilots, Lieutenant?’ asked Relekor, brow folding.

‘He’s engaging directly. I know the Jontu can’t be in its best condition, but…’ Her throat tightened. ‘He’s expecting us to come up from behind him.’ It was still bold and brash and against what she’d said, but he also didn’t know the Idaro had changed course, was intending to intercept the enemy further around the ring of the interior of the asteroid belt. ‘I have to signal him -’

Relekor looked uncertain, but it was Korsk who snapped, ‘Do that and they’ll detect us. You gave your man his orders. Let the glory hound reap the whirlwind.’

She rounded on him. ‘That’s someone on our side.’

‘You mean your side, Starfleet side. My side is the people of Agarath. I will put them first.’ Korsk met her gaze, eyes dark and intense. ‘If the Jontu continues its rampage -’

‘Change course.’ Relekor’s voice was almost too soft to be heard above the chaos. ‘Get us on a direct route to the Jontu, Korsk.’

The Reman glared at him. ‘Are you running this, or Starfleet?’

He hesitated. ‘I am. Which is why you’ll follow my instructions. Or there’s no way your forces and my forces can work together to protect this system.’

‘It’s possible we agree on that,’ Korsk growled. ‘But I’m not convinced you can protect this system.’

‘You certainly can’t without Starfleet,’ Kharth snapped. ‘Get me up close to them with my fighter backup and you’ll see what we can do. Again.’

Korsk glared at her. Then he did as she was bade.

They were twenty seconds out from the edge of the asteroid belt’s interior, twenty seconds out from where the four starfighters sparred and flirted with the Jontu, when one of the blips on her sensors went dark.

‘One of the Black Knights is down.’ Kharth’s throat tightened nearly-shut, and she looked up at Relekor. ‘Get us all speed.’

‘That will risk our engine emissions being detected,’ Korsk reminded them, and Relekor simply shook his head to the helm officer. Somewhere in Kharth’s mind, the warnings of Petrias Graelin rattled. Starfleet had ignored Romulan and Reman lives once; was it time, even with Starfleet come to help, for them to return the favour?

She couldn’t tell if her fighter was disabled or destroyed, and they would be no help either way. But the Jontu was coming up, the three remaining dots of the Black Knights swarming over it, and her hands flew across her controls to identify the weak spots, flag up where to open fire the moment they were ready.

Relekor seemed to grow in size as the view of the fight did on the screen. Only when it seemed impossibly late, though Kharth knew that was her senses lying to her, did he give a quick gesture. ‘Drop cloak. Shields up, take them.’

And the Idaro came out of nowhere to take the renegade ship in the flank, like a wildcat pouncing from the undergrowth with claws unsheathed and teeth bared. Kharth let loose with everything she had. More than brute force, it was targeted – the weapons systems, the engine systems, with an impact enough to send the Jontu spinning at the sudden strike.

‘Their shields are down to sixty percent in the first salvo,’ she reported. ‘I’m directing the Black Knights to get back and protect their own.’

‘We need them,’ Korsk snapped. ‘They should close the net so the Jontu has nowhere to run.’

‘They are battered and already down one -’

‘They’re here to fight, aren’t they?’

Kharth bit her lip and looked at Relekor, who, after another hesitation, simply nodded. ‘Have them establish a perimeter.’

A perimeter the Jontu will go through if they choose to. Still Kharth gave the signal, because the only thing worse than this was arguing. ‘Targeting their engine systems. We should give them the chance to stand down.’

‘We can’t trust anything they say,’ Korsk snapped. ‘They’d surrender and then -’

‘Then, what, you’d torture them?’ she sneered.

He glared. ‘Your principles -’

‘Don’t go away because I’m in a pinch, and that doesn’t make you more righteous than me, Korsk.’ It was her turn to glare at Relekor. ‘Demand their surrender. They can’t win this.’

Relekor sucked his teeth, then nodded. ‘Hold fire. Comms, offer them a surrender. Promise they will not be harmed. Offer them the chance of surrendering to Starfleet if they wish.’

It was a good idea, Kharth thought, though she disliked how the wind seemed to blow Relekor this way and that depending on who was being bolshier – her or Korsk. But she was not entirely surprised when, after long seconds of silence, the communications officer simply shook her head. ‘No response.’

Kharth’s throat tightened. ‘The Jontu is making a break for it. Heading for the asteroid belt; Black Knight Leader is in their way.’

‘Pursue,’ said Relekor.

‘And make him stand his ground,’ grunted Korsk.

Kharth glared at him as she tapped comms. ‘Kharth to Whitaker. Do not engage solo,’ she said, meeting Korsk’s eye as she did so.

The Reman grunted again, but on her display she saw Whitaker’s fighter slip to the side as the Jontu broke through into the asteroid belt, abandoning the fight or the raid on the defence systems, doubtless hoping to lose them in the rolling field of rock and chaos.

‘We’re on their tail,’ said Relekor, and their ship slid in behind them, careening and whirling between the obstacles, a little quicker in its manoeuvring than their battered enemy. ‘Shoot them however you can, Lieutenant. Stopping them getting away is a priority.’

‘I know.’ Her jaw was tight, and still she focused on the engine systems. Not out of reluctance, but stopping them manoeuvring would –

And the Idaro rocked as their enemy’s aft weapons took them in the prow, and the shield systems demonstrated just how much strain they’d been under by flickering – and dying at the sudden onslaught. Sparks cascaded across the bridge and Kharth had to grip her console tight to stay on her feet, at once yelling reports as they scrolled across her screen. ‘Manoeuvring thrusters are down! Forward torpedo launchers down, limited energy weapons only -’

‘The Jontu is getting away!’ Korsk swore. ‘We have to follow -’

‘We can’t navigate through the rocks like this!’

‘We can’t leave a ship with the capacity to cloak sitting in our asteroid belt –’

‘Idaro, this is Black Flight leader. We’ve got this.’

On the viewscreen, a trio of dark shapes tore into view, soaring towards the shining lights of the disappearing Jontu. Something seized Kharth’s chest at the sight – they were just three fighters, but the enemy ship was battered, and here they had the advantage of speed and manoeuvrability.

But they still had ground to make up, and Kharth watched as they danced and weaved even as they opened fire. Micro-torpedoes streaked away, only for one to hit a rolling asteroid harmlessly, and for the Jontu to juke away from a second.

‘Get me power back to engines,’ Relekor was snapping. ‘At the least, these fighters can stop the Jontu from cloaking again while we get back in the fight.’

But Kharth was tapping at Tactical, hogging all the processing power she could to scan and assess the fight, feed their more detailed sensor scans to the Valkyries. ‘Whitaker, they’re weakest on their starboard aft engines,’ she called down the comm-line.

‘I know, I know – they’re trying to keep us away from there, Lieutenant.’

‘We’ll be with you as soon as -’

‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t get it,’ came the pilot’s cool response. ‘Stay on their port side where they want us, Black Knights. I’ve got this.’

‘Whitaker, don’t do anything stupid.’

But he didn’t reply, and she watched as the other two fighters stayed where they were, hounding the Jontu as it tried to protect its weaker side. It was to that starboard side that Whitaker’s fighter pinwheeled, firing as he went. The phaser blasts bounced harmlessly off what little shielding they had left, focused on protecting their weakened engines, and the Jontu tried to rotate to again protect itself.

Which was when Whitaker acted. In a move that must have slammed him about in the cockpit even with inertial dampeners, his Valkyrie suddenly snapped back around, diving with improbable ease and grace to come up where the Jontu had just exposed itself. At once he fired a pair of micro-torpedoes that slammed into the Malem-class, and twin bursts of detonations rippled across its engines. Kharth knew at once this had crippled them.

Then an asteroid smashed into Whitaker’s fighter.

Her comms exploded with the squawking of the other two pilots, but Relekor was speaking, and she had to turn her eyes away from her fallen comrade, focus on the bridge, on the mission.

‘Get us up to the Jontu,’ the Romulan commander was instructing. ‘Give me the power for a damned tractor beam.’

‘We could let them drift a little more,’ Korsk drawled. ‘Make them shit themselves some.’

‘If we do that,’ Kharth snarled, ‘then we can pick up my man.’

‘Don’t lower navigational deflectors in an asteroid field,’ Korsk said simply. ‘Not for one pilot.’

‘One pilot who did your job –’

‘Also yours.’

Relekor hesitated, hand lifted as if poised between ordering them to help Whitaker and go after the Jontu. At last he shook his head. ‘Get the Jontu.’

Kharth opened her mouth, ready to warn what would happen if Whitaker died, ready to spit threats, but then the comms officer piped up again, sounding confused.

‘Commander,’ she said, hand pressed to her earpiece. ‘We’re getting reports from the Husk. This wasn’t the only attack. Something’s happened in the Habitat Dome.’

Blood hummed in Beckett’s ears as he peered around the corner. Look. Pick your target. Then shoot. Rourke’s lessons were like cold water, narrowing his focus from the adrenaline-spiked panic of battle. While his shot into the courtyard of the power relay station didn’t strike home, it did force the armoured figure to duck behind the packing crate.

‘We’re not making enough of a dent!’ called Arys from across the road, just as Beckett had thought they were doing well for themselves. So far as he could see, they had the attack squad pinned in the courtyard, unable to press further into the relay station without turning their backs on the three of them. Reinforcements could only be minutes away, and that would turn the tide.

But the tension in Lieutenant Rhade’s shoulders supported the Andorian’s assessment. ‘And this isn’t all of them,’ he murmured.

Just as he ducked back around the corner next to Beckett, his combadge squawked. ‘Kowalski to Rhade! There’s a trio breaching our south entrance. They’re spreading my guys too far out!’

What way, Beckett thought as he glanced around the corner to peer at the courtyard, almost getting his head shot off for his trouble, is south in a place like this? But the message was clear enough, he realised, as he got a sight of movement on the left wing.

‘We have to back them up,’ said Rhade, and pulled a PADD out from inside his away mission gear. ‘Keep firing, keep them busy.’

‘There’s no other way in,’ Beckett warned, snapping off a few wild shots, focusing more on distracting the enemy rather than trying to take them out. Indeed, yet another blast went wild, but heads went down.

‘I can scale the wall thirty metres that way.’ Rhade jerked his head down to the left. ‘There’s shelter at the substation control point once I’m over, and those breaching the south entrance will be exposed.’

Beckett opened his mouth to complain, but Arys called out with a firm commitment he couldn’t share. ‘We’ll cover you, sir! Go!’

It made sense, Beckett had to admit. Getting someone inside the compound meant getting someone behind their lines, and someone as good as Rhade could rain down hellfire before the enemy knew what was happening. Or he was getting himself cut off without support.

Another snapshot went from Beckett at the entrenched attackers; another shot went wide, and just to add insult to injury, Arys’s next blast took an armoured Romulan clean in the chest, sending him to the floor where he did not get up.

‘Nice shot!’ Beckett said despite himself. Did I get a faulty phaser?

‘I got lucky!’ Arys called back with a self-effacement that was asking for a strangling. ‘Keep it up!’

Then there was movement from inside the courtyard, at the southern wall, and Beckett paused for a heartbeat to watch Rhade swing over the top. He hung there for a moment, bracing himself before he dropped a distance that would have seen Beckett turn an ankle, and it took another split second before he remembered he really had to lay down some covering fire.

The two young lieutenants sprayed the courtyard with phaser shots. Beyond them, Rhade darted across open space to slide behind the noted control panel, firing all the way – both at the gunmen blocking the entrance, and ones Beckett couldn’t see, the ones Kowalski had identified. Like a deadly baseball player, Rhade snapped off critically precise shots before sliding behind cover, and at least one gunman at the courtyard entrance dropped.

Beckett’s combadge clicked to life. ‘This is Rhade. I’ve got the southern breach team breaking off, but they’re going to try to flank me. Moving to intercept.’ Beckett’s gaze snapped over to Arys, and he could only mouth, intercept? before the young Andorian straightened.

‘We need to move up,’ Arys ordered, and there was no time to argue with that, either, before he was moving and Beckett had to follow.

They were almost at the choke point and there wasn’t much cover to head up to, but Rhade’s arrival had sent chaos among the ranks, the Romulans knowing they had someone at their backs. Beckett moved as Arys did, swearing under his breath the whole time, firing as they went what felt like fifty metres but couldn’t have been even ten, sliding up next to the main gates of the courtyard.

From here, Beckett could see what intercept meant, and it was impressive. Rhade had charged a trio of armoured Romulans, setting about them into melee out in the open courtyard. One got a phaser jammed in their gut and was knocked down, another he grappled to yank in the way of a blast from one of the other Romulans trying to support their ally.

Then Beckett saw one of the gunmen at the gate raise their disruptor to their shoulder and take steady aim.

This time, Beckett did not panic. He did not listen to the blood humming in his ears, or the lessons of teachers from weeks or years gone by. He let instinct take over, raised his phaser pistol, took careful aim –

– and missed.

And Adamant Rhade dropped like a stone as a disruptor blast took him in the side.

‘Lieutenant!’ Arys’s next shot dropped the gunman, and then Kowalski’s security team, no longer pinned down, rushed out to join the fray. Flanked and surrounded, two of the last Romulans went down to Starfleet phaser fire before the last threw their disruptor to the ground and raised his hands, and just like that it was over.

‘Oh, shit,’ Beckett breathed, and broke out to run past the security officers, the defeated Romulans, towards the crumpled bundle of Rhade. Petty Officer Tovos was already over him, already on a communications link to Ensign Zherul, who sounded like she was breathlessly running even as she gave instructions.

The blast had mostly been taken by the armoured chestplate, but not fully, and Beckett could see the darkened flesh under the torn uniform. He stood paralysed as Tovos rolled Rhade to his back, checked his airways and breathing, and though he opened his mouth to offer help or ask what he could do, nothing came out.

In the dim background he was aware of Kowalski taking charge of the situation, of Arys sending word to Endeavour, of security swarming over the armoured Romulans and stripping them of weapons, of helmets, to show hard-eyed soldiers underneath. But all Beckett could now feel was that familiar closing of the throat and tightening of the chest.

Then Arys was at his side, grabbing his shoulder. ‘Nathaniel.’

It couldn’t have been the first time he’d tried to get his attention. But he’d never called him that before. Beckett snapped around to stare at the Andorian, and found his pale eyes surprisingly warm. ‘I… I should have got that shooter.’

‘This is what happens in combat,’ said Arys, and though Beckett knew he had all of five seconds’ more experience than him, he couldn’t argue with the weight of his confidence. Beside them came the green streak of Ensign Zherul, who didn’t stop talking as she moved from instructing Tovos over comms to doing so in person, getting him to roll Rhade over so she could examine the wound, medical kit already in her hands.

‘We’ve got this under control. Sounds like this is the only action on the Husk. You should go sit down,’ Arys continued, and Beckett had to fight to bring his attention back on him. ‘I’ll make the report to the captain.’

Beckett gave an awkward nod, then looked over at Zherul and waited until she wasn’t talking a mile a minute, until she’d stopped applying medical gear and was checking the impact of her work on her tricorder. ‘Will he be okay?’ His voice sounded treacherously wavering.

She looked up, gaze sympathetic. ‘He’ll live. The armour took the worst of it. I’m going to beam him to the King Arthur so we can bring him to Endeavour, though.’

Beckett nodded, and let Arys draw him away from the crowd of officers rushing about their business. ‘Nathaniel,’ the Andorian said again. ‘This isn’t your fault.’

Once more their eyes met, and Beckett remembered Jhorkesh, where he had frozen and where Arys had been clumsy in his leadership of the Hazard Team. This has redeemed you, at least, he thought with a sprinkling of bitterness. Not me.

‘I’ll… be at the Guardhouse,’ he croaked at last, and left better men to deal with the aftermath of chaos. There would need to be answers; who were these Romulans, what had they wanted, who sent them? But that was not his duty, and it was not his purpose, and there was no way he could help. He’d done enough already.

Or he’d done all he could, at least. Enough was a different question.

The eyes on the streets of the Husk were changed. More guarded, more cautious. None of the people had been hit by the violence, but violence had come again, and word was not yet out that Starfleet had protected them, saved the day, kept it at bay. It was a new distrust that shone in their gazes as Beckett passed, a doubt, a fear. Was it enough to call Starfleet? 

He didn’t have answers for them, though it might have sent him down a fresh wave of self-pity if he hadn’t reached the Guardhouse, seen Thawn in the middle of the throng of officers, and realised he did have one more thing left to do.

The knot in her brow told him all he needed, and she turned to him with an edge in her voice. ‘Is the situation resolved? We can’t have the power network being threatened -’

‘Thawn.’ His tongue felt like lead as he advanced.

‘I know you know we have redundancies, but I have a lot of scared people here and -’

‘Rosara.’ That got her attention, or finally her senses picked up the roiling ache in him, and she snapped straight.

‘What’s happened?’

He did her the courtesy of ushering her to one side, though enough of Endeavour’s crew were here and watching for this to be a mere fig leaf of privacy. Still he could lean in, though he didn’t quite dare touch her, and for a moment he just hovered, fighting words and feelings as all of them and none of them sought to race to the surface first.

‘It was a group of armoured Romulans,’ he said at last. Facts were simple. ‘Likely one of the Upper District’s private guard groups. Arys and Kowalski are dealing with the wrap-up.’

She shook her head, confusion reining. ‘Arys and Kowalski -’

‘Rhade was shot.’ Once he’d started he didn’t stop, but all colour at once drained from her face. ‘We – he flanked them, took out a bunch, stopped them from overwhelming Kowalski’s position and the relay station, but he – they shot him.’

While she remained pale, when she spoke her voice was surprisingly firm. ‘What’s his condition?’

‘Zherul’s got to him, she says he’ll live.’ If she shifted at all, it was like relief was a blow that threatened to double her over if she didn’t weather it. ‘She’s taking him aboard the King Arthur to bring him to Endeavour.’

Her eyes snapped away, focusing on a distant point. For a moment he thought he saw her lips move, and wondered if she was reaching out, trying to find with her mind the man she was sworn to marry. Then her eyelids fluttered and she was back, pale but straight, and giving him a stiff nod. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

On instinct he reached for her arm, but stopped himself an inch away. ‘You can sign off -’

‘I will request relief from Endeavour and go once I can. Otherwise…’ Rosara Thawn rose to her full height. ‘There’s work to do here. You’ve done a good job today, Lieutenant.’

Then she left, and Nate Beckett stood in the Guardhouse alone, not feeling like he’d done a good job with a single thing he’d turned his hand to today.

Rourke came into sickbay to find Kharth in the middle of dressing down pilots in severe medical condition.

‘…impetuous, reckless, absolutely against orders, rash as all hell -’

‘Being a bit tautologous there, Lieutenant…’

Kharth’s finger came snapping up at Lieutenant Whitaker, even while Doctor Sadek was busy with what Rourke knew were latter-stage care scans of the young pilot. ‘Does this look like the time to be clever? The time to be clever was before you chased after a rogue ship at three-quarters strength!’

Swallowing, Rourke advanced on the knot of activity around the biobeds. ‘How’s everyone doing?’

Lieutenant Whitaker, tall and lanky and effortlessly handsome, gave a toothy smile like he hadn’t nearly been blasted to oblivion and wasn’t presently laid out on a biobed. ‘Right as rain with the doctor’s tender ministrations, sir.’

‘That’s a lie,’ Sadek drawled. ‘I’ve never been tender in my life. But he’ll make a full recovery. Ensign Osman, too, though she’ll need longer care.’

‘How soon before I’m back in the cockpit, Doc?’ Whitaker said quickly.

She rolled her eyes. ‘You can be back in forty-eight hours. I can’t recommend it.’

‘Can you recommend the Star Navy hold off a little longer? I’ve got more cruisers to shoot down.’

Kharth looked like she might blow a gasket. ‘Did you learn absolutely nothing from this?’

Whitaker shrugged. ‘Any fight you walk away from, right?’

Rourke cleared his throat and looked at Sadek. ‘Lieutenant Rhade?’

Her expression tensed, and she nodded to Lieutenant Li, her Head Nurse, to take over as she ushered Rourke and Kharth to one side. Although Rourke’s chest was tight, after all these years he could read Sadek like a book; this was not grim news. But it was probably not good news.

‘He’s in surgery with Doctor Elvad,’ Sadek said levelly, and a little like she disapproved; Rourke suspected her perfectly-qualified colleague had simply been first on the scene, while a trauma surgeon like Sadek wanted to be in the thick of it anyway. ‘He’s optimistic, but there was penetrating abdominal trauma and we’ve had to regenerate one kidney already. I want him to take it slowly.’

Kharth folded her arms across her chest. ‘Slow isn’t something we have the luxury of right now.’

Sadek shrugged. ‘Medicine doesn’t care about politics. What happened down there?’

‘It’s what we expected, but not on this scale,’ Rourke sighed. ‘Some of the old ruling families kept their private guard forces in reserve and sheltered loyalist naval officers. They have links and contacts across the system. This was their attempt to strike back. It failed.’

‘I’ve taken the crew of the cruiser into custody,’ Kharth said tartly. ‘Vakkis is questioning as we speak. We’ll get names of where they came from. And who helped them get a Malem-class “lost” at the refit station.’

‘My priority is immediate security,’ Rourke admitted, ‘not a witch-hunt for loyalists.’

‘If we leave witches un-hunted, then Korsk will come for them next. And he won’t ask as nicely as me or Lieutenant Vakkis.’ She straightened. ‘Korsk is going to want those people.’

‘He’s not going to get them.’ But Rourke grimaced. ‘Hiran is coming aboard for us to discuss this. I expect him to bring Korsk, if not Relekor, if not Zaviss. I hope he brings Zaviss. It was going to be me and Ms Hale, but you should join us, Lieutenant.’

‘Then I,’ said Sadek in her sing-song voice of escaping responsibility, ‘will keep patching everyone up ahead of this getting worse.’

Rourke waited until he and Kharth had made it to the turbolift whisking them towards the diplomatic suites before he turned and said, ‘How are you doing?’

She gave him her usual guarded look, and his gut twisted. She’d trusted him, once. ‘It wasn’t a hard fight for us.’

‘I mean with all of this-’

‘Romulan among Romulans and Remans?’ An acrid tone entered her voice. ‘It’s just another homecoming, sir. I seem to get a dozen of them a year. The only thing is that none of them are home, they’re just places trying to sink hooks into me so they can tear back out again.’

‘That’s why I’m checking in.’

She sighed. ‘I see myself in the people. And not just because they’re desperate and dispossessed, but because they’re Romulan, yes. They are my people. But they’re also not; I have nothing in common with a group of miners rising up in insurrection. And I still get the filthy looks from Remans as if I was part of their oppression.’ She scowled. ‘Even if I had a better lot than they did back on Romulus.’

‘It must be a lot to take in,’ he said carefully. ‘You know I’m relying on you not because you’re our on-board Romulan, but because you’re my Security Chief, right?’

‘I believe you. But it is also because I’m a Romulan.’

The turbolift doors slid open at that, banishing any chance of continuing the conversation. The VIP Bodyguard, Petty Officer Tarran, gave them a curt nod as they reached the diplomatic conference suite, and stepped through the doors into a raging row.

To Rourke’s surprise, it was not between Hale and the representatives of Agarath. She sat at the head of the table, sipping her drink with a look like she was happy to wait for this to burn out, an energy somewhat matched by Hiran beside her.

Further down, Korsk was on his feet and leaning across the conference table as he yelled at Zaviss, who looked up with arms folded across her chest and a defiant jut to her chin.

‘…should string you up as a traitor right here and now -’

Rourke advanced to slam his palm on the table. ‘That’s enough. I won’t have threats like that on my ship.’

Korsk rounded on him, the big Reman a taut ball of fury. ‘You’ve let this snake aboard in the first place, Captain -’

‘I’m here,’ Zaviss snapped, ‘to give explanations. Not to have a yelling match.’

‘I didn’t come here for a yelling match either,’ Korsk sneered.

Again Rourke raised his hands. ‘One step at a time. Do we know where these people came from?’

Zaviss rolled her eyes at Korsk’s pointed look. ‘I do now,’ she sighed. ‘The Yenaran household. They went into lockdown the moment the uprising started, they’ve been keeping their private guard on standby, and they have assets across the system. They sheltered naval officers and clearly still had allies among the staff of the refit station.’

‘Who’s at the Yenaran household now?’ said Kharth.

‘My guard,’ said Zaviss, to a hiss of indignation by Korsk, and she looked up at him. ‘They’re surrounding and containing the building. And I will not hand their security over to you until I’m confident they won’t be summarily executed.’

Hiran leaned forward at last. ‘That’s not what we do,’ the weathered old Reman said. ‘It’s not what we’re going to do.’

‘Not summarily,’ Korsk growled. ‘But this is just a patrician household protecting another. You’re looking after your own.’

‘I am looking after the people of Agarath – all of them. The Yenarans can’t hurt anyone now. Their comms are monitored, their guards are in Starfleet custody, their allies in space are being rooted out and locked up,’ Zaviss pointed out.

Kharth gave a small shrug. ‘We are making in-roads in figuring out who helped them get their hands on the Jontu,’ she agreed.

‘So it doesn’t matter what happens to people who aren’t the family themselves,’ Korsk sneered. ‘But you had best keep the important people safe.’

Hale got to her feet. ‘Will you allow, Ms Zaviss, for Starfleet to secure the Yenaran family?’

Zaviss shrugged. ‘They can. That sounds like an absolute waste of my private guard, though. Are they to braid each other’s hair while we see to the fate of Agarath?’

‘There are people here who’ll slip a knife between our ribs the moment we turn our backs,’ said Korsk. ‘We have to root them out.’

‘I agree,’ said Hiran, and Rourke watched Zaviss stiffen at that. The old Reman got to his feet and squared his shouldered. ‘Lady Zaviss. You must have information on the other assets of the Yenarans. Other means they have of exerting pressure. I request you give us everything you know.’ At her hesitation, he inclined his head. ‘You can in the meantime keep your guards in-place at the household. Once we have dismantled the Yenaran assets, and you see we are not slaughtering them -’ Korsk was given a curt look, ‘-then I will ask you to stand your people down and let the Agarath Guard secure the family.’

Zaviss hesitated. ‘As I said, is that not a waste of my guard?’

‘Your guards will continue to secure the Upper District. But I will need you to be more forthcoming with suspicions as to who else can be a threat. I’ve given you and your kind a long rein. I am not going to bring the fist down on those who do not oppose us. But damage to the power relay station could have brought down the habitation dome’s containment fields. Thousands could have died.’ Hiran planted his hands on the desk and leaned down. ‘Do we have an accord?’

She wetted her lips and looked to Rourke. ‘I am sure Starfleet will not stand for mistreatment of innocents.’

‘Starfleet doesn’t stand for the mistreatment of anyone,’ Rourke said. ‘This is a good solution, Ms Zaviss. I can’t defend this system if we’re going to be backstabbed from within.’

‘The First Secretary has made headway with the patrician families,’ Zaviss said, nodding to Hale. ‘There are many reassured by the Federation and Starfleet’s presence. I am sure that more time seeing the best of Governor Hiran’s rule will encourage them to participate in Agarath society.’

Korsk rolled his eyes and scoffed, but Hiran shook his head at him. ‘Thank you, both of you. As I have said: if you do not take up arms against me, or aid those taking up arms against me, you are not my enemy. But I do not want to see Agarath continue in such a splintered manner.’

‘So long as the Upper District remains in all its luxury, and everyone else rests in squalor, we will be splintered,’ Korsk pointed out.

‘You have two options to resolve that,’ Kharth said to him. ‘You give time or you take blood.’

‘Nobody gave my people the luxury of adapting to hardship at their own pace and comfort,’ came his quick retort.

‘And we are better than the people who did that to you, to us,’ Hiran reminded.

‘Ongoing relationships with the Federation will make this easier,’ said Hale gently. ‘We protect Agarath first. Then once we’re secure, the Velorum Sector is secure, I promise you there are opportunities for reforming this place and making it somewhere everyone is safe and happy.’

‘Under Federation rule,’ said Korsk, and for the first time Rourke thought he saw Zaviss look like she might agree with him.

Hiran shook his head. ‘Speaking of our defences, what is their condition?’

‘Two weapon platforms on the inner asteroid belt destroyed,’ Kharth reported. ‘Only minor disruption in the habitation dome. This could have been a lot worse. Commander Cortez already has teams building replacement platforms.’

‘And continuing this work is something I should get back to,’ Rourke said with a deep incline of the head. ‘I’ll ask Lieutenant Kharth to stay to help liaise and plan what the Agarath Guard needs to do next to contain this situation. Thank you all for meeting on board.’

Kharth did not look overburdened with gratitude as he left, but someone had to liaise, and she’d shown herself able to handle Korsk, at least. He suspected Zaviss was somewhat eased by talking to a Romulan officer, and had to quietly admit that maybe Kharth had been right, after all. He didn’t use her because of her heritage – but her heritage did influence how he used her.

When he got to the bridge, Lindgren rose from the command chair with an anxious look. ‘Good timing, sir. We’ve just been contacted over subspace.’

Rourke frowned. ‘Command?’

‘No, sir. These are Romulan Star Navy frequencies.’ She bit her lip. ‘They want to talk to you, specifically.’

‘Put it through to my ready room.’

It was not a particular surprise to see the face that greeted him once he’d settled behind his desk and brought the screen to life. Sharp-featured and severe in comportment and manner, Commander Lotharn remained every inch the Romulan officer Rourke remembered. It had been long months since last they had met, last they had spoken, but their time together in Tagrador Prison Camp was burned into his heart.

Lotharn inclined his head and spoke with surprising courtesy. ‘Captain Rourke. Thank you for receiving my call.’

‘Commander Lotharn.’ Rourke hesitated, lips twisting, then leaned forward. ‘Nah, let’s not piss around acting like we’re gentlemen at war. You’re coming here to slaughter people, after all. What do you want?’

‘To the point as ever.’ Lotharn shook his head. ‘I’m not here to slaughter anyone. My orders are to restore the rightful government of Agarath, bring it back under the authority of Rator, and bring the criminals who staged a bloody uprising to justice.’

‘You mean, the officers of the Star Navy who removed the legal government of the Senate of Rator? Those criminals and that bloody uprising?’

Lotharn’s expression didn’t shift. ‘I have my orders, as you do. Let’s not pretend you’ve not committed atrocities in the name of Starfleet. I might not be hunting you for the Erem any more, but I have not forgiven or forgotten.’

The Erem, the Romulan ship he’d ordered destroyed, even as it was trying to flee, for seizing dangerous Omega particles against all of his warnings. The bounty on his head had not been formally lifted, but Rourke knew it was likely down to Lotharn that the Star Empire had eased in its desperation to bring him in.

‘You said to me once,’ Rourke mused, ‘that all the rules crumble in the face of annihilation, except for the ones maintained by those who never have to look that destruction in the eye. Your empire is falling, Lotharn, and yet again in a crisis you are demeaning yourself, your honour, your uniform, for the sake of superiors who don’t have to live with the choices you make.’

‘My empire is wounded,’ Lotharn allowed. ‘But I will not stand idly by as it falls. What would you do for your Federation, Rourke? Run?’ He shook his head. ‘The odds are against Rator. But what else can I stand for? The Free State, with the Tal Shiar’s claws sunk into it so openly, with not even the back-and-forth of politics and a chance to wrest back control as in the days before the supernova? The rabble of the Republic? I do not have a choice. I take no pleasure in marching on our own worlds, on our own people. But it is this or the life of a renegade.’

‘There is always,’ said Rourke, ‘the Federation.’

Lotharn gave a low chuckle. ‘I do not remember you being funny, Rourke. I am not a traitor.’

‘Then why are you calling me, Lotharn, if you’re so damn implacable?’

‘Because you do have a choice.’ The Romulan leaned forward. ‘You have one ship. A mighty ship, for sure; mightier than when we last met. But one ship. The desperate scraps of Agarath’s defenders. And that is it. I have a strike force. You cannot hope to win.’

‘Oh,’ said Rourke. ‘This is the bit where you play at being a man of honour and offer me the chance to walk away, save my skin, save my crew, and let you just slaughter the defenders. Because you will have to kill these people to stop them. I think that means you’re actually worried about going toe-to-toe with me, Lotharn. We never did that before, did we.’

‘We did not. But the odds are not on your side. I have no issue with the Federation if you stay out of my way. But if you will stand your ground, then…’ He drew a slow breath. ‘Perhaps you will answer for your crimes after all. You have seventy hours until my strike force arrives. Make the right choice, Rourke.’

‘Don’t worry. I will.’

But for all of his defiant words, for all the bravado he could put up, once the screen went dead and Lotharn’s face disappeared, Rourke could only slump back in his chair, scrub his face, and feel the boiling dread rise before him at the oncoming storm.

I remember the time

Of the collier and the candle

Of a long, bitter fight that darkened the land –

The numbers didn’t add up, and this stopped his humming. With a glare at his screen, Petrias Graelin snapped back to cold reality. Then he ran the numbers again.

And I asked you the question but you wouldn’t answer…

Even without the humming, the tune wouldn’t stop. He snapped his screen shut on his desk, and shot to his feet as he smacked his combadge. ‘Graelin to Rourke. I need to see you.’

The captain replied with his usual dose of caution, his usual dose of dour judgement that he thought made him better than everyone else – better than him. ‘Is it urgent?’

Graelin bit back a sarcastic comment. That would waste time. ‘Exceedingly.’

When I asked you the question, did you understand?

Four minutes later he was in the captain’s ready room, stood tall before the cold disinterest of Rourke’s eyes. ‘We cannot evacuate all of the mining facilities on the outer rim.’

That got Rourke’s attention, his jaw setting. ‘Is this about leaving the facilities to run unattended, or numbers?’

‘Both. The majority of facilities can be shut down with our aid, or shifted to automated processes. My teams will have to work day and night.’ There was no brag here or self-pity, but a simple statement of fact. ‘Some will require at least a skeleton crew. But the zenite mine is a problem.’ Without asking he reached across Rourke’s desk, ignoring the captain’s indignant expression as he brought the screen to life to show his calculations.

Rourke stopped to read. ‘There are too many people to relocate to anywhere inside the belt.’

‘I thought about putting them on Endeavour,’ Graelin elaborated, ‘but that hardly moves them out of danger.’

‘And if we have to protect the facility, that forces our ships away from our weapon platforms and other defences.’

‘I have no doubt the Star Navy will threaten one of Agarath’s key mining facilities, both to endanger the lives of those aboard and its economic future. It would hardly be out of character for them to slaughter miners.’

Rourke sighed. ‘Then we have to put them on Endeavour –’

‘No.’

I saw drills and machines,

All churning there, burning,

Millions in bondage to work in the land…

The tune wouldn’t stop. Graelin drew a deep breath. ‘I can adjust the radiation shielding in the facility to mask life-signs and power levels. To the outside, the place will be abandoned. This will require me to be in the facility to regulate the process, and ensure the shielding is manipulated for as short a period as possible to reduce exposure.’

Rourke frowned. ‘Is that safe?’

‘Nothing about that facility is safe. But until or unless we are to completely overhaul Agarath’s process of zenite mining, this is the reality. No option is without risk, Captain.’ He gave a curt shrug. ‘This will please First Secretary Hale. The more Agarath needs the Federation for its well-being, the more likely it is to lobby Velorum for the sector to become a protectorate.’

The frown deepened. ‘That’s not her agenda.’

‘Of course it is,’ Graelin said simply. ‘But you don’t want to look at the political reality.’

Rourke sank back, gaze frustrated. ‘Don’t give me this, Petey. Don’t give me this “I see things clearly because I’m more cynical, and you’re blinded by your childish idealism.”’

‘I don’t think you’re blinded by idealism.’ Graelin shrugged again. ‘I think you’re blinded by ignorance.’

And I asked them the question but they wouldn’t answer…

The captain’s jaw remained tight. ‘We are here to help the Romulan – and Reman – people in a way that Starfleet failed before -’

‘You weren’t even here.’ The tempo of the song had been hammering away within him, its beat thudding in-time with his heart but speeding him, and now it surged up with a wave of adrenaline. Still he did not raise his voice, eyes locked on Rourke. ‘You were on the Klingon border when Starfleet aborted the Romulan evacuation. And still you’re acting like you, personally, failed these people and have to shoulder this.’

Rourke scowled. ‘Just because I didn’t see it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care -’

‘But you act like you understand. You always have, ever since we met on the Achilles when we regulated the collapsing border to the Neutral Zone and you positioned yourself as this champion of the downtrodden who empathised with their plight in a way nobody else could.’ Graelin found his lip curling. ‘We both know that’s bullshit.’

When I asked them the question, did they understand?

The captain’s chin tilted up. ‘Remember yourself, Commander.’

‘You started this accusation calling me Petey,’ Graelin sneered. ‘You’ve always looked down on me, but the simple truth is that I understand these people better than you do, and always have. Where do you think I grew up on Ardana, Rourke? Because it wasn’t Stratos.’ He watched Rourke’s eyes widen, and couldn’t smother the small flash of satisfaction that the self-professed master of reading people had been fooled by his code-switching for over a decade. ‘Where did you grow up, Rourke? Ah yes. Earth.’

Rourke drew a slow breath, visibly scrabbling for steady ground. ‘I’m not ignorant of my privilege -’

‘You’re a damned poser,’ Graelin snapped at last. ‘You grew up with everything and even when you took a walk on the dark side of the galaxy you were the man with the uniform and the phaser and the shield of Starfleet. Don’t you dare act like you understand the people of Agarath better than me. Act like you shoulder the burdens of these people more than me. You swan around, self-flagellating for all Starfleet did and didn’t do in the Romulan supernova fifteen years ago, which had nothing to do with you, as an exercise in – in vanity.’ Rourke’s eyes snapped up to meet his, and Graelin did not waver. ‘I’m not here so you can allay your guilt about being luckier than them by showing off how much you care.’

Silence rang out, and Rourke did not drop his gaze. At length, he spoke again. ‘I imagine it’s difficult for you, Commander, being confronted with the impacts of zenite mining on these -’

It took all of Graelin’s self-control to not tell Rourke to go do something biologically improbable. ‘You have never given a damn about my well-being before, Rourke. Don’t start now.’

Rourke’s jaw clenched. ‘Alright. Begin your work to shield the mine and the miners. Take who you need from your department. Your duty station will be there when the Star Navy arrives.’

‘I -’

‘Dismissed.’

Then I saw the ones sit

In the seats of decision

They sat and they judged the miners’ demand…

He must have been more tense than he knew, because the moment he was back on the bridge and heading for the turbolift, Lindgren fell into step beside him with a worried look. ‘Petrias.’

He tried ignoring her, but she followed him onto the turbolift, and he rolled his eyes as he turned back to the door. ‘Deck Seven. You’re on duty, Lieutenant.’

But she stood her ground as the doors slid shut behind her, chin tilting up so she could look him in the eye. ‘Don’t give me that. What happened in there?’

‘I briefed the captain on -’

‘You fought.’

Graelin scoffed. ‘Rourke and I always fight.’

‘But you’ve not been okay for days now, Petrias.’ She reached for his hand. ‘Talk to me.’

He jerked his hand back, eyes flashing. ‘Don’t presume you have a right to my thoughts.’

And though they decided, did they understand?

She pulled back as if struck. ‘Don’t I? We’re -’

‘Fucking,’ he finished, expression blank as he met her gaze. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Elsa. You have been a diversion and an entertainment, but I am hardly about to invest my thoughts and feelings into something like this.’

To her credit, she masked whatever she had to be feeling. That was one thing he’d always appreciated about her; she played the game well, saw the boundaries and the rules without testing them or asking. ‘I think that’s a convenient fiction so you don’t have to have to talk to me about what’s really going on,’ she said softly. ‘But you should have that conversation with someone. Counsellor Carraway -’

‘I misspoke,’ Graelin butted in. ‘I am hardly about to invest my thoughts and feelings into someone like you.’

Because the other thing he’d always appreciated about her was that, for all that she was good at the game, he was better. He could yank her chain when he wanted to, leave her swinging in the dark for as long as he wanted and snap his fingers and have her running back, and because she was so committed to the game, she never let on that she either knew or had a problem with him having all the power.

But he did. And they both knew it. And normally he used it merely to demonstrate or remind himself.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he used it because he needed to.

Then I saw an old miner

Whose body lies broken

Claimed by the dust, much finer than sand…

Elsa Lindgren looked up at the turbolift roof. ‘Computer, stop at the next deck,’ she said, and he could hear the faintest waver in her voice. But her eyes were clear when they met his. ‘You might be driving me away. Don’t think that this is over.’

The turbolift slowed, and Graelin rolled his eyes. ‘It most certainly is over. This was a diversion. That’s all.’ The doors slid open, and she took half a step back.

But the humming in his veins hadn’t stopped, was starting to burn now, and it was to smother that flame that he grasped her arm, met her gaze, and leaned in a couple of inches. ‘You were very good,’ he said, voice dripping with appreciative condescension. It did fade the humming to feel her tense under his touch, apprehension bubbling in her, the jerk of her chain making the flames flicker lower. ‘But run along, now.’

He let her go before she could pull free, did so with the faintest, ushering push, and Elsa Lindgren took an unsteady step back towards the door, the mask at last starting to crumble.

His was intact as he watched her go, intact as the doors slid shut, intact even when he was on his own in the turbolift as it surged back to life and carried him on his way.

And I’ll ask him the question, though now he can’t answer,

I’ll I ask him the question, he’ll understand.

(Lyrics liberally adapted from Max Boyce’s “Did You Understand,” (1974) a song about the working conditions of Welsh coal miners)

The Valdore-class’s bridge was still gloomy, though her power levels had been restored; Kharth assumed this was to keep any Reman staff comfortable. But it meant only her footfalls announced her arrival as she padded onto the hushed chamber, bereft of crew while the ship remained docked in the refit yard, save the figure stood before the central chair.

‘Did you pick a name yet?’ she asked Relekor, her voice soft only to not tarnish the quiet.

‘Korsk won in the end,’ came the Romulan’s wry answer. ‘I’ll settle just for the Talon.’

‘Simple. Effective.’ Kharth advanced and rested her hands on the back of the command chair. ‘Commander Cortez says she’ll be fit for action in forty-eight hours. Plenty of time.’

Relekor hummed. ‘Maybe.’ But now he turned, and the determined amiability had faded from his eyes. ‘You disapproved of how I commanded before.’

‘I’m Endeavour’s Chief of Security. My first duty is to protect her crew.’

‘At the expense of the mission?’

‘I disagreed with the threat assessment.’ Rather than press this point, she tilted her head. ‘Why do you care?’

He hesitated. ‘If you’re going to be on my bridge, if you’re going to be running point with the Agarath Guard when the strike force comes, I need to know I can rely on you.’

‘You could tell I disagreed with you. Did I argue after you overruled me? Did I disobey?’ At his silence, she met his gaze. ‘I’ll get the job done. We’ll get the job done. But there’s nothing worse on a bridge than a lack of trust.’

A scoff. ‘Like that’ll happen with Korsk around.’

‘Korsk shouldn’t be on a bridge.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s not starship-trained. He’ll be at his best helping the ground protection teams.’

‘He won’t like that.’

‘Then get Hiran to back it up.’ Kharth frowned. ‘Truth be told, my problem isn’t with you on the bridge. Or really with Korsk on the bridge. It’s with both of you on the bridge.’

Relekor tilted his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Korsk is good at what he does, and he is absolutely driven to prioritise the people – the workers – of Agarath over anything else. I understand that and I respect that. But his background has also convinced him he can only make hard choices.’ Her eyes met Relekor’s. ‘And he makes you think that you have to be cynical to be effective.’

Relekor stepped back. ‘I hardly…’

‘You were barely a Centurion when you became commander of the Agarath Guard,’ she said bluntly. ‘You’re younger than me and you’re playing pretend. I don’t think that’s strictly a bad thing, I think it’s how we learn. But…’ Kharth gave a short laugh, directed more at herself than him. ‘I guess I’m saying he’s a bad influence on you.’

His shoulders sank, and at last he started to look his age, the bubble of confidence that made him bigger slowly deflating. ‘I know I’ve got a lot to prove.’ He shook his head. ‘I joined the Navy because nobody else was standing up for our people. Then everything went to hell and I was supposed to turn on them? And then there’s Korsk, who I…’

‘You respect him,’ she finished. ‘Even if he doesn’t respect you.’

Relekor shifted his feet. ‘I don’t think Korsk has to question himself when he looks in the mirror in the morning. He always fought for his people.’

‘Korsk took the crew of that Romulan destroyer into custody and tortured them for information. If he doesn’t question himself, he should.’

Silence hummed through the bridge as Relekor looked away, frowning. At length he said, ‘If Korsk is on the ground, he’ll have his people on the ground. I agree they can protect the facilities, the Husk. But I need people on our ships.’

Kharth nodded. ‘Then I’ll see what I can do.’

When she did just that, back on Endeavour and in Valance’s office, the first officer looked like she’d sucked on a lemon. ‘How am I supposed to give you more people, Lieutenant?’

‘I get we’ll be scraping the barrel,’ Kharth admitted, ‘but even a third-year cadet would be a damned asset to the Agarath Guard’s crewing problems right now.’

‘We don’t have any cadets.’

‘Relief officers! Ensigns!’ Kharth set her hands on her hips. ‘You should keep Juarez on Endeavour. He’s a good tactical officer. Let me stay with Relekor.’

Valance looked up from her desk, frowning, and Kharth hated that Valance knew how much that suggestion had hurt. To be away from Endeavour’s bridge in a battle, in a crisis, went against all her instincts and all of her training. But she knew where she was needed most.

What she didn’t say was that she was trusting Valance, not Juarez, with the ship’s safety in her absence.

‘What I can do,’ said Valance slowly, ‘is scale back the support teams on the ground. It will mean you don’t have very long to get them up-to-speed when they finish the relief efforts.’

Kharth nodded. ‘That’s fair. But if that’s the case…’ Her voice trailed off as she hesitated. ‘Then I want Thawn.’

Their eyes met. Valance drew a slow breath. ‘Thawn would be very good at quickly orienting herself in this sort of situation,’ she admitted.

‘Athaka is more than qualified to man the bridge when there’ll be reliable people around him.  You’ll have Arys back. Veldman at Science.’ It would be almost entirely deputies at bridge stations. ‘Look, Thawn’s good. She’s very good. And this is where she thrives. If anyone can make magic out of absolutely nothing, it’s her, and on those ships we’ve got close to nothing.’

Valance picked at the stylus for her PADD. ‘Can you two work together?’

That was the question she’d wanted to ask all along. ‘I’m not going to let a year-old rift get in the way of saving these people,’ Kharth said firmly. ‘And if Thawn has a problem she can do what she usually does: repress.’

‘Fine.’ Valance nodded. ‘I’ll give you Adupon and Harkon, too.’

‘Sounds like a bridge crew.’

Valance leaned back in her chair, meeting her gaze. ‘Then it’s your mission, Lieutenant. Keep the Agarath Guard effective in this battle. Because if we can’t, there’s no way Endeavour alone, or any of our other defences, can protect this system.’

* *

‘Come!’

He entered the diplomatic offices at the summons, hands clasped behind his back. Hale stood at her desk, looking like she was reading reports while ready to spring into action at any moment.

Rourke drew a slow breath. ‘We’ve had the answers back from Lieutenant Vakkis about the military officers from the rogue ship. Zaviss was right. It was the Yenaran family.’

Hale’s eyes turned skyward, and she sighed. ‘If you could have your Security Department continue to secure them…’

‘I don’t have the spare officers once the strike force arrives,’ he said frankly. ‘We’re going to need to work with the local assets.’

‘Local assets means letting Zaviss and Korsk fight over whether Upper District security restrains Upper District families, or whether former miners barricade an Upper District home.’

Rourke frowned, hands still clasped behind his back. ‘They’re going to have to tear down that divide some day,’ he pointed out. ‘Why not today, when there’s necessity and external threat to unite them? Why do it when people have plenty and all it does is drive a wedge between them? Starfleet won’t be here forever as the acceptable neutral party.’ At her silence, his head tilted. ‘Will we?’

Hale gave a vague gesture. ‘We can’t know the future. If you don’t have the resources, you don’t have the resources.’

His gaze remained fixed. ‘Graelin keeps telling me that you want Velorum as a Federation protectorate. And how that’ll keep Starfleet up to its neck in regional politics for a decade. I’ve been fobbing him off, but is he wrong?’

She looked surprised. ‘I didn’t think I’d been coy about any of this, Captain.’

Something twisted in his chest. ‘You mean you’re trying to position Agarath as an example to the rest of the Velorum Sector, so they lobby for us staying here. Instead of focusing on what’s best for them.’

‘Being a Federation protectorate is what’s best for them.’ Her bemusement remained. ‘Why are you taking against this? You know better than to pretend we’re above politics. Everything is politics. People’s lives are politics. I’m not throwing the workers away to make the Federation look good.’

He advanced on the desk. ‘We need to focus on the here and now, Sophia. There’s a strike force coming, and I need to make sure that the Yenaran family are contained and won’t use their influence to drive a knife in our backs mid-fight. I don’t really care who it pisses off.’

‘There has to be a community, an Agarath, that can sustain itself when we win the fight,’ Hale pointed out. ‘Or when we leave, this place will turn on itself, fractured between the former rulers and the former enslaved.’

‘You think keeping them apart is the answer? Acting like an artificial barrier they’ll learn to rely on?’

‘I think if this goes wrong, we’ll have Korsk and his miners tearing down the Upper District and a fresh civil war breaks out.’ Her expression twisted with further bewilderment. ‘I’d hoped you’d be more clear-eyed on this.’

‘I’d hoped you’d not be putting Federation expansionism ahead of what’s best!’

She took a step back, a mask of control slipping on. ‘That’s unfair. I do want what’s best for them. The difference between us is that you’re limiting your perspective.’

‘Limiting my…’

‘You’re a problem-solver, Matthew.’ Hale bit her lip. ‘It’s an asset of yours. It makes you a great investigator. A great combat captain. It makes you excellent in executing short-term projects. But you worry about the battle in front of you and not the strategy, and it makes you…’ She hesitated, but he was glaring by now, and she squared up. ‘It makes your perspective on the long-term somewhat lacking.’

On a different day, he might have heard more of the space between her lines, heard more of the best in what she was saying. But he’d already been called a poser that day, a boy from privilege playing at someone who knew hardship, trying to walk in shoes that couldn’t possibly fit him.

Rourke took a sharp breath. ‘You mean I’m a thug who beats up problems and sends them packing.’

‘That is not what I said.’ Hale actually sounded hurt, but that didn’t penetrate the buzzing in his ears. ‘This is you sliding back into that persona you find safe, don’t -’

‘My responsibility here is to shore up the Agarath System until the Velorum Sector can establish its independent government and choose its future. What that future looks like isn’t for me to decide, and it’s not for you to decide.’ His jaw was tight as he straightened, shoulders squaring, and he knew on some level he was doing exactly what she’d accused him of – closing himself off to be the bruiser everyone liked to see him as. ‘So we’ll fight off the strike force. Then we’ll receive further orders.’

‘From whom?’ Hale said softly, watching him. ‘The likes of Admiral Beckett, a man you patently dislike and disagree with?’

‘From whoever’s listened to the people of Velorum.’

Hale sighed, and glanced down at the reports on her desk. Shining on the front of one PADD was a map of the Husk’s habitation dome, the division between the Upper District and the Lower Streets clearly demarcated. Then she met his gaze. ‘Which people?’

He squared his shoulders. ‘Have Zaviss secure the family. They can deal with it in the short term. Then I encourage you to extract your operations from the Husk and return to Endeavour full-time. This is the place from which I can assure your safety, First Secretary.’

By now she looked either controlled or saddened, and he wasn’t sure if he was imagining the latter. At length, Sophia Hale inclined her head. ‘As you wish, Captain Rourke.’

A hundred people had said these sorts of things about him a hundred times, and more often than not he’d led them to think it in the first place. But when he left Hale’s office, blood pounded in his ears louder than he’d expected, and the echoes of her accusations thudded with it.

Captain’s log, stardate 77461.06. In approximately eighteen hours, Commander Lotharn’s strike force will arrive at Agarath. For the past week we’ve helped the locals, built defensive platforms, repaired the ships of the Agarath Guard and prepared ground defence forces. So now we’re at the hardest part of all: Waiting.

‘I feel fine,’ Rhade insisted, and made sure he didn’t show an iota of discomfort as he sat up on the biobed.

But Doctor Sadek looked unconvinced. ‘There’s not much of fine after what you went through, Lieutenant. You need rest.’

‘Rest is a luxury. I can hardly nap in my quarters while there’s a battle going on.’

‘That was going to be what I prescribed, with nothing but a hot toddy and a blanket,’ Sadek drawled sardonically, then her gaze went sharp. ‘What you want, Lieutenant, is for me to say you can gear up in body armour and run around on the Husk with a rifle again. You’re not going to get that.’

He swung his legs over the side and sat up straight, aware that any show of weakness would be used against him. ‘I understand you have to do your job, Doctor. But battle is coming whether we like it or not, and many people fighting for their lives on the Husk will not be subject to Starfleet combat readiness regulations.’

‘Those regulations aren’t to satisfy pencil-pushers on Earth. They’re to make sure you’re physically up to the task,’ she reminded him. ‘If I ignore them and you take up arms, and then you collapse halfway through a fight – then your comrades have to look out for you. Then you’re a burden to them.’

‘I’m a burden to them if I get shot,’ he pointed out, then lifted his hands. ‘I understand. But I need to be down there. So I had something else in mind for which you might green-light me.’

Sadek was not happy. It was not easy. But in the end she agreed, signing the paperwork and sending him to his quarters to get as much rest as possible before he had to disembark.

She was barely gone and he had barely gotten to his feet before the doors slid open and in stepped Dathan, straight-backed and with the tension in her gaze he knew spoke of apprehension. She stopped short at the sight of him. ‘Lieutenant. I didn’t realise you were being discharged.’

‘Doctor Sadek does her work well,’ he said softly, and padded over.

‘I didn’t come to see you sooner.’ She clasped her hands behind her back, the admission an implied apology holding the faintest frown. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Much recovered. Back to duty tomorrow.’

A fresh frown. ‘So soon?’

‘As battle demands.’

Her eyes raked over him and he watched her, unable to not sense the tension radiating from her, that constant burning guilt he’d never understood. The guilt only worsened when she took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m glad you’re recovered.’

He inclined his head. ‘Thank you. But I was in no real danger. The team was there – Kowalski, Arys, Beckett…’

‘I trust one of them,’ she said flatly.

The corners of his lips curled. ‘It has all worked out.’

‘Until you go back and fight.’ But before he could answer, she shook her head and pressed on. ‘I stopped by to see how you were. If you’ve been discharged, you need rest.’

They had not spoken much in months. One moment he had been free of his commitment to Rosara Thawn, asking to spend more time with her, with nothing stated and too much in the unspoken. The next, his family had assured him the arrangement was not dissolved, and all it had taken was one short, simple message to Dathan.

That had been that. She’d taken a long step back and they had gone to being polite acquaintances. This was the first time she’d come to him since, and already she was turning away, heading for the door.

‘Tahla,’ he said, tongue feeling too big for his mouth. ‘Thank you for checking in.’

But all she did was glance back, give a curt nod, and leave anyway.

Even sitting down in his quarters was more relaxing than expected, and Rhade had just begun to suspect that Sadek was on to something with her recommendation he rest when the door-chime went. On opening, it was the last person he expected to see. ‘Rosara?’

Thawn wound her fingers together as she stepped in, her most obvious tell of nervousness. But that didn’t help illuminate him, as her aura of nervous guilt had been constant for months now, and all he could do was follow as she moved to the centre of his quarters and began to pace.

‘I’m glad you’re alright,’ she blurted at last, and then stopped to stare at him. ‘I didn’t visit. I’m sorry. I should have.’

He frowned. ‘You do not need to apologise. I understand you have been busy -’

‘I have.’ She flinched. ‘That’s not why. I mean, it’s partly, and I wanted relief and it took ages, but I didn’t…’ Thawn sucked her teeth. ‘I could have fought harder for relief. Under the circumstances. You’re my betrothed. And you were injured.’

‘And Doctor Sadek has discharged me – see, I am fine.’ He took a step forward, hands open, but in truth he was deeply confused by her anxiety at even this condition.

Indeed, she winced again. ‘I’m glad,’ she said, which didn’t enlighten him at all. But she sensed that, and winced further. ‘I mean – I really am. Beckett told me, he said what had happened, and when he did, before I knew how you’d be, I…’ Her voice trailed off, and she took an awkward step towards him. ‘I was worried.’

He could not help but give an indulgent smile. ‘I would be concerned if you were not.’

‘I mean really worried.’ She kept twisting her fingers together. ‘I didn’t – we haven’t talked about this. I’ve lost people before.’

He sobered. ‘Lieutenant Drake.’

‘I… sort of. Maybe. But Noah Pierce before him, and he… and we…’ Apprehension entered her eyes, and they widened. ‘Nothing happened between us! That’s not what I’m saying…’

‘Rosara.’ He closed the distance and, after a moment’s hesitation, lifted a hand to cover both of hers. It didn’t stop her fidgeting, but made her hand turn and grab his in an iron grip. ‘I have never expected or asked or wanted you to keep your life on-hold until we were united. You do not have to apologise or even explain -’

‘But I do,’ she pressed, even if she had relaxed an iota. ‘Not – not justify Noah. But I… he was important to me, and I lost him. He died right next to me. And I never did anything about it, and yes, it was because of you, and I don’t know if that was right or wrong but it ate at me, and then you’re…’ She had been staring at their entwined hands, but now her eyes snapped up to meet his. ‘Then you were hurt. And all along I’ve been keeping you at bay, not… daring? Not trying? As if no matter what I’ll do, you’ll be there at the end. And I was cowardly about Noah, and this is just a different kind of cowardice to…’ Her voice trailed off, and he wasn’t sure he understood.

Then she stepped up and kissed him, and he did understand. Perhaps.

Perhaps she’d been hurt by death and his brush with it had shown her what she really wanted, really needed, and urged her to act at last, commit at last. Or it had made her afraid and blind, afraid enough to cling to him with all her might for once because the alternative was an unknown she didn’t dare face.

In the uncertainty he hesitated. Then she slid her arms around his neck, and her closeness made him think of Dathan, turning and leaving even as he reached out.

So he kissed her back.

* *

The Safe House was quieter than normal, because normally officers weren’t scattered across the system and facing one last night before battle. So Beckett thought he’d be able to drink alone, and was grimly disappointed by Tar’lek Arys pulling up the bar-stool next to him.

‘That had best be synthahol,’ the Andorian chided.

‘Hullo to you, too,’ Beckett grumbled, swigging his drink. ‘Of course it is; you think this place serves anything else right now?’

‘You could have smuggled something in.’

‘That does sound like me.’ He set the glass on the bar. ‘Did you just come to lecture me?’

Arys hesitated. Then looked up at the holographic bartender, pointed to Beckett’s empty glass, and held up two fingers. ‘Believe it or not, I came to check up on you.’

‘Will wonders never cease? Careful, Arys, people might think you care.’

The Andorian rolled his eyes as the glasses were set in front of them. ‘You can be very tiresome, Beckett.’

‘Thank you. I practice.’

‘So you’d best be back on the Husk tomorrow.’ Arys watched him hesitate. ‘That’s why you’re in here. You don’t know if you should go down there again.’

Beckett pursed his lips and swirled the liquid in the glass. ‘Is this a pick-me-up to soothe my wounded confidence?’

‘Please,’ Arys scoffed. ‘Like you listen to me.’

‘That’s true.’ But Beckett glared at the bar, then he sighed. ‘I’m not as good a fighter as you.’

‘That’s also true,’ Arys said without pride.

‘But I spent the last week down there with those people. Listening to them. And it’s not just that I don’t want to turn my back on them. I want to do more than listen.’

Arys frowned. ‘So what’s stopping you?’

He pursed his lips again. Then had another swig of synthehol. ‘I guess,’ Beckett started at length. ‘I guess I was expecting someone to. Stop me, I mean.’

Arys gave a short, simple laugh. ‘You won a medal for valour. You’re a member of the Hazard Team. And you’re expecting someone to take you off the ground defence forces on the Husk tomorrow, because you weren’t pitch-perfect in the complete mess of the substation fight?’

‘When you put it like that…’ He swallowed and shook his head. ‘Yes. Yes, I was expecting that.’

Arys sobered. ‘I kind of want to be down there. Not on the bridge.’

Beckett looked over at last. ‘You’re our helmsman.’

‘I know. But I’m happier being hands-on.’ Arys shrugged. ‘It is, I think… okay… to feel like we should be somewhere else when there are a dozen different battles and challenges. Who ever really knows they’re where they should be?’

‘Ugh.’ Beckett swigged his drink. ‘Stop being clever. Or I’ll have to stay being the pretty one and, really, can I get any prettier?’

Arys frowned. ‘I didn’t know we were a duo to be the smart one or the pretty one, and anyway, I don’t work out as much as I do to not be -’

‘When did she get here?’ He’d not been looking around much. He’d come to the bar and ordered drinks and slumped into his self-pity, as was his wont, and only glanced about the Safe House now Arys was pulling him back. Arys must have been unusually focused on him, too, because normally he had a laser-sharp focus for noticing Elsa Lindgren, who was sat in a corner of the bar with a glass that looked long-empty.

Arys straightened and blinked. ‘I didn’t see her come in.’

Beckett grabbed his glass and slid out of his chair, and both men headed across the bar towards Endeavour’s Chief Communications Officer. He was trying to gauge her expression, her stance – figure out what could possibly be wrong – so he was quiet as they approached.

And so it was Arys who walked right up to the table and, with all the earnestness of a Labrador, blurted, ‘Are you alright?’

Lindgren had been lost in her own thoughts and looked up with a start. From behind Arys, Beckett rolled his eyes, met her gaze, and gave her an apologetic grimace. ‘Oh! Tar’lek, Nate… I didn’t see you there.’

‘You seemed distracted,’ Arys observed astutely, and Beckett thought he was a lot better at dealing with people when he viewed them with contempt. ‘We thought we might help.’

We can go, Beckett mouthed to her, but she gave the faintest shake of the head. ‘There’s a lot coming up,’ she said instead. ‘In less than a day we’ll be… I don’t know.’

Beckett didn’t believe her. But he also knew better than to pry when it came to Elsa Lindgren, and better than to pry with Arys there. So instead he bounced past Arys and pulled up the nearest chair. ‘That’s why we’re down here,’ he said. ‘Drinking truly mediocre synthehol and trying to not think about tomorrow. Fancy some company?’

‘Exactly,’ Arys added, also sitting down. ‘We’re company.’

Her smile for Arys was polite, her smile for Beckett a little more grateful, but she did sit back in her chair and seem to relax, at least an iota. Sometimes, Beckett knew, acting like life was easy could make life feel easy for a little while. ‘Company,’ she said at length, ‘sounds great.’

* *

‘Go.’

Valance looked up from the command chair and gave Rourke a confused look. ‘I’m on-shift for the next two hours, sir.’

‘Let Stevens take over. He can use the time in the big chair. I need you at your best tomorrow.’ The captain kept his voice low as he leaned against the XO’s seat beside her.

‘I’ve plenty of time to sleep -’

‘Cortez has just clocked off. Go see her. Do more with this night than pass out. Tomorrow’s going to be hard.’

He didn’t say, and this might be the last night you get. It wasn’t all that he meant, but it was some of what he meant, and his XO accepted his point without further argument. Lieutenant Stevens took to the central chair with eagerness, and Rourke left him to it, ignoring his own advice to head for his ready room.

The ship had settled into only a low hum of tension, like even the hull itself was catching as much shut-eye as it could ahead of the violence that felt inevitable. Officers knew they were either holding down the fort now for those who would be on the front-lines later and crackled with guilty dedication, or were reluctantly taking care of themselves so they could be ready for the chaos to come.

And here he was, on his own, behind his desk, pouring out one single glass of Islay. He had barely touched it over the next half-hour before the door-chime went.

His eyebrow raised as Kharth came in. ‘What’re you doing up and about at this hour, Lieutenant?’

‘I could say the same to you,’ she pointed out. ‘I was going to ask permission to disembark. Get to the Talon tonight, get started with work.’

Rourke’s lips twisted. ‘No,’ he said at length, and stood at her indignant expression. ‘No, have one drink with me first.’

Kharth sat down, expression not really shifting as he went to his drinks cabinet to pour her a glass. ‘If you say so, sir.’

‘You’ve been doing a good job here, you know,’ he said as he sank back onto his chair, sliding her drink to her. ‘The Agarath Guard’s in a good state.’

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’

He tapped his fingers on the edge of his glass, the drink still untouched, and they sat in silence for a moment until he quietly said, ‘No.’ At her glance, he shrugged. ‘We’ll do it. We’ll pull it off.’ There was more he’d wanted to say; questions for her, reassurances, to tease out the apprehensions he could feel radiating off her, and that was why he’d sat her down with a drink in the first place. But now he was here, it didn’t feel right.

Instead of contemplating the whys and the hows and the future, they could take ten minutes to sit.

Kharth did, at last, drink. But then she said, ‘I don’t know how you can be sure.’

Another shrug. ‘We have to win. So we will.’

‘Simple as that?’

He sipped his whisky. ‘Simple as that.’

Captain’s log, stardate 77460.15. Long range sensors have picked up the Romulan Star Navy’s strike force less than an hour away, and we are standing by. Shy of our fight upon arrival, this is the first pitched battle of this new Endeavour, and yet my crew, many of my senior staff, are scattered about the system, posted where they’re needed most. From the ships of the Agarath Guard to the ground forces on the Husk, we are splintered in a way that troubles me greatly.

But that trouble is personal. They are my crew, my people, and I want them here beside me. Still, they are where they should be, where they have to be, and every one of them has my trust. Even scattered, they will do their duty and make me proud.

Descending the steps to the trio of central seats, Rourke cast his gaze about the bridge. ‘All stations, report in.’

Lieutenant Juarez snapped to attention at Tactical. ‘Weapons and shield systems are fully operational, sir.’

‘System-wide communications are clear; tactical data synchronisation is fleet-wide,’ reported Lindgren at Comms.

‘Sensors are connected to perimeter monitoring systems,’ said Lieutenant Veldman at Science. ‘Confirm ETA of strike force: fifty-three minutes.’

‘All engine and thruster diagnostics have been completed with zero faults found,’ confirmed Arys.

‘Computer system response time is in-line with combat readiness protocols,’ added the anxious figure of Lieutenant Athaka, beside him at Ops.

Last was Valance, stood with her hands clasped behind her back at the XO’s chair. Her gaze was level and steady as he moved to join her, adding to the comforting aura she exuded. None of his veterans were in their bridge posts, and even the senior staffers here were his more junior, his less-tested, or in less-critical posts such as even the excellent Lindgren. But having his first officer beside him, his rock, washed away those spiking anxieties.

‘Crew on all decks are at combat stations,’ she said levelly. ‘Commander Cortez confirms we are, as she puts it, running hot and ready.’ That helped, too, knowing that Endeavour’s beating heart was in the hands of her true master, the Chief Engineer.

Rourke nodded and sank into the command chair. ‘Now we wait.’

* *

‘This is gonna suck,’ Beckett mused as he shouldered his rifle and walked with Chief Kowalski into the Guardhouse, the hub of all Starfleet activity on the Husk’s habitation dome.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kowalski with a lopsided smirk and all the ease of a senior noncom in reassuring a junior officer while giving deference to their rank. ‘We’ll figure it out.’

‘You mean you’ll figure it out,’ said Beckett, because he was never going to ignore Kowalski’s two decades of experience. ‘I’m here to help, not lead.’

Kowalski stopped at the door and turned to face him. The air of Gentle Managing faded for something firmer, more sincere. ‘You have everything you need to make a difference here, Lieutenant. I’m glad you’re with us.’

Beckett couldn’t do more than grimace and nod at that, and headed deeper into the Guardhouse. Once, it had been the hub for Starfleet’s relief efforts in the dome; now it was the command centre for all ground defence. A field console had been brought down, one of the pool-table control panels showing not just the layout of their defences in the habitation dome but the status of all guarded locations across the system.

Lieutenant Rhade stood there, back in combat armour and looking ready for action despite his injury. Beckett idly wondered how he’d convinced Sadek to clear him for this, but suspected necessity had won out. If the Guardhouse were compromised, things were so bad Endeavour itself wouldn’t be much safer.

‘Lieutenant, Chief.’ Rhade gave them quick nods. ‘Thanks for joining me. I want you two on the rapid response team I’m keeping on standby here in case anywhere needs backup. You’re all I’ve got of the Hazard Team.’

Beckett shrugged and joined him at the table. ‘If you say so, sir. Are we really expecting the strike force to get far enough for landing parties?’

‘They have to know that an attack on the Husk could destroy the Agarath leadership,’ said Rhade. ‘A cloaked ship could theoretically slip through the defences and drop a strike team.’

‘Great.’ Beckett looked down at the control panel, and squinted. ‘Why have we got Starfleet defenders down in Gamma-Seven?’

Rhade glanced up at him. ‘What makes you ask?’

‘Well, it’s a complete warren of slums – we get some locals who know their way around and they’re going to have a huge advantage on any military team…’

He didn’t notice Rhade and Kowalski exchange looks, but the big Betazoid lieutenant smiled after a moment. ‘There’s your local knowledge paying off, Mr Beckett.’ Rhade glanced over his shoulder. ‘Can we arrange that, Governor?’

Beckett almost jumped as a Reman he’d thought was simply checking equipment by the wall turned to join them, and recognised Hiran himself. ‘We can swap in. And it’s not “Governor,” not today.’ The former commando shouldered a rifle. ‘I’m not ruling. I’m fighting.’

‘Aren’t you a bit… important?’ Beckett flapped.

‘No more than anyone else,’ Hiran said simply. ‘And they’ll come and try to kill me no matter where I am. Better to do it on my terms.’

‘This is the best place to defend from,’ Rhade explained, ‘and from here, Hiran and I can coordinate ground defences across the system while Mr Korsk runs protection of the shipyards.’

Beckett blinked. ‘Sure,’ he said, but then it was Rhade’s turn to look astonished as another figure in Starfleet combat armour marched through the front door.

Nothing in Dathan’s eyes acknowledged the unexpected nature of her arrival as she approached the control panel. ‘Where can I help?’

Rhade stared at her. ‘Lieutenant, shouldn’t you be on -’

‘Chief T’Kalla’s manning the CIC on Endeavour,’ Dathan said simply. ‘You shouldn’t be coordinating the ground defences system-wide solo, however. Besides.’ She looked him up and down. ‘You’ve been injured. If the Guardhouse is breached, you need protecting.’

‘Oh,’ said Beckett, provocative before he could stop himself. ‘You’re his bodyguard, huh.’

The look he got in response was withering, and Rhade rushed to fill the silence. ‘You’re welcome, of course,’ he said with only a hint of awkwardness. ‘I could use the assistance.’

‘Great,’ said Beckett after a moment. ‘Now what?’

Hiran scoffed. ‘Sit tight, Lieutenant. There’ll be trouble soon enough.’

* *

‘Hold up a second.’ Just outside the doors to the Talon’s bridge, Kharth turned to Thawn. ‘We should talk.’

Thawn’s expression was guarded. ‘Must we, Lieutenant?’

She’d gotten bolder since they were of a rank, Kharth thought. ‘I gave you shit a year ago in the Archanis campaign, and that was wrong of me,’ she said bluntly. ‘We never made that right.’

‘We.’

‘I never made that right.’ They had never been friends. But deep in the pursuit of the Wild Hunt, Kharth had tried to help her, given her an outlet for all her loss and rage. Then she’d destroyed whatever fledgling rapport had come of this. ‘I was wrong. I’m sorry.’

That did take Thawn by surprise, but nobody had ever called the young Betazoid forgiving. She shifted her feet. ‘I’ll try to not disappoint you again.’

There was not an ounce of sincerity, and Kharth sighed. ‘I asked to have you here today. The Agarath Guard needs to punch above its weight, and there’s nobody who can help us do that more than you. You’re the best damn bridge officer I ever served with.’

Silence hung between them as uncertainty entered Thawn’s gaze, and at length she drew a slow breath. ‘I’m glad we’ve got you at Tactical, Lieutenant.’

‘Okay.’ Kharth gave a flicker of a smile. ‘That’s enough talking about our feelings. We gonna kick some ass?’

Thawn’s response was only a nervous hint of her own smile and an awkward nod, and the two women entered the bridge.

Commander Relekor stood at the central chair, hands on his hips, posed like a heroic figure from an old-fashioned holodeck programme. ‘Lieutenants!’ He turned with a wide grin. ‘On behalf of the Agarath Guard, welcome aboard.’

Ensign Harkon was already at the helm, and Kharth knew Lieutenant Adupon would be in engineering, marvelling at Romulan technology and probably having an anxiety attack. She moved to assume Tactical just as Thawn went to Operations.

‘How’s the rest of the fleet?’ Kharth asked.

‘Ready and waiting,’ Relekor said coolly. ‘The shining jewel of Agarath, here to save the system.’

‘And, ah, their operational status?’ Thawn prompted. ‘The Idaro didn’t have full engine capacity as-of 0900.’

Kharth smothered a smirk as Relekor paused, then pulled out a PADD. ‘Oh. Yes. They haven’t ironed that out,’ he said.

‘Then let’s position the Idaro,’ Kharth said gently, ‘at the centre of the formation, close behind us. They can act as a gunboat.’

Relekor snapped his fingers. ‘Good thinking, Lieutenant. That’s why you’re here.’

Kharth nodded, but couldn’t help but glance at Thawn. Their gazes met for just a heartbeat of shared wry amusement before they both shook their heads and got to work.

* *

I remember the time

Of the collier and the candle –

‘What’s that song?’

Graelin looked up. Not only hadn’t he realised he wasn’t alone in the main control centre of the zenite facility, he hadn’t realised he’d been speaking out loud. Singing, even.

Before him stood the rangy Reman woman he’d charged with guiding the Starfleet team who had tried to refit, repair, and improve the filtration systems in the facility, but had barely had enough time. Torva? Was that her name?

He cleared his throat and looked back at the control systems. ‘It’s nothing.’

She moved around the panel in the dingy brown heart of this dingy brown place that gave Agarath a quarter of its wealth, and sat beside him. ‘It sounds like our work songs.’

Graelin paused, his fingers on the panels still. At length he said, ‘It’s from my homeworld. My father was a miner. My people have historically not valued that work.’

She watched him. ‘You got out. Joined Starfleet.’

‘He got out,’ Graelin said before he could stop himself, and his jaw tightened. He shook his head. ‘He was a foreman. Was offered a management role that would get him out of the pits. But he went back anyway.’ His gaze went distant. ‘Said it was where he belonged.’

Silence met his words as the young Reman nodded. ‘I don’t think I’d leave. I’d want things better. But it’s good work now it’s for our people. Our own good.’

It is back-breaking and dangerous no matter what protocols you put in place; it is the demeaning labour to power the light by which intellectuals and artists read –

But she was speaking still, before he could summon more palatable words for the public. ‘Have you lowered the rad shielding yet?’

‘Not yet,’ he assured her, settling now he could focus on work. ‘I want those radiation levels as low as possible for as long as possible. When the strike force is ten minutes out, I’ll adjust the shielding, and the radiation levels will hide our life signs.’

‘This could be a long fight,’ she observed. ‘A siege.’

‘I will ensure,’ Graelin said crisply, ‘that exposure is as limited as possible. And radiation medication after the fact is better than being blown up by a strike force during, Torva.’

She made a face. ‘Tulva.’

Whatever. ‘I would have an easier time,’ he said instead, ‘of focusing on this without distraction.’

‘You need someone to monitor radiation levels in the facility itself if you’re trying to gauge how strong or weak to make our life-signs depending on the battle,’ Tulva pointed out. ‘I’ve been training with these for two weeks.’

Two whole weeks. Graelin sighed. ‘If you insist.’

* *

‘Incoming ships.’ Lieutenant Veldman’s cool gaze lifted. ‘Sixteen in total. Eight frigates, five cruisers…’ Now she hesitated. ‘Three Valdore-class warbirds.’

‘Three?’ Athaka repeated, voicing the upset incredulity everyone else felt.

‘We can handle three,’ Rourke said, marshalling every inch of control to sound calmly confident. ‘We have one of our own, remember.’ But the Talon was hardly operating at maximum efficiency, and while he was sure Endeavour could take one, it would be bloody. Still the bridge settled down at their captain’s reassuring words, because confidence was sometimes worth more than torpedoes.

Valance leaned over, dropping her voice. ‘The one in the lead is the same one we slipped away from at Tagrador.’

‘Of course it is,’ murmured Rourke, still masking his feelings. ‘It’s Lotharn’s.’

‘They’re hailing us, sir. Open channel to anyone who’ll listen,’ reported Lindgren, and with his nod the face of the Romulan commander himself appeared on the viewscreen.

‘Defenders of Agarath, this is Commander Lotharn of Galae Command. By the authority of the government of Rator of the Romulan Star Empire, you are ordered to stand down. If you surrender now to the rightful leadership of the Velorum Sector, you will be shown leniency.’

Rourke stood and looked to Lindgren. ‘Patch me through so everyone can -’

But the viewscreen split with a new message before he could even finish talking, the bright-eyed figure of Commander Relekor appearing. On the bridge of the Talon behind him, Rourke could see the cautious shapes of Kharth and Thawn.

‘Commander Lotharn, this is Commander Relekor – head of the Agarath Guard. I don’t answer to you.’ His words echoed with rather youthful defiance. ‘I answer to the people of Agarath. And they’ve told you to leave. If you don’t, I’m going to have to assume the duty of telling you again.’

Rourke swallowed, hand half-raised to Lindgren still. This was not, he realised, his moment to be defiant.

But Lotharn rolled his eyes. ‘Traitors and dissidents. You’ve dishonoured your uniform, Relekor. You’ll be among those shot first.’ His gaze flickered. ‘Starfleet officers, you are committing an act of war by being here. Leave now and I will make nothing of your presence to my superiors.’

Now Rourke finished gesturing to Lindgren to patch him in, and he scoffed. ‘Your superiors are in no bloody position to threaten the Federation. You can barely keep yourselves together. You’re an illegitimate government and I don’t give a damn what you think or warn – to get to these people, you have to go through us.’

‘This must be a good day for you, Rourke,’ Lotharn mused. ‘You get to kill Romulans again. I’ve given you enough chances. Taking you out will be a pleasure.’ He straightened, dark eyes setting hard. ‘The Empire will prevail.’

The viewscreen went dead, and at once Veldman’s hands flew over the controls. ‘They’re coming in.’

‘They can do that,’ Rourke said, sinking back onto the command chair. He drew a deep breath. ‘You know the plan, you know your orders. We hold.’

‘The strike force has engaged the Agarath Guard,’ Veldman reported, her focus at Science on monitoring the wider battle while everyone else kept their attention on Endeavour. ‘The Valdore is tearing into them.’

‘Let the Talon worry about the enemy Valdore,’ Rourke said calmly. ‘We’ve got two to fight.’

It was going as planned, he reflected as he watched the tactical map on the main viewscreen, the two forces engaging in the open stretches of the outer rim of the Agarath System. It was just that the plan included Endeavour fighting two Valdores at once. She had the advantages of modernity, not just from inherent design, but Starfleet technology had advanced and grown more sophisticated and efficient over the decades since the Obenas birth, while Imperial development had stymied since the supernova.

But it was still two enemy battleships at once.

‘Their reserve force is moving,’ Veldman added, her eyes darting over the console. ‘They’re on a course to sweep around the outer facilities.’

‘They’ll be trying to draw us off by threatening them. Leave them be. They’ll find no prizes there.’ Most of the facilities were empty or disguised. It’d be a blow to the Agarath industry if some of them were destroyed, but they’d factored that into the planning. Rourke looked to Lindgren at comms. ‘Direct the Black Knights to stay on our port side. We’re going to focus on Lotharn’s ship, and if the other tries to flank us they’re going to get harried.’

She nodded, finger to her earpiece and at once relaying instructions to Lieutenant Whitaker, barely restored to flight status and with one of his reserve pilots in the cockpit with Ensign Osman’s incapacitation at the hands of the Jontu.

Rourke straightened. ‘Bring us in hard and fast on the lead ship, Mr Arys. I want first blood. Mr Juarez, get ready to juggle our shields, but for now – all power to the fore.’

‘Aye, sir,’ called Arys. ‘Setting course bearing four-seven mark sixteen, coming in at full impulse.’

‘Fire as you wish, Mr Juarez.’

While the main body of ships swirled in a maelstrom of weapons fire and flaring of shields a distance away, the Agarath Guard engaging the slew of frigates and cruisers in what looked from here like a rolling dogfight, Endeavour soared towards her ill-suited boxing match. Rourke sank back in the command chair as they moved, eyes raking over the tactical map but always coming to the two dots before them.

He was used to his ships being like a shiv in a dark alley, but this was a cavalry charge. The point was to break them.

Lotharn’s ship met the challenge head-on, weapons fire exploding between the two ships in a kaleidoscope of phasers and disruptors. The second Valdore, as anticipated, tried to sweep around with the hopes of flanking, but soon slowed as the Black Knights engaged like a tiny swarm answering Endeavour’s command.

‘Tell Whitaker not to slow them entirely,’ Rourke added. ‘Keep them busy, but let them come about us. That’s their mistake if they forget we have better weapons coverage than them.’ A Starfleet ship could benefit from being flanked. It let them bring secondary weapons to bear. ‘Mr Juarez, focus fire on the lead ship’s port side. It’ll force them to break off.’

It did, the Romulan ship less effective at juggling its deflector power allocation than a finely-tuned Starfleet weapon, and that gave Endeavour more breathing room to focus on the second ship as Lotharn’s pulled away. Endeavour tore into the Valdore like a beast unshackled, the Obena’s famous maneouvrability flipping her around to bring weapons to bear. It was more than a one-two of punches, a series of body blows that left the other ship staggering.

Despite their success, on Endeavour’s bridge Veldman sucked her teeth. ‘The Agarath Guard remains outnumbered, sir. They’re taking losses.’

‘Advise them to fall back to the asteroid belt,’ Rourke replied, keeping his tones calm and collected despite the news. ‘They can get more support from the weapons emplacements.’ It was bold of Relekor to have engaged in open terrain like that, but the plan had been discussed at length in the meetings over the past few days.

Valance leaned in. ‘Do you think Kharth can manage him?’ she asked, as if reading his mind. ‘He’s going to make foolhardy choices.’

‘I think Kharth can eat men like Relekor for breakfast,’ Rourke pointed out. Then Endeavour shook as Lotharn’s ship re-engaged, and the rest of the battle became less pressing.

The second Valdore was still limping but Lotharn had come back fresh, and this time it was Endeavour’s turn to take a series of body blows. The two ships twisted around each other, both fast for their size, weaving in and out as Arys fought hard to keep their phaser banks with a line of sight on Lotharn’s ship, and the Romulans in turn tried to get to her less-protected underbelly.

‘Bring the Black Knights to our ventral side,’ Rourke instructed Lindgren. ‘Guard our weak points.’

But fighters could only do so much, and Rourke watched on the tactical display as the second Valdore fought to restore its shields, looking like it might re-enter the fray at any moment, while Endeavour had seen no chances to recharge.

His jaw tightened as Veldman continued her reports. ‘The imperial strike force followed into the belt, and they’re taking out the weapon emplacements, sir.’ They’d not been able to build as many as they had hoped, focusing on getting the Agarath Guard operational, and by the tactical map the Guard was finding itself still out-matched.

‘Where are those scout ships?’ Rourke checked.

‘At Agarath IX, sir; they’ve just taken out the surface installations of its arcybite mines.’ That was no insignificant dent in Agarath industry.

‘Sir,’ called Juarez. ‘Second Valdore is coming back in.’

‘Alright. I guess we’re done screwing around.’ Rourke looked at Lindgren. ‘Signal the rest of the Guard.’

Deciding how to prioritise Agarath defences had taken an argument. Relekor had favoured more weapons emplacements, but Rourke had held his ground; they offered protection, but no flexibility. Cortez had looked at him with sheer indignation when he’d made his final pitch, but with the strike force tearing through the weapons platforms, he knew he was about to be proven right.

Right, as on the tactical map the final third of the Agarath Guard decloaked behind the imperial strike force in the midst of the asteroid belt’s fighting, and took them from the rear.

‘This is worth listening to Isa complain all week about the workload in getting those cloaks online,’ Valance mused wryly.

‘Elsa, tell the Agarath Guard they should finish this as quickly as possible,’ said Rourke, and again Endeavour shook as the two Valdores came thundering at him. He rolled his eyes. ‘Mr Juarez, this backup is getting on my nerves. Emergency power to the shields so we can take a pounding, but get us close on him; pattern Gamma-4.’

Despite Lotharn’s ship delivering slugging blows, Endeavour turned to the weaker of the Valdores and again set about her. This time there was no escape; she pinned it in with phaser fire and dropped torpedo after torpedo into first its shields, then its hull, and even when it tried to pull away Arys kept the quick and manoeuvrable Endeavour on it.

‘That’s their engines gone! They’re drifting, sir!’ Juarez reported jubilantly.

‘The imperial strike force is taking massive losses in the asteroid field, sir,’ said Veldman.

Agarath had played at being weaker than it was, and the Romulan Star Navy was paying for its arrogance. Rourke leaned back with a satisfied smirk. ‘Keep bloodying Lotharn’s nose, Mr Juarez,’ he started.

But Veldman wasn’t done, eyebrows raising with surprise. ‘Sir, the strike force is pulling back. Their scouts, too.’

‘Lead enemy ship has turned away, left the second Valdore behind, sir,’ said a bemused Juarez.

Rourke had always been a believer in hitting your enemy hard and fast and shaking their morale. But as he watched on the tactical map, as he replayed the battle in his mind, Lotharn’s ship had made textbook perfect moves, given Endeavour a solid battering. The rest of the strike force had been more messy and imprecise.

Valance straightened with confusion. ‘The Imperial Navy’s not the hub of discipline it once was,’ she mused.

‘It’s not,’ Rourke confirmed. ‘Which is why I’d hoped luring them into a trap would mess with their heads. It’s just working a lot better than I’d hoped.’ He straightened. ‘Let them pull back. Signal the same to the Agarath Guard.’

Lindgren nodded, but a moment later she was grimacing, finger to her earpiece. ‘Commander Relekor is in… disagreement, sir.’

‘Put me through to the Talon.’ Rourke stood as the viewscreen shifted for his ally’s bridge, the young Romulan commander scowling with unusual anger. ‘They’re pulling away. No need to hit them when they’re on their heels.’

‘They’re not retreating, Rourke,’ Relekor pointed out. ‘We should be running them down while they’re weak.’

‘We’re here to defend, not to slaughter them. Use this time to regroup, make emergency repairs, recharge your shields. If they want a second bout, we’ll be ready for them.’

‘If they want a second bout, we just played our best card and didn’t exploit it,’ said Relekor and killed the line, but when his face was replaced with the tactical viewscreen it showed the Agarath Guard ceasing their pursuit.

Rourke turned to Juarez, jaw tight. ‘If that disabled Valdore so much as twitches at its weapon systems, fire a warning shot. They only get one.’

‘Captain.’ Lindgren again sounded confused. ‘The enemy lead ship is hailing again. Not another general transmission – this is direct to us.’

Rourke turned with consternation as the viewscreen again changed, and while he was once again shown Lotharn’s grim-set face, his surroundings were different. No longer was he stood on a battle-drenched bridge, but the same office he’d been in when they talked days ago.

‘I underestimated you, Rourke,’ Lotharn admitted. ‘But you know you haven’t won yet.’

‘I might have won today. I’ll take that.’

‘My ships can rally. It’ll be bloody and who knows who’ll win, but who wants to go back to the Star Empire after failing?’ The Romulan commander drew an unsteady breath. He was more dishevelled, Rourke noticed; the battle had tossed him about. ‘We should talk.’

‘We’re talking.’

‘No. You and me. And your diplomat. In person.’

Rourke looked at Valance, but she was no less confused than him. He turned back to the viewscreen. ‘You’re welcome on Endeavour any time -’

‘There’s a mining platform around the sixth planet you’ve clearly shut down and evacuated. I’ll be there with one guard. I’ll let you and First Secretary Hale bring two, if you wish. Nobody else.’

‘If we’re to discuss the future of Agarath,’ Rourke continued slowly, uncertainly, ‘there should be a representative of Agarath.’

‘That’s my offer, Rourke. Signal me to confirm the meeting in ten minutes, or we’ll have round two of this battle. You might be confident of victory, but how many people will die for it? Or are you happy to spend Romulan lives, still?’

‘I’m not letting you bait me into this.’

‘Ten minutes to confirm. Lotharn out.’

Rourke set his hands on his hips, squinting at the viewscreen, and turned to Valance. ‘Why the hell does he want to talk to us face-to-face?’ he asked, but at her nonplussed expression he knew he had no choice but to signal Hale to the bridge.

‘I assume,’ said Hale once she’d arrived and been brought up to speed, ‘you’ve already weighed up the possibility of a trap. Lotharn does hate you personally.’

‘That doesn’t explain why he’d include you,’ Rourke pointed out. ‘Though if he’s looking to exert pressure on Starfleet, capturing a ranking member of the Diplomatic Corps would also be a feather in his hat.’

Valance was on her feet with them, the three gathered before the command chairs with the discussion unsettlingly in full view of the senior staff – but Rourke did not trust the imperial navy enough to leave the bridge. ‘You understand I have to object strenuously to either of you going,’ she pointed out.

‘He wants us for a reason,’ said Hale, and turned to Rourke, gaze intent. ‘If we assume this isn’t a trap for a moment – he wants this off-comms. On neutral ground, or at least ground neither side has prepared. He only wants to bring one guard. This is a conversation he doesn’t want in front of an audience.’

Valance looked between them. ‘What could he have to say he doesn’t want anyone else to hear?’

‘Lotharn is a patriot, but he’s not a fool, and he doesn’t think the sun shines out of his superiors’ arses,’ Rourke mused. ‘It’s possible he wants to hammer this out with a frank discussion of what the Star Empire can do.’

‘And I wonder,’ said Hale quietly, ‘if he can afford to come back empty-handed. Doing this behind closed-doors lets him reach a bargain without worrying about losing face in front of his officers.’

‘But none of this,’ said Valance, ‘explains why he wants Ms Hale there.’

Rourke looked at Hale. ‘You think he wants to defect.’

‘I’m not about to bet on it,’ she admitted. ‘But if I’m right about any of this, we can end the threat to Agarath without firing another shot. Without anyone else dying.’

‘If you’re wrong,’ said Valance flatly, ‘we lose two of our leaders.’

Hale shrugged. ‘Then send just me. I can negotiate on behalf of the Federation, and does losing me really impact Agarath’s defences if they just want to fight?’

‘If you go, I’m going,’ Rourke rumbled, and looked at Valance. ‘The ship is yours, Commander. Keep the Agarath Guard in-hand.’

She pursed her lips. ‘I’d say this is the sort of decision where I want my protest noted in your log. But I’m not sure we have time for logs.’

‘Nope.’ Rourke turned to the Tactical arch. ‘Juarez, gear up. Get Petty Officer Tarran to meet us in the shuttlebay.’ He glanced to Comms. ‘Elsa, signal Lotharn. We’ll have his meeting.’

Facility Petrarch was once an ore processing facility hovering in orbit of the ninth planet of the Agarath System. It had been abandoned in the uprising and no efforts had yet been made to resume operations, leaving it as one of dozens of empty shells in the system, notable only for its distance from the Husk. And notable because this small station, six decks high and two hundred metres long, was the location Commander Lotharn had chosen for the meeting.

Both starships hung half a million kilometres away from Petrarch, enough that any sudden aggressive moves would be seen coming. Rather than rely on transporters in a situation where shields might be raised at any moment, Rourke had taken to his yacht, the four of them disembarking on the Prydwen. Petrarch had once boasted a bay to load ore from the surface and a second for shipping it out once processed, and the two parties thus docked separately. A show of good faith from Lotharn saw the Romulans using the first bay, directed towards the surface and worse for a quick getaway.

Rourke had donned combat armour and grabbed a rifle, and was on his feet near the door even as Petty Officer Tarran eased the Prydwen onto the grey-brown deck of Petrarch. They’d had to remotely activate life support aboard, but their sensors showed the dimmed systems were functioning.

‘Right,’ Rourke said as Tarran ran through the post-flight sequence. ‘Petty Officer Tarran, stay here with the First Secretary.’

Hale turned, restrained for now by the safety webbing which she at once began to unbuckle. ‘Lotharn insisted on both of us being here -’

‘And I’m going to make sure it’s not a trap first,’ Rourke told her flatly. ‘I’m the biggest prize here. If he really wants, he can bring just me back and get a pat on the head from his superiors even if he fails at Agarath. Juarez and I will make sure the coast is clear, then you can follow.’ At her indignant expression, he shrugged. ‘This is a Starfleet operation, First Secretary. I’m the captain. This isn’t up for debate.’

He turned away before she could protest, so he was at the door to the exit ramp when she got to her feet and followed him. But when she spoke, it wasn’t the argument he’d expected.

‘Be careful.’

Rourke hesitated, hand hovering over the control panel to the ramp. He did not turn his head back to her, simply tilted to see her in his peripheral vision, hazy and hovering and worried. ‘Nothing about this is careful,’ he admitted at last, and hit the panel.

Juarez followed him into the dim landing bay and did not talk until the ramp had retracted, leaving the Prydwen as a secure fortress, even if it restricted their escape.

‘So this is a choice, huh, Captain?’ Juarez said at last, rifle in his hands. The broad-shouldered officer’s expression had not completely lost the easy cheer with which he faced most things.

‘If it’s a choice that stops this battle, it’s worth it,’ said Rourke, tromping for the heavy doors.

‘Sure. You’ll just forgive me if I prioritise you over anything else here, right? Only I don’t want Lieutenant Kharth to kick my ass when this is all over.’

‘Let’s be real, Lieutenant.’ Rourke gave him a sidelong look. ‘Lieutenant Kharth is going to be furious with both of us.’

‘Ain’t that the truth…’

The lighting at least worked, rather than flickering as they walked the corridor to the central control room where Lotharn had demanded they rendezvous. But it was dim for the comfort of the formerly Reman workers, and it felt to Rourke like their footsteps on cold metal echoed out only to be muffled by the shadows.

There was no sign of life. Little light from the dead control panels. Only essential systems had been brought online, which at least included doors, and yet Juarez stopped before the door to their end of the central control room. He pulled out a tricorder and scanned.

‘Okay,’ said the young lieutenant after a heartbeat. ‘Two life-signs, both Romulan. Looks like he’s playing ball.’

‘I know the stereotype for Romulans and duplicity,’ said Rourke quietly. ‘But don’t ignore their sense of honour. They’re more reliable than Klingons, in a way.’

‘Sir?’

‘Lotharn’s honour is tied up in his duty to the Empire. He’s frustrated when he feels it’s acting in a way he feels is against its spirit, its best part. He wants to uphold those finer principles.’

‘Sure,’ said Juarez at length. ‘But I don’t know what those finer principles are or are worth while the Romulan Star Empire’s collapsing, and if he’s so honourable and dutiful to the empire, why do we think he might be defecting?’

Rourke ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘Guess we better go find out, Lieutenant.’

Juarez went first, because he was still the officer responsible for the captain’s safety, and they padded into the dim-lit control chamber of Facility Petrarch. With none of the equipment online to perform the facility’s main purpose of ore processing, only the controls which monitored thrusters to keep it in orbit, life control, and basic systems, were alive.

There were no exterior windows here, the chamber deep in the belly of the facility, and so it was by the faint lighting of these that the two Romulans were silhouetted. Rourke recognised Lotharn at once, stood to one side with his hands on a disruptor rifle. Metres away, rifle levelled at the doorway, was an armoured soldier with no helmet, and for a moment Rourke thought he was about to be shot.

Juarez had the same idea, his rifle snapping up, but both commanding officers raised hands at once to stop their men. They hung in silent stillness for several thudding heartbeats, watching each other, until at last Lotharn said, ‘I wanted to see First Secretary Hale, too, Rourke.’

‘I know what you wanted,’ said Rourke, trying to keep his voice light. ‘But you can’t pretend this isn’t damned odd. Once I’m satisfied with what’s going on here, she’ll come out.’

‘So you put yourself in the jaws of the beast first,’ Lotharn drawled. ‘I’m still not sure if that’s dutiful of you, or if you’d just rather get your hands bloody if this goes wrong.’

‘I don’t want any more blood. And we’re not here to talk about Teros.’

‘No,’ Lotharn said softly. ‘My purpose here isn’t to get angry at you. However much I am.’

Rourke drew a deep breath and advanced deeper into the chamber, Juarez keeping him covered. ‘So let’s get down to brass tacks, Lotharn. What do you want to talk about you won’t discuss on comms?’

‘So many things,’ was Lotharn’s wry response. ‘Do you think the Imperial Star Navy consists now solely of officers who are all in perfect agreement over recent events? After the Navy overrode the Senate?’

‘Murdered and forcibly replaced,’ said Rourke. It was provocative, but that was his intention, and he carefully watched for the Romulan’s reaction.

All he got was the briefest tense of the jaw in response. ‘All I will say is that not everyone thinks that was a good idea. This should hardly surprise you. Strike forces have been assembled quickly and desperately. I do not know every one of my ship commanders, and I cannot be sure where their allegiances or sympathies lie.’

‘I notice you’ve been all cagey on yours. On if you’re a dedicant of the path chosen by the navy and worry some of your commanders are less committed, or… the other way around.’

‘Did you just come here to gauge my opinion?’

‘I came to talk and to see if we could find a way out of this bloodshed. But seeing as my hard line is Agarath being left to determine its own future, free of Imperial involvement, your opinion’s pretty damn important.’

Lotharn met his gaze and drew a deep breath. ‘It is my opinion the Star Empire should be worrying about bigger things than Agarath. But its wealth is still of value. Independence for Agarath, but favourable terms for trade with -’

‘I can’t negotiate trade on behalf of Agarath,’ Rourke pointed out. ‘Hale can’t negotiate trade on behalf of Agarath. Stop screwing around, Lotharn, and tell me what you want.’

‘Get First Secretary Hale here as I requested,’ came the blunt reply, ‘and we can talk. I’ve not given you any reason to doubt me.’

Rourke hesitated. Then the control room exploded around them.

It was the unmistakable impact of weapons fire thudding into Petrarch Facility, though this deep inside it came instead with the lurching of the deck and the shrieking of metal, the burst of explosions as several control panels overloaded. They were all thrown to the floor, and Rourke had to catch himself on the edge of a console to not smash into metal.

The thudding of impacts felt like a storm raging overhead, but could only have lasted mere moments. Only heartbeats later both Rourke and Lotharn were tearing to their feet, both raising their rifles, both crackling with anger.

‘You lured us here -’

‘You murderous snake…’

They might have realised they were both accusing the other of a double-cross at that point. But that was also the point the air shimmered around them, and six armoured figures beamed into control chamber, and attacked.

* *

‘Commander!’ Lindgren sounded startled as her head snapped around from her bridge station to Valance, sat on the command chair. ‘Lieutenant Rhade’s reporting landing parties hitting the habitation dome. Korsk likewise on some of the asteroid belt facilities.’

Valance had just watched the cascade of weapons fire come as if from nowhere and thud into Facility Petrarch. Endeavour’s bridge was awash with the lights of a fresh red alert, and she couldn’t help but snap as she said, ‘Tell me where these Romulans have come from!’

‘It looks like there were cloaked ships making their way through the asteroid belt while the fighting stopped!’ Veldman called, her hands flying over her controls. ‘But none of the imperial ships are unaccounted for; this must have been another reserve force.’

‘How many reserve forces did they have?’ Valance scowled. This made no sense as a gambit. But that was a rhetorical question, and they were under attack. ‘What’s the force here at Petrarch?’

‘I – oh.’ Veldman was a professional, so her pause of confusion didn’t last long. It still felt like an age as she brought up the viewscreen. ‘Those aren’t Star Navy ships,’ the science officer gasped. ‘They’re Klingons.’

Valance’s throat tightened, but before she could reply, Lindgren was talking again.

‘Agarath Guard confirms Klingon ships are engaging them, Commander. And… the Klingons are engaging the Star Navy, too. It’s chaos out there.’

‘Commander, there’s a Vor’cha-class coming about to engage us,’ Arys warned.

Valance’s hands curled into the armrests. ‘Then we meet them,’ she said. ‘Protect Petrarch, and let’s save ourselves here before we turn to the rest of the system. Everyone else is going to have to play their part.’

* *

It was necessary to keep the power low; any emissions might be picked up by enemy ships, and so Graelin worked in the control centre of the zenite mine by as little light as possible. That suited him fine, and it seemed to suit his Reman colleague fine as well, however much he resented her company.

He couldn’t help but glare when she made a small, worried sound. ‘Picking up something on short-range sensors,’ she said. They had to keep those active, because when enemy ships were close was time to boost radiation levels to better mask all emissions and life-signs. ‘The Star Navy must be coming around for another pass – wait.’

Graelin glared at the bulkheads. ‘Unless they break directly for us, stop panicking about their damned patrol patterns.’

‘It’s not another scout sweep,’ Tulva said tartly. ‘And this isn’t the Star Navy. These are Klingon ships.’

‘Klingon.’ Graelin tightened his jaw. The Klingon Empire were allies of the Federation, but long enemies of the Romulans. More importantly, there was no way Rourke wouldn’t send a Starfleet ship to check in on him, or at least a member of the Agarath Guard who knew how to signal the facility. This was not the all-clear.

‘And they’re coming for a close fly-by. I think – I think they really want to check us out, Commander.’

‘Fine. Let them.’ Graelin reached for the control panel to adjust the magnetic shielding. ‘We can eat this for a little while.’

Tulva watched cautiously as he adjusted the shielding to let radiation levels rise, obscuring them from detection by sensors but not without cost. ‘They won’t pick us up?’

‘They would have to be right on top of us,’ he assured her. ‘So keep monitoring and let me know if they are on top of us.’

That was not the only reason he’d told her to do that. Graelin wanted Tulva to look away so he could take a quick look at the small error message notification blinking in the corner of his screen, and assess how bad it was.

Not too bad. So long as he could bring the rad shielding back fully online in the next fifteen minutes.

Otherwise the modulator was going to blow.

Klingons?

But there was no time for surprise, as one of them was swinging a bat’leth at his head. Rourke was still bracing against the control panel to keep his footing, and barely pivoted away in time. The blade’s edge raked against his breastplate and the impact alone was enough to knock the breath from him, but it also sent him staggering back just out of reach.

They were outnumbered and had been dazed, but the six Klingons had to pause to take stock of the situation. That was enough for Lotharn’s guard, who had planted himself behind cover and was spraying disruptor fire. It forced a couple of the Klingons to hunker down in the warren of control panels in here, the facility’s command centre and dead heart. But the others were moving, though all Rourke had time to see were the swirling shadows where the other warriors were engaged.

But he couldn’t help them before he helped himself. He’d dropped his rifle and the Klingon was coming at him again, bat’leth in a wide swing that’d shatter his ribs if it made contact. Rourke had to twist on his feet to juke back so it missed him only by inches – and so he could lunge in turn. It was rarely a good idea to get close to a Klingon in a wrestling match, but in that moment, the reach of a bat’leth was worse than the enemy’s raw strength.

He drove his elbow into the warrior’s chest, though body armour dulled that impact more than he’d hoped. The bat’leth clattered to the deck as the Klingon dropped it, then strong arms settled around Rourke for what had abruptly become a wrestling match. The hands on his shoulders tried to wrench him back, but Rourke used the momentum to drag the Klingon with him.

They hit a control panel and tumbled over it, hitting the deck and rolling, both sides trying to get the upper hand. Now it was a match of strength with a Klingon, and that was a contest Rourke knew he couldn’t win, within moments ending up on his back with the warrior above him.

But in accepting the loss, he’d managed to pull his phaser pistol from its holster, and even as the Klingon leered in victory, he rammed the barrel into his gut and pulled the trigger.

By the time he’d shoved the Klingon off him and staggered to his feet, phaser in one hand, the warrior’s mek’leth in the other – a blade of a weight and size he was much more confident with – things had shifted. One warrior was down, brought low by Lotharn’s guard’s fire, but Rourke couldn’t see the Romulan, either. Lotharn himself was locked in a fight with two, a long Romulan blade in his hand, while towards the door Juarez wrestled another. That left –

Rourke barely brought the mek’leth up in time as he turned to parry the swing from the last warrior’s blade, and he had to twist it to deflect the sheer force. This Klingon had his own shorter sword out and looked older, likely wise enough to know a bat’leth was often an unsuitable weapon in confined environments. Scars across his face suggested this was hard-won wisdom, and the flurry of blows between them as Rourke tried to drive him back stamped that experience plain. Each of Rourke’s attacks was countered with skill and grace and experience –

Then the Klingon pivoted, and in the dim lighting Rourke saw the crest on his baldric. His jaw dropped, and he braced to a defensive posture.

‘You’re House of K’Var?’ he snarled in shock. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

The Klingon did hesitate at that, obviously surprised at being recognised. But his lip curled. ‘Conquering enemies while the High Council refuses to answer a call to war.’

It was just as well Rourke had been surprised into a defensive stance; it was how he won. The Klingon came at him and Rourke raked his mek’leth up in response, avoiding the blow and slashing viciously across the Klingon’s forearm with the secondary blade. As the warrior reeled he stepped in, and found he had no good choice but to drive the main blade into the Klingon’s gut.

That close, you had to keep going until your enemy dropped. When Rourke straightened, breathing ragged, his opponent on the deck before him, the fight had shifted. Juarez was still locked in a wrestling match, but Lotharn had dropped one of his opponents. Now the Romulan listed, fighting defensively, green blood oozing down the side of his face.

It was no real choice that had Rourke again draw his phaser and pick a target. Lotharn was simply in more danger. But the fact remained that heartbeats after Rourke took careful aim and Stunned the Klingon fighting the Romulan commander, the last Klingon drove his blade into Juarez’s chest.

‘Lieutenant!’ Rourke spun, phaser ready – but it was a disruptor blast that took the Klingon, Lotharn quicker to drag up the rifle his guard had left on the deck, and as suddenly as the violence had started, it stopped.

Rourke flew across the control room to sink to his knees in a pool of Juarez’s blood. The young officer was on his back, eyes wide, a dak’tagh jutting from his chest through the body armour.  Their eyes met for a moment, for one last thudding heartbeat, before Juarez gave a weak gurgle – and went still.

Ignoring Lotharn, Rourke’s hand smashed into his combadge. ‘Rourke to Endeavour, I need you to beam Lieutenant Juarez straight to sickbay -’

But Lieutenant Lindgren’s voice in his ear sounded fraught. ‘Captain – I’m sorry, our shields are up, we’re in a firefight against Klingons here.’

‘I know, it’s the House of K’Var, they boarded Petrarch…’ And Rourke’s gut went cold as implications sank in. Juarez was too far gone, and there was no way he was getting him to sickbay in time. The nearest medkit was on the Prydwen, docked on Petrarch. And Klingons had surged aboard where the life-signs were strongest. ‘Shit.’ He smashed his combadge again. ‘Rourke to Prydwen. Tarran, Hale, come in.’

The crackling silence was dented only by Lotharn’s footfalls, and only then did Rourke realise he had his back to his armed enemy. But all Lotharn did was say in a low voice, ‘My man’s dead, too. They’ll have cut off the route to my shuttle.’

Rourke looked up, chest tight, and shot to his feet. While he watched Lotharn, he tilted his head to address his combadge, speak to Lindgren. ‘Patch me tactical data to my tricorder, Lieutenant. All the scans you have of the number and location of lifesigns on the facility, too.’

‘Doing it, sir. I can guide you from here. But we’ve got Klingons landing on the Husk and other facilities, we’ve got ships tearing into us and the Guard and even the Star Empire – they’ve taken us completely by surprise.’

Rourke didn’t know how renegade Klingons were going to defeat two fleets. But these fleets had been battered and underpowered at even the start of the battle, and now they’d been taken completely by surprise. His jaw set as he snapped his tricorder open and saw the scan of Petrarch fill the screen.

‘Four life-signs at your shuttlebay,’ he said to Lotharn grimly. ‘Eight at mine. Two human. Six Klingon.’

‘What are these beasts playing at?’ Lotharn growled. ‘You know them?’

‘I know the House.’ Rourke flexed his left hand, on the palm of which lay the scar from his blood-bond to Torkath, son of K’Var. ‘One of the younger sons was prowling around the region when we approached. We suspect him of having Mo’Kai links -’

‘Mo’Kai,’ Lotharn sneered. ‘You mean the scapegoat the Klingons use so they can do as they wish and avoid political fallout by blaming so-called renegades? We’ve received reports of Klingon forces trying their luck across the border. This is their invasion of us when we’re weak.’

‘We can argue about the politics later.’ Something cold and hard had settled into Rourke’s gut. ‘Right now, they’ve got Ms Hale.’

Lotharn tilted his head. ‘That doesn’t sound like my problem, Rourke.’

‘The way I see it, we have three options. We can fight each other here and now, we can split up and try to take on these Klingons solo, or we can join forces.’

‘I have nothing to lose,’ said Lotharn, ‘by disappearing across this facility and letting them come to me until my ships win the fighting out there. Whatever we do here is meaningless if the Klingons win the ship battle, and we can’t impact that.’

‘It’s not meaningless for her.’ Rourke took a quick step forward, and saw Lotharn bristled. ‘You asked me here for a reason. You asked Hale here for a reason. It wasn’t to quibble over trade agreements. Help me and we can finish this negotiation, and you don’t have to go back to Rator to report defeat to your superiors.’

‘I’m not the one with my back against the wall here, Rourke. Someone whose safety is your responsibility is in the clutches of Klingons with, let us be frank, nebulous motivations at best,’ Lotharn sneered. ‘Don’t act like I need you. You need me.’ But the Romulan looked away, expression shifting before Rourke could summon a response. And at length he drew a deep breath. ‘But so do the people of Agarath. Subjects of Rator or not, these are Romulans, Remans. My kith and kin. And I will not leave them to the Klingons.’

He shouldered his rifle and extended a hand to Rourke, jaw tight. ‘Let us save your charge. And then protect these people.’

Rourke hesitated. Then he clasped the extended hand, Lotharn grabbing him by the wrist, and they exchanged curt nods. ‘Let’s do it. And I’m really looking forward to your ideas how we take out six Klingons with two hostages.’

‘Starfleet. You always think you can negotiate,’ Lotharn rolled his eyes and gave a knife-slash of a smile. ‘We deal with Klingons with Romulan trickery.’

‘Guardhouse, this is Vakkis; we’ve just had another landing party at Echo-7 –’

‘Jain here; I’ve got two officers down, need immediate backup…’

‘Oh, hell,’ Beckett breathed as the reports came echoing into the control centre in the Guardhouse. ‘We need, like, four extra teams at once.’

Rhade looked up at him, and knew he was going to have to sound far more confident and reassuring than he felt. ‘We’ve prepared for this,’ he said, and reached across the pool table console. ‘Directing Teams 5 and 6 to their fallback points. It gives us less leeway but they can better support each other.’

Hiran watched as the lights on the map shifted for the new deployment instructions. ‘If they’re overrun at the Crossroads, that gives the Klingons open access to one of our biggest habitation zones.’

‘Do we think the Klingons will just slaughter civilians?’ Beckett said nervously. ‘Why are they even here?’

‘It would be an embarrassment to Klingon honour for them to attack the defenceless,’ Rhade started.

But Hiran cut him off. ‘These are Romulans and Remans. Klingon honour doesn’t extend to us.’ He shouldered his rifle. ‘My commandos and I will deploy there. There’s nothing left to hold us back for.’

Rhade looked at the map, at the lights sparking up in other zones of the Husk with status updates. They had prepared for fighting Romulan soldiers, who would stick to disruptor rifles. They had built barricades and made tactical plans for a shooting match. They had not prepared for Klingons to charge with blades. And he was running out of anything more to give.

He looked up at Kowalski and Beckett. ‘Lieutenant, Chief – take the team and go with them. We have to hold the Crossroads.’

Kowalski nodded, but there was tension in his eyes. ‘And if somewhere else is threatened?’

‘Then I’ll go,’ Rhade said simply. ‘If somewhere else is threatened, we’re way past needing me in here.’

Everyone but Hiran looked dubious, but the Reman simply took a step back towards the door, flinty gaze on them. ‘We fight today not for uniforms or honour or oaths. There are people, helpless people, who need us. Today we are blessed with the best battle of all – to protect the innocent. It is simple. Fight. Win. Save them.’

‘Oh,’ breathed Beckett, even as he slung his own rifle over his shoulder. ‘That easy, huh?’

‘You’ve got this,’ Rhade told his officers as they left, but then they were gone and the Guardhouse was just him and Dathan and the chirruping of the pool table’s warning systems. At last he slumped, knowing that of all people, Dathan Tahla did not need him to put on a brave face.

‘If you go out there, you’re going to be a liability,’ she said coldly.

‘If I don’t go out there and need to, someone else will die.’

‘This isn’t about you. This is about winning. Fighting isn’t your job, not today.’ At last she met his gaze. ‘Today, you supervise, you wait.’

Rhade drew a slow, unhappy breath. ‘While others die.’

‘Self-sacrifice is easy for a man like you. This?’ She gestured at the tactical display. ‘This takes being a little more cold-blooded.’

* *

‘Good news and bad news!’ called Kharth as a fresh spray of sparks arced across her head in the battle-wracked bridge of the Talon. ‘The Romulan strike force has been hit hard, they’re in total disarray.’

Relekor had to grip the command chair hard to not be thrown from it. ‘What’s the good news?’

‘That is the good news. And the bad news. It’s both at once.’

Kharth could hear Thawn’s disapproval as the Ops officer called out from her station. ‘The Idaro has been disabled; that last salvo from the bird-of-prey took out their engines.’

‘Move to protect them!’ Relekor called. ‘Tell them to abandon ship.’

‘No!’ Kharth felt bile rise in her throat. ‘That’s what the Klingons want; we won’t be able to maneouvre, they’ll pin us in.’

‘So we leave them to be picked off?’

Kharth didn’t answer for a heartbeat, fingers flying across her controls to plot a new attack pattern. ‘We hit the bird-of-prey head first. Be aggressive. That keeps their attention on us; we provide better sport for the Klingons.’

Relekor hesitated. ‘What’s the condition of the rest of the Guard?’

‘The Klingons focused on the Star Navy first; they were closer,’ Thawn confirmed. ‘We’ve been able to take them in the side; I think they’d been fooled by us falling back, too, thought we were weaker. But the Klingons are rallying, and we’re just no match for their bigger ships.’

‘And Endeavour?’

‘Has got its own battles, as does the lead Star Navy ship. Two Vor’chas and other smaller ships over Petrarch.’ Thawn clicked her tongue. ‘They’re not coming to save us.’

Relekor paused, then pushed to his feet. ‘So we save ourselves. As you say, Lieutenant Kharth. Let’s hit the Klingons head-on.’

Kharth drew a deep breath. ‘You heard him, Ensign Harkon. Bring us about, follow my flight route. They’re going to try to break away, so we want to sink in our claws.’

Relekor chuckled. ‘Our talons.’

The deck lurched as inertial dampeners struggled to fully compensate when Harkon brought the Talon around. They’d been pinwheeling while they tried to figure out just what the hell was going on, but now it was time to act.

‘They’re opening fire on us; modulating our shields to compensate,’ Kharth called out. ‘Thawn, give me more power to deflector management.’

‘On it,’ Thawn called. Kharth knew they had precious little to spare, and yet still Thawn shaved inches off other systems, and adjusting their defences while the Klingons raked weapons fire over them became as easy as breathing.

‘I’m on their tail,’ Harkon confirmed. ‘Speeding up to get close.’

‘I’ve got targeting locks, do not lose them.’

The Talon swept through the roiling firefight like a racer who’d heard the starting shot, a hunter falling upon its foe. The Klingon bird-of-prey that had gone for the Idaro was forced to break off, but it was too slow to evade this deadly attack. In heartbeats the Talon was on it. The bird-of-prey’s shields held for only moments, and when they collapsed Kharth’s hand lashed out to drop a pair of torpedoes into their engines.

Through the blossoming explosion of the destroyed ship the Talon swept, and only then did Thawn give a more thorough assessment of their own damage.

‘An EPS conduit’s failed on Deck 4,’ she called. ‘Energy reallocation is going to get harder.’

‘Shields down to sixty percent,’ Kharth added. ‘Recommend we back up another ship and act as gunboat while we recharge.’

But Relekor, still on his feet, scowled at the tactical map. ‘The Hortens and the Priar are taking a hammering.’

‘We don’t -’

‘We’re the biggest ship in the Agarath Guard. We have to protect them.’

Kharth watched him for a moment. It struck her in particular for him to speak out to defend the Priar; the frigate was crewed by some of the more ship-trained of Korsk’s Remans. She exchanged a glance with Thawn, who sucked her teeth.

‘One more sprint in us, maybe,’ said the Betazoid. ‘But emergency power is limited.’

‘We can sprint or they can die,’ said Relekor. ‘Bring us in.’

As they raced through the periphery of the asteroid belt towards the hotspot, Kharth cast her eye to the wider tactical map. Endeavour was still locked in a rolling firefight, but as she watched, two Star Navy frigates disengaged from the Klingons to set upon one of the smaller ships of the Agarath Guard. ‘We can’t win this as a three-way fight. This only benefits the Klingons.’

‘Once the Klingons ease off, the Star Navy will come for us,’ Relekor pointed out.

‘The Priar has lost power and is drifting,’ Thawn called out, and the wider battle became irrelevant.

‘We need to engage from here,’ Relekor said. ‘Draw their fire.’

Kharth hesitated, but knew there was only so much arguing she could get away with on the bridge. Quick taps of the controls later, and the Talon was firing long-range at the Klingon ships besetting their allies.

As expected, it mostly bounced off their shields. As expected, it still caught the Klingons’ attention, and they rounded on the barrelling form of the Talon, opening fire –

And the first salvo crashed through their shields as the emergency power reserves failed.

The deck surged up and Kharth lost her footing. Explosions racked the bridge, and everything spun in shadow for a moment. She could only have been down for seconds, and by the time she was pulling herself back up again, Harkon was shouting.

‘I’m breaking off! They’re not following!’

‘I – that hit us straight-on and I didn’t have the reserve power,’ Thawn was panting. ‘Commander, what do we…’ Both Thawn and Kharth looked up to the command chair at the same time, and realised at the same time that Relekor had gone down and had not risen.

‘Harkon, pull us back!’ Kharth called, staggering around the tactical console towards the crumpled bundle of Commander Relekor. She did not need to be very close to realise that the overloading of the conduit overhead had hit him straight in the face. Still she bent down to check, still she put a finger to feel for a pulse, still she came away with nothing but a hand stained with green blood. She straightened and looked to the wide-eyed Thawn. ‘He’s dead.’

Thawn drew a quaking breath. ‘The Star Navy strike force is pulling back in disarray. The Klingons are focusing on the Guard.’

‘Endeavour?’ Thawn just shook her head, and Kharth turned back to the tactical map on the main display and the total chaos reigning there. She swallowed hard. ‘Lieutenant Thawn, signal the Agarath Guard. Inform them I’m assuming command of our forces. We need to pull back and rally; deeper into the asteroid belt.’

And still she had to move back to Tactical, because the only thing worse for Kharth than being forced into responsibility for hundreds of Romulan and Reman lives, was not being responsible for her firepower while she was about it.

* *

Moving through the Husk under invasion was like surging through a forest fire. Shuttered and barricaded buildings lined their way, and Beckett knew behind every door and window was an innocent life that had already seen too much hardship for them to possibly afford to fail. In the distance hummed the warning signs of battle, the Klingons whose ships had slid cloaked through the defences of the asteroid belt already revelling in getting boots on the ground. But they could not afford to be diverted by any of it – the distant screams, the war cries roaring, the clash of metal on metal and gunfire, the tang on the tip of the tongue of blood and death. They had their heading.

Beckett hadn’t realised how hard he was breathing until Hiran slowed from the lead of their column and fell back to join him.

‘You’re the one who’s been talking to anyone and everyone,’ the Reman governor said, voice a low rumble.

‘I’ve not…’ Beckett hesitated. ‘I’m not in a position to report to you on what anyone’s been saying; that’s not the point of my research.’

Hiran scoffed. ‘Not what I want. If I want people’s opinions, I’ll ask them. You’re looking tense, Lieutenant. First battle?’ He tilted his head. ‘Not fight. Battle.’ Beckett could only give an awkward nod, and the Reman reached up to clasp his shoulder. ‘Think of the people you’ve been talking to. Think of their stories. You’re doing it for them.’

Beckett swallowed. ‘I’ve trained for this, sir.’

‘No doubt you can move and shoot and do it well. From this point it’s not about training, it’s about heart. Do you think it takes hate in your heart to fight? That can work.’

‘If I think of the people here, the people I’ve heard the stories of – the people I want to see survive and thrive now I know what’s on the line…’ Beckett hesitated. ‘That’ll just distract me.’

‘Fury distracts. Fear distracts. It’s not about what feeling does or doesn’t distract you. It’s about what feeling makes you fight harder.’ Hiran gave him a stern nod. ‘You know these people now. Fight for them.’

‘Governor!’ Kowalski had taken the lead, and called out as Beckett realised they were almost at the Crossroads, where two teams had fallen back to one last set of barricades. If they were overrun, this entire residential section was going to be at the mercy of Klingons.

Beyond Kowalski, Beckett could see the narrow streets, the solid cover, the mixture of Starfleet and Remans standing ready. And they could not have been more perfectly timed, as down the long narrow road under the perpetual night sky of the habitation dome, shadows stretched across the silhouetted form of the oncoming Klingons.

Beckett drew a shaky breath as Hiran moved to the front, and cast one last look at the blocked doors and windows of the housing block they passed. He’d been here days ago, spoken to one survivor of the uprising who’d lost an arm and was trying to keep the water lines maintained so everyone in the building could drink, listened to their hopes and aspirations of what lay in Agarath’s future. But none of it could happen yet.

He tightened his grip on his rifle and moved forward. Fight for them.

Rourke hunkered down beside the doors to the docking bay where he’d left the Prydwen, and consulted his tricorder. ‘Still eight life signs,’ he said in a hushed tone, though there was no way his voice would travel through the bulkhead. ‘Two human, six Klingon.’

‘They haven’t killed your people at least,’ mused Lotharn. ‘That’s not a good sign.’

‘What do you mean?’

The Romulan shrugged. ‘It means they want something. That’s when Klingons get unpredictable. I think they know we’re the fleet commanders and we’re here. If they were cloaked and watching our engagement, they saw two flagships launch shuttles to come here during a cease fire.’

‘And if this is the House of K’Var, and it is Dakor leading them, then they know Endeavour. They know me.’ Rourke straightened, jaw tight. ‘There’s a chance I can talk them down.’

‘Talk down Klingons with hostages -’

‘I’m a sworn blood-brother of a son of their House. Even if Dakor is renegade, that doesn’t mean all of those of K’Var following him will disregard my bond to Torkath.’

‘That’s an idea,’ Lotharn allowed, and drew a deep breath. ‘Here’s another one.’

Then he drove his disruptor pistol into Rourke’s back and grabbed him by the shoulder. Lip curling, he leaned in. ‘I told you this would take Romulan trickery. They sent more warriors to your shuttle for a reason.’

‘You -’ But Rourke barely had time to marshal his shock as Lotharn hammered the door control to the shuttlebay and shoved them both inside.

Dim lighting cast jagged shadows about the landing bay. The hulking mass of the Prydwen stood silhouetted against the stars, but the landing ramp was down and light spilled from the inside with a brightness that was more blinding than illuminating. Five broad-shouldered Klingons stood on the deck, the crumpled, battered, but still-breathing form of Petty Officer Tarran in a bundle before them, barely conscious.

There was no sign of a sixth Klingon or Sophia Hale.

‘Klingons of K’Var!’ Lotharn roared as they stepped in. ‘You’ve ambushed us to kill my people and to kill Starfleet. True deception almost worthy of a Romulan. You have my attention. Let us talk.’

Rourke’s jaw tensed as the Klingons turned to them, and he had to growl, ‘You slippery piece of shit -’

But the lead warrior simply opened his hands, shoulders straight. ‘Why shouldn’t we cut you both down here, Romulan?’

‘For whatever reason you haven’t slaughtered that guard or the dignitary aboard,’ Lotharn retorted. ‘For whatever reason you’re lying in wait for us at the Starfleet docking port. I don’t think I’m the one you want. And I think you want more than blood here.’

The Klingon shrugged. ‘That doesn’t mean we need to spare you.’

Rourke could feel Lotharn bristle and grow. ‘I am Commander Tavalok tr’Lotharn, commanding officer of this strike force, and ranking member of Galae Command. There is a reason your warriors have targeted the Velorum Sector: fine terrain for battle without fighting an entire armed forces. However bold your venture to here in Agarath is.’

But Rourke drew a quick breath. ‘Listen to me, all of you. I don’t know why Dakor, son of K’Var, has sent you here. My name is Matthew Rourke, sworn brother to Torkath, son of K’Var. I am a friend and ally of your House, and Dakor would have you breach your oaths to the family for whatever reason he -’

‘Does that make us brothers?’ Footsteps rang out from the deck of the Prydwen, and Rourke’s blood went cold as the broad silhouette of Dakor himself appeared at the top of the ramp. ‘I don’t think so, Rourke. You can try to twist the loyalty of my warriors with talk of Torkath all you wish. But they have not followed Torkath here. They’ve followed me.’

Rourke swallowed hard. ‘This entire venture will do nothing but bring the might of Starfleet down on you -’

‘I see the might of Starfleet. I’m unimpressed.’ Dakor wasn’t especially tall, but he was particularly broad, and had the presence still to fill the landing bay as he descended the ramp.

‘For now. You think that you can take and hold Agarath?’

‘Hold? No.’ Dakor tilted his head. ‘Make off with its arcybite? Enough to dictate the shipbuilding and refits of the House of K’Var for a year or more? Certainly.’

‘I see,’ said Rourke, and looked across at the other warriors. ‘He’d make raiders of you. Plunderers and thieves, targeting those already in a fight, or the helpless civilians -’

‘Romulans,’ Dakor sneered, and Rourke felt Lotharn tense next to him – but only for a moment. ‘You can’t dishonour the dishonourable. No, Rourke, I came to Agarath to get what I need to stop my father, my siblings, from remaining weak and listing and refusing to take a side. But I came here because…’ He gave a smile that was all teeth. ‘Because my brother insulted our house when he made oaths to you.’

Rourke swallowed hard. ‘If that’s the case, if you came here for me, then… what have you done with Sophia Hale?’

Dakor shrugged. ‘That’s hardly your concern.’

‘If Lotharn here’s to sell me so he can get him and his forces away,’ Rourke pressed on desperately, ‘then leave her here. Or leave her with him.’ He half-twisted as if he might glare at Lotharn, though he couldn’t. ‘You at least can bloody well negotiate to send her back to the Federation, you -’

Lotharn shoved him. ‘I’ve no interest in her,’ he said, and Rourke went still as he felt the pressure and weight in his back. The Romulan’s eyes went up to Dakor. ‘But the captain speaks truth,’ he continued. ‘Take him. I’ll withdraw my forces. You can slaughter these traitors to Rator, plunder their resources, and go.’

Dakor narrowed his eyes at him. ‘What do you get out of this, Romulan? Apart from slinking away with your tail between your legs?’

Lotharn shrugged. ‘I wasn’t winning this fight. It’s not ideal for you to wreck Agarath, but they will come whimpering back to the Star Empire after the ravages of your warriors.’

Dakor spat on the deck – but then he laughed. ‘As slippery as I would expect from a snake like you.’

‘You seem like a man with vision,’ Lotharn said. ‘You’re not just here to fight. You want enough ships left which are intact enough to make off with Agarath’s resources. This way you get a fight, you get to win, you get the prize of this man, this wound to your honour – and you get the cargo you’re after.’

Dakor snorted. ‘Then we have an accord. Give me Rourke, and I’ll give the word to my warriors.’

‘An accord,’ Lotharn said bluntly, and again shoved Rourke in the back.

He stumbled but kept his feet, fought to keep his back straight, as if defiance was enough to keep him upright and alive. His gaze fell on the Klingons as he advanced – Dakor with his bat’leth in-hand, three others with blades ready, two with disruptors levelled at him and Lotharn.

One warrior with a mek’leth approached, blade hung low by their side, other hand extended. He was almost upon Rourke, almost about to grab him by the arm, when Rourke moved.

And drew from behind his back the phaser pistol Lotharn had shoved into his belt to ram it into the Klingon’s gut and fire.

Hell broke out at once. Rourke had to step in and grab the falling warrior, and yanked him in the line of fire as one warrior with a disruptor opened fire. The blast thudded into the unconscious warrior, but that was only one gunman, the other lining up a more precise aim –

– only to fall as Lotharn brought up his own disruptor and dropped him with one shot.

Then it was only four against two, and the two of them had energy weapons. Lotharn shot the other gunman as the last two Klingon swordsmen surged forward, and Rourke had to again seize the mek’leth of a fallen enemy to defend himself. He kicked the Klingon in his arms at one to slow them down and pivoted back, parrying the oncoming bat’leth swing of another. But this was a rolling melee now, and in the gloom and chaos he didn’t know how effective Lotharn could be with a disruptor.

So his heart sung with relief when the Romulan commander slid into the fight with his sword drawn, and the odds were much more in their favour.

Rourke was not a fencer and he was not much of a swordsman. He knew knives and fists, which meant he knew his best choice was to keep close to his opponent, force them to fight on his terms, deny them the graceful and quick moves of a bat’leth fighter in a duel and turn this into his preferred fight: a brawl. So he ducked one swing, stepped in, raked his mek’leth across the warrior’s flank and felt it bite through the armour to draw blood.

Beside him, Lotharn was everything he was not. The Romulan wielded the long, thin, single-edged blade of his people with grace and speed, and had his enemy outmatched. A bat’leth could have let the Klingon overwhelm him with strength, but Lotharn was quick enough to simply twist away the enemy’s blows with a parry, and then lunge in for counter-strike landing short but painful blows. In so far as Rourke could see, he wondered if this was going to be a death by a thousand cuts.

But it ended almost at once. Rourke drove his mek’leth into his enemy’s thigh, and as he fell to one knee, howling, slammed him in the face with the pommel, dropping him. Either Lotharn had been gauging his opponent or simply playing, for it took little more than a flourish, the hiss of a blade slicing air, and the Klingon fell.

The two men came to a halt, chests heaving, and Rourke felt the blood sing in his ears as he glanced at Lotharn. ‘Remind me to not go up against you in fencing or poker,’ he growled.

‘I needed you to be convinced,’ Lotharn said indifferently.

But there was little time to rally, as Rourke straightened to regard the Prydwen, and his heart went tight and dark. ‘So much for honour,’ he growled as he saw Dakor, one arm wrapped around Hale’s throat to pin her in front of him, the other pressing his knife to the side of her neck. ‘Your family would be ashamed of this.’

‘I don’t take lectures on honour from humans,’ Dakor sneered. ‘And you’ve already reneged on one deal. Don’t think I can trust anything you say.’

Rourke swallowed hard, and looked down at Hale. ‘Are you alright?’

‘I’m not hurt,’ she managed, her voice somewhat strangled, her grip on Dakor’s forearms not strong enough to let her fight back. ‘You need to get out of here, get to the battle…’

‘Not yet.’ Slowly Rourke let the mek’leth drop, but he brought up his phaser pistol in a two-handed grip, and his gaze locked back on Dakor. ‘You’re going to let her go,’ he said in a slow, level voice. ‘And I’ll deliver you to your family, not the High Council, not a Federation cell, not to Agarath or the Star Navy. You’re not making a deal with Commander Lotharn. You’re not even making a deal with me. You’re trusting Torkath.’

‘Torkath has nothing to -’

‘Torkath trusted me enough to swear a blood-oath fifteen years ago.’ Rourke continued to keep his voice level, though his heartbeat thundered in his ears, his mouth remained bone-dry. ‘I owe him delivering you to your family. And to let them decide what to do with you.’ He saw Dakor hesitate. Beside him, Lotharn remained stock-still, but Rourke could feel the tension radiating off him. He was poised and ready, though Rourke had no idea what the Romulan could possibly contribute at this point.

But then Dakor’s lip curled. ‘Then all you’ve said, Rourke, is that you won’t kill me. Or that will break your oath to Torkath.’

Rourke swallowed bile. ‘I don’t have to kill you. I just have to stop you from getting away -’

‘Let me take this ship, and the woman, and leave,’ Dakor snapped. ‘Try to stop the ship, she dies. Try to shoot me here, and you think I can’t so much as twitch and drive a blade through her neck?’ He gave a short jab at that, and Hale flinched, biting her lip tight.

‘Take her,’ Lotharn said at last, straightening. ‘Take her and run. You get your safety and we lose only one more.’

‘That’s not how this is going to work,’ Rourke found himself snapping before he could even begin to guess if Lotharn had a plan or if he was just cutting his losses. ‘You’re going to let her go and surrender -’

But Dakor took a sharp step back up the ramp, Hale pinned against him. Short as the Klingon was, she was enough to provide him good cover, and all Rourke could make out was the narrowest target of his head. ‘I think not. Listen to the Romulan again, Rourke. Maybe I’ll toss her to my family when we’re gone, maybe I won’t -’

Rourke found his thumb tapping the back of his phaser. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Dakor; this is your last chance -’

‘I will not go home empty-handed -’

Rourke’s phaser blast hit him in the forehead. Dakor might have twitched, he might have stumbled, he might have consciously or unconsciously managed to get one last lethal jerk of the knife. But he couldn’t, because a phaser blast on the right setting was enough to disintegrate him on impact.

Hale gave a noise that would have been undignified under other, far less reasonable circumstances, staggering and almost falling. Rourke went to rush forward but it was Lotharn who stopped him short, the Romulan’s expression aghast.

‘That was – what’s wrong with you?’ Lotharn snapped. ‘You could have hit her!’

Rourke jerked his arm free and strode across the landing bay to Hale, reaching for her shoulders. ‘Are you hurt?’

Her face was pale as she looked up at him, and he could see the tremble in her gaze as both sense and instinct suggested panic. But as he watched she dug deep and grew steadier, drawing a wavering breath. ‘I’m not. But Tarran…’

Lotharn had gone to the fallen petty officer, checking his vitals. ‘He’s alive. Looks like a weapon stun after they beat him.’ He straightened and turned to Rourke, jaw tight. ‘You’ve killed their commander. Will that break them or make them fight to the death?’

‘They’ll fight – but they won’t have staying power. Weather their anger and they’ll break,’ said Rourke, still keeping a hand on Hale’s arm. 

‘I see,’ said Lotharn, and it was only as they stood there, regarding each other, that Rourke truly remembered they had come to this station as enemies. Then he reached for the communicator from his belt, flipping it open and keying the activation. ‘Galae Command, this is Commander Lotharn. Focus all your fire on the Klingons. Form up with the defenders of Agarath. We will drive the invaders from imperial space, we will preserve the lives of the people, and we will worry about factions later.’

‘That’s all we can do here,’ said Hale at last, some colour returning to her cheeks. ‘Give orders and wait for it to be over. And – and help Tarran. He fought to keep me safe, they could have killed him but he didn’t stop…’

‘There’s a medical station on the Prydwen,’ Rourke agreed, and advanced to the fallen crewman. He glanced to Lotharn as he got there. ‘Help me carry him?’

Lotharn rolled his eyes, but he did reach down to help with Tarran – only to drop his voice. ‘One of these days, Rourke, you and me will finish our conversations. Know that nothing you have done here – not least of all your reckless disregard for the safety of your own – has fundamentally changed anything.’

‘It looks like,’ said Rourke, hefting up the young crewman with a grunt, ‘it’s changed things for today.’

Lotharn hesitated, then nodded. ‘For today.’

There’d been a scared face at the window. One block back, the pale cheeks and dark eyes of a Reman child peering out from behind a barricade for a moment, just a moment, before they were ushered away. Beckett shouldn’t have seen them; he shouldn’t have been looking that way, should have been focused on the barricade. But there had been a lull in the fighting and he’d glanced back.

It didn’t help. It only made him more aware of how worn and battered the defenders were of this crossroads in the Husk, how much of a beating they’d already taken. How much was at stake.

His attention was dragged back to the front by Kowalski sinking behind the barricade next to him, the chief’s chest heaving. ‘They’re coming,’ he warned.

‘Again?’

‘Listen.’ Kowalski’s jaw set, and he reached out for Beckett’s rifle. ‘Klingons in body armour are hard to take down. Their physiology’s tough. Their armour’s tough.’ He began adjusting the power settings.

‘Hey, Chief – I’m not about to tell the commandos what they can and can’t do, but we’ve got Stun settings -’

‘How many times did you see them get back up again after you shot them on this setting?’

Beckett hesitated. ‘Not every time.’

‘But sometimes.’ Kowalski met his gaze. ‘Sometimes they get back up and they keep fighting.’ His thumb hovered over the setting switch, eyes questioning.

Beckett had thought the metal taste in his mouth was from the air filtration system, the sweat and bulkheads around them, even the blood in the air. Now he realised it was his own body trying to resist the horrors before them. ‘I didn’t get into Starfleet to kill people.’ But still he reached out, and flicked the switch.

Kowalski let out a slow breath and nodded. ‘We’re here to protect people.’

‘Sure. But protecting my own feelings about killing while you, while other officers, while the commandos are dropping them and keeping them down is – is vanity.’

Before Kowalski could reply, there was a roar from the road ahead, and the two rose, rifles propped up over the barricade. There had been three waves, and they’d driven them all back. The Klingons had pulled to other areas, tried to breach other segments. But this was the best way for them to get through to the heart of the Husk, and here they came.

Hiran’s voice rose over the hum of Klingon chanting. ‘Stand fast,’ growled the old commando. ‘Stand for your people.’

Then they hit. It was a wave of roars and metal, of disruptor fire and shadows surging forth from the dim-lit streets into them. Beckett’s rifle came up and for some reason his most conscious thought was the most simple of his training – not that he had forgotten how to hold a rifle, how to aim, how to breathe, but the words running through his mind were even more basic than that. Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull.

The flash of the energy blasts. The roar of the oncoming Klingons. The clash of metal on metal as they surged into the front row of Reman commandos, braced and ready to take the warriors who longed to fight and kill up close. Then it was a roiling storm of shadows, and he had to aim up, over their heads, shoot at the flashes of light that were enemy gunmen. This time, more often than not, his blasts received no answer, the pinpricks of illumination darkening as he shot them.

But the storm surged anew, and then a shadow was in front of him, a hulking Klingon warrior swinging a bat’leth down. Beckett had to roll so the blade didn’t split his skull, and only then did he realise Kowalski wasn’t beside him.

He fumbled for his phaser pistol to fire at close range, but the Klingon kept coming – then a shadow took the warrior in the side. Darkness swirled as Hiran hit the Klingon, his knife flipped with blade down, and the flurry of blows between them couldn’t have lasted more than two heartbeats before the Reman’s weapon slashed across the Klingon’s throat.

The warrior fell even as the storm eased, even as this last wave of Klingons fell back again, and Beckett accepted Hiran’s help to stagger to his feet.

‘For our people, Lieutenant,’ the revolutionary leader said gruffly, firmly, but Beckett wasn’t looking at him – was looking, aghast, at the blade protruding from just below the centre of his ribcage, jutting out through the armour.

‘Governor…’

Hiran looked down – opened his mouth – then he fell, as if it took knowing of the injury to feel it. Beckett barely caught him as he collapsed, and still he wasn’t quite strong enough to bear the whole weight of the big Reman and his body armour.

Hiran twitched in his arms as Beckett tried to ease him down, grabbing his shoulder. ‘Don’t stop,’ he croaked. ‘I’m just one. There are so many of us…’ Then he went still.

When Beckett looked up, Kowalski was back over him, the big man battered but still on his feet, rifle propped against his shoulder. ‘…the Klingons?’ Beckett managed to ask.

Kowalski’s jaw set. ‘Another wave coming in.’ He looked back at the rows of defenders, at the Remans and Romulans alike staring aghast at their fallen leader, at the Starfleet officers wavering with this loss.

‘We can’t…’ Beckett swallowed. ‘How much more can we hold this?’

Kowalski hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’

The pale face at the window was gone. But that didn’t mean there was nobody behind these doors. That didn’t mean the eyes of the Husk, of the thousands who lived here, were not upon them. Creakily Beckett got to his feet, chest heaving. ‘You don’t know if we have a chance,’ he said, and Kowalski merely winced, not wanting to lie, not wanting to confirm.

Beckett looked back at the dimming storm. He could see motion down the road. Though Klingons were strewn in the street, dead or dropped, many more had survived to pull back. And the more they met resistance elsewhere in the Husk, the more they would come here. He drew another deep breath and hefted his rifle. ‘I don’t know if we have a choice.’

Kowalski gave a stiff nod. ‘Alright, Lieutenant.’

They turned to face the road ahead and the shifting shadows, turned as the rest of the defenders rallied.

‘I feel,’ Beckett said in a lighter voice than he’d expected to use, ‘like I should have something terribly Shakespearean to say.’

‘Do you have anything Shakespearean to say?’

‘Maybe.’ He cleared his throat. ‘If I die here, Chief, make up something cool for me.’

‘Deal.’

* *

‘They can’t keep holding.’ Rhade’s fists clenched as he stared down at the map in the centre of the Guardhouse.

‘Everywhere else is barely holding on,’ pointed out Dathan. ‘The Klingons are pressng that section because it’s the hardest to defend, and they’ve been bouncing off everywhere else. But if we draw from somewhere else and they hit…’

She did not jump when his palm slammed on the console. But she did go stuff, watching him with his tight jaw, with his heaving chest, as he glared at the simple truth before him that they did not have enough, and there was little he could do.

‘If they’re overrun, a lot of people will die,’ growled Adamant Rhade, and reached for the phaser rifle propped up against the console.

She grabbed his forearm. ‘We have to keep monitoring from here. Because if things do ease off, we can send reinforcements. If they do break through, we can give instructions on the rallying point, the fallback point. That will save lives.’

‘Not enough lives.’

‘Some lives are better than no lives.’ She felt him tense under her, watched his dark eyes stare at her hand, and slowly she pulled back, drawing a deep breath. ‘I’ll go.’

That just made his jaw set in a different way. ‘I don’t -’

‘There is no argument you can make for why I shouldn’t go, if you were prepared to go.’

Their eyes met – and Dathan had rarely been happier to hear the click of the comm system as it came to life. This time from a different frequency, one they had not heard much from so far today.

‘Guardhouse, this is Zaviss. I’m bringing reinforcements to Hiran’s team.’

They both stared at the console, and it took a moment before Rhade tapped the comms button. ‘Please confirm, Lady Zaviss; you reported insufficient numbers to leave the Upper District.’

‘I did have insufficient numbers, containing all entrances and keeping dissident households under guard.’ There was a pause, though Zaviss sounded unconcerned, even as she added, ‘So I have executed the dissidents. I and my guards are on our way.’

Dathan did not, for once, have to fake a reaction of surprise at someone’s cold-bloodedness. ‘Oh,’ she breathed.

‘Governor Hiran and I can discuss this when it is over. Inform the Crossroads team, Guardhouse. We’re two minutes out.’

Rhade stared in silence as the map shifted with the new information, as the dots of moving teams made progress across the map. At length Dathan drew a fresh breath and said, ‘Does she have enough to help them hold?’

Rhade swallowed. ‘She has to.’

* *

‘Star Navy forces are engaging the bird-of-prey attack wing.’ Thawn had to raise her voice to be heard over the hum of the Talon in the midst of battle.

Kharth nodded, one hand running over the Talon’s deflector controls, the other bringing their tactical map to focus in on the section. ‘Have our second wing support them.’ A brief silence met her instructions, and her gaze snapped up. ‘The Romulans have engaged the Klingons and not us. Let’s work together to beat up some Klingons.’

‘Endeavour is still taking down these Vor’chas,’ Thawn warned.

‘Lieutenant!’ It probably wasn’t the first time Harkon had tried to get her attention. ‘K’Vort class coming around on our aft.’

‘Okay, we’re going to have to get this done right.’ Kharth lifted a hand. ‘We’re running low on torpedoes from our aft launcher, so, Harkon, I want you to slow down and let them get right up close.’

‘Up close,’ Thawn echoed dubiously.

‘We’ll eat it on our shields. When I give the signal…’ The tap of a button sent her plan over to Thawn’s console, and the Betazoid quirked another suspicious eyebrow – but nodded.

‘They’re here,’ Harkon warned, and again the Talon bucked under weapons fire. It took all of Kharth’s skill to keep dancing deflector strength to where she anticipated the Klingons would shoot, watching the percentage dip down, watching the proximity metre for the K’Vort tick down and down –

‘Now!’

Thawn swore as she hit the controls. But a heartbeat later Kharth saw the change on her display as the Talon vented a stream of plasma from its aft, ebbing through the space they’d left for the K’Vort to fly right into it.

And erupt into an inferno when one blast from the Talon’s energy weapons ignited it. The K’Vort spun as it tried to surge through the blaze, twisting away – and into a position where Kharth could bring the Talon’s other weapons to bear, torpedoes thudding into the unprotected hull to hit, crack – and burst it open.

Harkon whooped as the Talon pulled away from the detonating K’Vort. ‘Scratch one more!’

Kharth drew a slow breath and felt strength come with it. ‘How’s the fleet?’ she asked Thawn.

Thawn sucked her teeth. ‘First and third wing are struggling; they’ve got birds-of-prey all over them, and there’s a K’t’inga they can’t quite get on top of…’

Damn last-generation Agarath fleet. ‘Put me through to the nearest lead Star Navy ship.’ Thawn’s nod confirmed that their connection was audio only, and Kharth drew another breath. ‘Galae Command, this is the Agarath Guardship Talon, requesting you form up on us so we can take out that last wing.’

As she watched, the tactical map shifted – the Star Navy ships beginning to pull back now the pressure was off them. But the voice that replied was lighter, more uncertain. ‘This is the Imperial Navy ship Eskalion. We don’t answer to you; we’ve softened them plenty and are awaiting further instructions from –’

‘You clearly had orders to help, or you wouldn’t have stopped taking chunks out of us to focus on the Klingons. You’re battered, I see that. Join my formation and we can finish this. Your commander signalled that we can leave the politics for later.’ Her throat tightened, and she had to fight to swallow through it. ‘My name is Lieutenant Saeihr t’Kharth of the Federation starship Endeavour, but my mother was Commander Saylaha t’Kharth of the Star Navy, betrayed by deserters during the Romulus Crisis. We all want the same thing right now – to protect the lives of our people. Work with me to do that.’

A pause – then the comm line went dead, and Kharth smacked her fist on the control. ‘Son of -’

‘They’re – ah, actually, they’re coming about and forming up,’ said Thawn, blinking. ‘On our wing.’

Harkon twisted back in her chair, beaming. ‘Imagine that, talking a whole bunch of enemies into fighting by our side. Shall we take them in, Skipper?’

Dangerous words, thought Kharth. ‘They had their orders. I just reminded them of that.’

Thawn glanced up again. ‘There’s a communication going out from Facility Petrarch – no, it’s Starfleet, it’s from the captain’s yacht. All frequencies – they want everyone to hear this.’

The viewscreen came to life to show what Kharth recognised at the cockpit of the Prydwen and the armoured, battered, bloodied face of Captain Rourke. His voice grated as he spoke.

‘Warriors of the House of K’Var. My name is Matthew Rourke, captain of the starship Endeavour, sworn brother to Torkath, son of K’Var. You have breached Romulan territory and attacked Starfleet ships. I understand you came here on a quest for glory against the wishes of K’Var himself, against the wishes of the High Council, at the behest of Dakor, son of K’Var.

‘Dakor is dead. I killed him. For my oaths to Torkath, I urge you all to run.’

Kharth looked at Thawn. ‘What’re the Klingons doing?’

Thawn winced. ‘Forming up. I don’t know if they’re going to run or rally.’

‘Or maybe they don’t know.’ Kharth winced and nodded. ‘Perhaps we should give them a push. Let’s finish this.’

‘Agarath Guard and Star Navy ships have encircled the Klingon strike force,’ Lindgren called out. ‘They’re leaving them a space to run to, but they’re on their heels.’

Valance should have been satisfied by this. Valance was satisfied by this. But there was still the tiniest thread running through her. You can’t possibly let Kharth beat them before you.

She pushed herself to her feet. ‘I’m tired of this,’ she said, nodding at the Vor’cha they’d been locked in a fight with, unable to fully bring their forces to bear with the birds-of-prey backing it up. But Lotharn’s ship had joined the fight, and the Klingons had to be wavering. ‘Mr Arys, make straight for the cruiser and keep going. Mr Stevens, bring all weapons to bear. We’re going to brute force this.’

Arys glanced back, apprehensive. ‘We’re going to try to brute force Klingons? The captain gave them a warning and they’ve not bolted…’

‘I expect there are a lot of arguments happening on these bridges. They just need a push.’ Her gaze was level as Endeavour barrelled towards the enemy cruiser, unleashing weapons fire. Normally she would have expected the Klingons to hold their ground, to meet strength with strength. But the tide had turned. Honour demanded many things. But honour sometimes did not extend as far as dying like a dog in some dank corner of the Romulan Star Empire with enemies uniting against them.

‘Their shields are down – they’re breaking off!’ Veldman reported with satisfaction from Science.

‘This isn’t how or where they want to be defeated,’ Valance said levelly. ‘But stay on them, Mr Arys. Stevens, don’t shoot to kill or disable, but we will hound them out of here. Keep us within transporter range of Petrarch and if they flee too far for that, let them go.’

Across the tactical map of the Agarath System, the tiny moving crests of the Klingon Empire that Lindgren had quickly put up there were pulling back, heading for the periphery of the system. The forces that had ambushed them around Petrarch, including Dakor’s own ship, were now withdrawing to join them.

Valance let out a slow breath. ‘It’s over.’

Arys twisted in his chair to meet her gaze. ‘If the Star Navy doesn’t want another go.’

‘We’ve got a moment. Lower shields, Mr Stevens; Lieutenant Athaka, beam our away team back.’

Rourke was back on the bridge within minutes, battered and bloodied but with that grim set to his jaw Valance knew meant there would be more to discuss later. ‘What’s our condition?’

‘Klingon ships are withdrawing,’ Valance said coolly, stepping aside from the command chair. ‘The Star Navy has been focusing fire on them for the past while, even cooperated with the Agarath Guard taking some of them down. Do you know what Lotharn is about to do?’

‘I don’t know anything about that man for sure.’ Rourke sank into his chair with a grunt. ‘Bring shields back online and take us about to face his ship. If he so much as twitches the wrong way, I want to be ready.’

Veldman glanced up from Science. ‘Klingon ships have gone to warp, sir. They’re heading for the border.’

‘It’s one thing for them to defy their own House with one of K’Var’s sons leading them. With Dakor dead…’ Rourke sucked his teeth. ‘That’s not our problem, and definitely not today.’

Valance sat next to him and leaned closer, voice dropping. ‘Juarez?’ He winced and shook his head, and with a pained sigh she sat back.

‘Sir.’ Lindgren turned at comms. ‘Lead Romulan ship is hailing us.’

Rourke nodded, and the viewscreen flooded to life with the dimmed and battered bridge of Lotharn’s ship. The commander himself stood there in similar condition to Rourke, shoulders heavy.

‘It’s over,’ Lotharn sighed. ‘I commend you on your defence of the Agarath system, Captain. Against me, against the Klingons. You can tell as well as I that now you have me out-matched.’

‘We never finished our conversation on Petrarch, Commander.’ The corners of Rourke’s eyes creased. ‘We can still talk.’

‘I have made my position clear. My duty is to my people. I was sent to bring Agarath back under Rator’s control but, failing that, I would not see them slaughtered by opportunistic Klingons.’ He sighed and cast a look about his bridge, seeming to swell at whatever sight greeted him. ‘If Rator is to stand, we have to demonstrate why we are worthy of being followed. Why we are the heirs of the empire.’

Rourke gave a stern nod. ‘Then I wish you good fortune setting the example, Commander Lotharn. You can show them a better way -’

‘You remain, Rourke, perhaps the worst of your people.’ Lotharn sounded wry. ‘Brash and self-righteous. Know what commands your loyalty above all else, what drives you, before you look to judge me. You think yourself a man of duty until your heart burns. But that is when we need duty the most.’ He shook his head before Rourke could answer. ‘Some day we’ll finish this, you and I.’

Rourke’s jaw tightened. ‘I don’t think we need to. I think we’ve made better allies than enemies.’

‘You got today, Rourke. Don’t push your luck. Enjoy this victory. Lotharn out.’

The viewscreen went dead, and Valance watched as her captain’s hands curled in the armrests of his chair. A moment later Veldman looked up again.

‘Romulan strike force is withdrawing, sir. They’re going to warp as well – heading for Rator.’

Valance found herself the only one with voice in the silence that followed. ‘It’s over. We’ve won.’

Rourke slumped, eyes closing. ‘Get me reports from across the system. Let me know the cost.’

The cost came rolling in. Kharth at the head of the Agarath Guard, reporting on their losses, the loss of Relekor. Various reports from the facilities of the system, many of which had seen Klingons landing forces in their hunger for battle, Korsk brusquely confirming they had been sent packing. Word from the Husk confirming that they had repelled the attackers, but the joint report from Rhade and Zaviss bearing the grim news of Hiran’s death.

‘That,’ murmured Rourke as the comm lines finally went dead, ‘is going to be a problem.’ He twisted towards Lindgren and gave her a nod. ‘Contact Commander Graelin, tell him he can come out of hiding.’

She nodded with a flash of relief in her eyes, finger pressing again to her earpiece.

Valance leaned in once more. ‘Agarath has just lost two of its more cooperative leaders.’

‘Relekor is a loss, but a Romulan military officer was never going to run the system,’ Rourke murmured. ‘But Hiran – he could bridge the gap.’

‘Without him, Korsk is going to run riot over -’

‘…Captain?’ There was a toneless quality to Lindgren’s voice he’d not heard before, and Rourke sat up. ‘I’m – I’m patching us through directly to the zenite mine. Audio only.’

A deep but somehow reedy voice came through, and Rourke knew the Reman timbre by now. ‘Endeavour? This is Supervisor Tulva. It’s over?’

He frowned and leaned forward. ‘That’s correct, Tulva. The Klingons are gone, Galae Command is gone. You can come out of hiding.’ He paused. ‘Where’s Commander Graelin?’

Another pause. ‘He… we had to keep adjusting the rad shielding. The Klingons came closer and lingered longer than the Romulans did. I think everyone’s going to need a heavier dose of radiation meds when this is over.’

‘We can do that.’ Rourke found his voice going low, calming. ‘Endeavour has the facilities, we took that into account. Is Commander Graelin alright?’ Despite himself, his glance flickered over to Lindgren, whose face was going paler.

‘Our modulator overloaded,’ Tulva said waveringly. ‘We lost the capacity to adjust our rad shielding from the control centre. I offered to go down there, but he said he was the one who knew these sorts of systems best…’

Rourke frowned. ‘Are you saying he went to the reactor core himself?’

* *

I remember the time

Of the collier and the candle…

The reactor was near the central ore processing facilities. They had been down-powered to mask the mine’s location as much as possible, so his footsteps had echoed uncomfortably loudly on his way down. Now his every breath reverberated through this dark, narrow space he’d had to crawl into to get access to the main interface on the reactor’s rad shielding.

Mines weren’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be cacophonous holes that never slept and from which you never truly escaped. He’d grown up around them, grown up alongside too many people who’d committed their lives to the hard labour and drudgery. Even a century after Ardanan reforms, the work remained difficult and dangerous. Even a century after, when he’d escaped to Stratos, he’d learnt to change his timbre and accent, his manner, so nobody looked down on him as one from below.

Now Petrias Graelin was back in a mine, close to its beating heart, and he knew he was going to die here.

He’d brought a rebreather. Even now he had to chuckle to himself; it wasn’t as if he’d be here long enough to really feel the impact of the unprocessed zenite. And if he did, it might have been a relief to lose his faculties and not know what was happening to him. Not feel the massive amounts of radiation as he stayed this close to the core and brought its shielding to perilously low levels.

The others would feel it. Would need medical aid. But they were made of sterner stuff, these Remans; had a physiology to help them withstand it. He’d felt their eyes on him as he’d walked out of the command centre, the miners and their families sheltering as the battle raged overhead and he tried to keep them shrouded from view. Brutish creatures, really, with their sloping foreheads and deep-set beady eyes, their sharp teeth.

Young and old. Hearty and weak. Scared, all of them. Scared and with no control over their fates. Scared, and he was the only one who could help them.

Stupid way to die, really.

Graelin leaned back against the red-hot bulkhead behind him, eyes closing, chest heaving. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand for much longer, but he could prop himself up in this narrow space. And he had to keep his mind for a little longer. After all, he hadn’t brought the rad shielding back online yet.

‘Then I saw an old miner,’ he breathed in something approximating a tune, because he needed to keep focused as he waited. ‘…whose body lies broken…’

‘Tulva to Graelin.’

He had to blink hard before he could hit his combadge. ‘Are they gone? They had best be gone.’

‘The Klingons are gone, the Romulans are gone. You can get out of there.’

His jaw tightened, and he blinked dancing spots away from in front of his eyes as he straightened. ‘In a moment. I need to bring the shielding back up.’ But the controls swum as he tried to focus, and he had to move slowly, deliberately. ‘You have been,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘a great help, Tulva.’

‘I should have gone down there.’

‘No. I’m better at this than you,’ Graelin said simply. Around him he could hear the facility starting to come to life as they reactivated systems, like night was over and a bright dawn was coming. 

Or would the Remans celebrate sunset, instead? He remembered the dark places beneath the clouds where he’d grown up. Was that home, really? He’d spent his life trying to escape. Even now he didn’t know if returning to shadow was comforting, or a trap.

‘That’s it, Commander – radiation shielding is fully online!’ His eyes snapped open at Tulva’s voice. He must have adjusted the controls and slumped face-first against the panel. Likely not for very long. ‘You can get out of there now.’

Graelin tried to straighten – and then his knees buckled, and in the narrow gap he slid to the deck with a groan. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, I don’t think I can.’

There was a pause and the sound of scuffling. ‘I’m coming down to get you.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Is Endeavour there?’

‘They –’ She hesitated. ‘They’re coming. Should I put you through on comms?’

‘That would be…’ Graelin squinted. ‘Yes.’

Hardly a second later, Rourke’s voice came echoing through the narrow space. ‘Commander Graelin, what’s your status?’

Despite it all, he rolled his eyes. ‘I didn’t have you patched through so I could make a report, Rourke. The job is done, if our enemies are gone and the facility’s still standing. Give them medical care, they need it.’

‘We’re just minutes out. We’ll beam you aboard as soon as we’re in range.’

‘…you’re such an asshole, Rourke,’ Graelin found himself saying. The shadow was spinning before him, and it was peaceful in a way, lulling him. ‘Skies, I’ve one last chance to speak to you, and that’s all I want to say.’ It was an unpleasant ray of blinding light in this welcoming shadow. He did not want to say goodbye. There was nobody to say goodbye to. Even Elsa; he would not do her the insult of patronising her at the very last.

‘It’s not one last chance, Petrias…’

‘Do me one damn thing, Rourke. Don’t turn me into something I’m not once I’m dead. Don’t you dare say I came back to my roots to save these miners. Don’t make me a hero. I fundamentally disagree with how you serve Starfleet, Rourke, and I did this anyway, because I was the one who could do it, because it needed to be done. It’s that simple. I was never one of yours. Don’t make me one.’

‘I don’t -’

‘Graelin out.’

One last chirrup of his combadge – the last chirrup of his combadge – and then he was alone in the dark. The dull hum of the facility coming back to life around him. The distant thudding of footsteps on the upper levels as people came out from hiding, realised the danger had passed.

One danger. There would be another, and another. Likely down in these mines, which they couldn’t possibly run safely, which would doubtless kill more of them.

Petrias Graelin drew a raking breath. The shadows were seductive now, darkness wrapping around him in a comforting embrace. Pulling him back to where he belonged.

‘Claimed by the dust, much finer than sand.

And I’ll ask him the question…’

Perhaps he finished the song. Perhaps he didn’t.

…though now he can’t answer.

I’ll ask him the question, he’ll understand.

The Husk looked like the battlefield it had become, even in the Upper District. This time when Rourke turned away from the view from the balcony, he had not been looking upon the serene conditions of the former elites of Agarath. Below him were wrecked avenues and buildings, and among them the Remans and Romulans of the Lower Streets, whose habitations had been devastated by the Klingons, moving between the new shelters here.

‘It’s good of you to open the Upper District for all, Lady Zaviss,’ he said, throat tight. ‘And it was good of you to bring your guard down to reinforce…’

She didn’t have fancy drinks this time, sat on the edge of a sun lounger in another of those battered jumpsuits she’d been wearing when first he saw her. Now she looked up at him with cold eyes. ‘But you’re going to lecture me for the executions.’

Across the balcony, near the door to the building so he could stay in the shade from the Upper District’s false sun as much as possible, Korsk snorted. ‘It was the right damn thing to do.’

Rourke’s gaze flickered between the two of them, then to Kharth, leaning on the railing with her eyes shut. Exhausted though she had been when the dust had settled, asking her to come with him to the Husk had somehow made her more tired.

‘It was slaughter without due process,’ Rourke said carefully. ‘And I cannot support it.’

‘So, what?’ said Korsk. ‘You come this far, you bleed and fight and lose people for us, and now, because we did the right thing to defend ourselves – and your officers who’d have been overrun at the Crossroads – you’re going to turn your back on us?’

Zaviss lifted a hand. ‘He won’t. He just has to express his Starfleet disapproval.’

You think yourself a man of duty until your heart burns. Rourke swallowed. ‘If anything like this happens again, the Federation will find it untenable to support the new administration of Agarath.’

Another scoff from Korsk, but Zaviss nodded. ‘We did what we had to in a time of war. Now we hope to rebuild. You just looked out on the streets, Captain – did you miss how everyone is come together? Our backs were against a wall and we had to pick a side. But that meant we had to know everyone was on our side.’

‘If the Upper District can come to our help,’ rumbled Korsk, ‘and take out the trash on its own, maybe Hiran’s dream does happen.’

Rourke swallowed again, and did not say what he was thinking. Hiran’s opinion was immaterial now he was dead. ‘The two of you will work together for the new administration?’

They exchanged glances, and Zaviss gave a small shrug. ‘It seems fitting.’ She rose and regarded them. ‘I thank you for your work here at Agarath, Captain. I know there is more rebuilding to be done, but I understand from Governor Resak that the Romulan Republic has made offers of help, possibly membership. We will not need to be a burden on Starfleet for much longer.’

‘We’ll stick around to help with the handover, but, yes. Our orders are to let the Republic take over the relief work.’

Zaviss nodded and turned. ‘And you, Lieutenant. Agarath’s people owe you a debt.’ At Kharth’s confused frown, she smiled. ‘You commanded our forces in battle, convinced the Star Navy to work alongside us. You repelled all manner of our enemies. Thank you.’

Kharth shifted her feet uncomfortably. ‘It’s important you remember Relekor,’ she said awkwardly. ‘He died fighting to make sure we protected all people of Agarath.’

‘He was an idiot,’ said Korsk, but fondness had entered his voice. ‘But he was one of us. You’re one of us now, too.’

It’s funny, Rourke thought as they finished the meeting, how we change how we remember the dead. Then he thought of Graelin, of the body they’d recovered from the zenite mines, and he stopped thinking about that.

They left Zaviss and Korsk there, in the battered remains of the Upper Districts, stood with Romulans and Remans alike under its false sun to plan the future leadership of Agarath. And he knew that its path was not his to affect any more.

‘I don’t know,’ said Kharth when they stepped off Endeavour’s transporter pad after beaming back aboard, ‘if they’re going to work brilliantly together or kill each other. I’ve the bad feeling they’re both the same kind of nasty, and they’ve just realised it.’

‘Zaviss committed a war crime by any definition,’ Rourke grumbled. ‘But I’m damned if I know what we’re supposed to do about it.’

‘The Republic can deal with it.’ Then their eyes met. ‘I should get to Security, sir, there’s a lot to do with Juarez gone -’

‘I’ll write the letter to his folks,’ Rourke said abruptly. ‘I was there. I owe them that.’

‘He was my deputy, sir. My responsibility.’

‘I’m sorry. But give me a little more of your time, Lieutenant. Come to my ready room.’

It was a stiffer and more awkward trip by turbolift than he’d have liked, but the tension felt like it hung everywhere, at least, rather than from the old rift between them. They had their own thoughts and burdens, a sense of the cost of Agarath’s hard-won survival, and there was little appetite for chit-chat.

Rourke tried to not look at the communications station when they crossed the bridge. Lindgren had refused all offers of time off, pointing out she could rest when they left Agarath. She had not, to his knowledge, been down to see Graelin’s remains. That was probably for the best.

Valance was in the ready room already when they arrived. ‘Have you done it?’ she asked Rourke.

He tried to not frown. ‘We’ve had our last meeting with Zaviss and Korsk,’ he confirmed. ‘The Republic should arrive tomorrow. We do the handover. We get the hell out of here.’

‘I think our time would be best-used helping Agarath’s military assets in the meantime,’ said Valance. ‘We’ve offered basic relief, but we can help their defences much better and quicker than the Republic can.’

‘Agreed.’ Rourke turned to Kharth. ‘Where do you think we should start? The ships or the platforms?’

Kharth frowned a little. ‘I think the ships, but… you two know all of this. Is this what you asked me up here, for?’

‘Sure,’ said Rourke, walking around his desk and pulling open a drawer. ‘See, I had more than one conversation with Command. Obviously we talked Agarath, and the mission, and Lotharn, and K’Var… all of that. But we also talked Endeavour.’ He pulled out a small box and tossed it to her. ‘And how I need a new second officer.’

Kharth caught the box more out of reflex, then stared at it without opening. ‘Sir…’

‘I could list all the things you’ve done in the last week alone to justify recognition. We can hold a party about this later, but I want to get to work now, and I think you do, too.’ Rourke straightened. ‘It’s not just about your skill. There’s nobody else in the command staff who gives both of us a better, different, and more challenging perspective.’

Kharth glanced up at Valance, and her expression creased. ‘You’re not against this?’

Valance shrugged. ‘I had opinions,’ she said. ‘I expect you and I will have more… opinions, Lieutenant Commander.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Rourke, ‘that part’s non-negotiable. You get that just because you deserve it. But you can turn down the title bump and I get, I don’t know, Nate in to be my yes-man and serve me tea.’

‘Beckett would not be that cooperative,’ Kharth mused, but at last she snapped the small box open to show the small, shining pip, and stared.

Rourke softened. ‘I heard what you heard in Zaviss and Korsk’s gratitude: that you have a place on Agarath if you ever need it. I want to make something abundantly clear to you, Saeihr: this is your home, too. Not just Endeavour. You fight harder than anyone I know to do the right thing for the underdog, and that’s what we should be about. Don’t ever think you’re on the fringes of Starfleet. You’re Starfleet to the bloody core. When your back’s against a wall, you don’t forget who you are.’ He felt Valance’s gaze flicker to him, and wondered if she heard the echo of Lotharn’s voice in his words.

But Kharth had pulled out the pip and broken Valance’s attention, and looked up with a deep breath. ‘I accept, sir.’

He beamed. ‘Then congratulations, Lieutenant Commander Kharth.’

When Kharth left, he gave Valance a cautious look. ‘For the record, you’ve had your chance to object to this.’

Valance shrugged. ‘Kharth and I these days have… an accord.’ But her expression soured. ‘Replacing Graelin at Science will be harder.’

‘You think Veldman isn’t ready?’

‘Veldman just got another research project with the Daystrom Institute. I think she’s happy where she is, she’s a scientist first. We can keep her in the position temporarily, but I think we’ll need someone sending in.’

They exchanged glances, but before Rourke could decide whether to venture his opinion, there was a chirrup at his console.

‘Lindgren to Rourke. Captain, there’s a high-priority subspace message for you. It’s from the House of K’Var.’

Valance winced. ‘Should I go?’

He shook his head, and sat down warily before flipping his screen on. Before him sat the stern-faced figure of Torkath, son of K’Var.

‘Matthew.’

Rourke sighed. ‘You didn’t come for pleasantries, Torkath. I expect your warriors have returned by now.’

‘Desperate with their apologies, begging for my father’s mercy, and blaming everything on Dakor.’ Torkath rolled his shoulders. ‘Whose arms and armour they did not recover.’

‘They didn’t.’ Rourke clasped his hands to not fidget. ‘I have them.’

‘His first mate says he sought you out for battle. I had not known his acrimony against you was so deep, but it does not shock me.’ Their eyes met. ‘What happened?’

‘He wanted Agarath’s wealth and resources, and to use them to leverage his influence in the House.’

‘I do not need you to explain the politics to me, Matthew. I understand why my brother acted, far better than you do.’ The tension in Torkath’s voice put a chill through him. He had not looked forward to this conversation, and it seemed he had been right to be apprehensive. ‘I am asking how he died.’

His mouth was dry. ‘I killed him.’

Torkath shut his eyes and exhaled slowly. ‘Explain.’

‘He’d attacked me and my party. And he had a knife to the throat of – of one of my people. Someone I’m responsible for, someone it’s a great honour to be responsible for -’

‘Someone, by your tone, important to you.’ Torkath bowed his head. ‘We swore oaths to one another, Matthew.’

‘I swore oaths to you, not to Dakor or your House -’

‘And there was no other way?’ He sounded hurt. That was the worst thing, Rourke thought; this was no bluster of Klingon honour and broken vows, of the complex series of oaths intertwining so tightly something snapped. This was nothing more complicated than pain, and pain he’d caused.

‘If I could have found another way,’ Rourke said as gently as he could, ‘I would have taken it.’

Torkath looked away, gaze going distant when he opened his eyes. ‘So you made your choices.’

‘I did what I had to -’

‘That was my brother, Rourke.’ Torkath’s eyes snapped back to him, colder than Rourke had ever seen them. ‘K’Var will not forget.’

‘Torkath -’

But the screen went dead, and in the silence that followed, Rourke could feel the sick sense of the violence of the past days catching up with him. He bowed his head.

‘Dakor put you in an untenable position,’ said Valance at length, and he’d almost forgotten she was there.

Rourke drew a raking breath. ‘I’m not sure he did. Every decision I saw would have put Hale in astonishing danger anyway. I chose the astonishing danger that ended it quickly – and killed Dakor.’

‘I remember what happened to us last year,’ she said delicately, ‘in the Azure Nebula.’ He was silent, brow furrowing as he tried to find the connection. ‘Where I saw what happened on the Firebrand.’

Rourke worked his jaw and looked up. ‘Forgive me, Commander, but I don’t see the connection.’

‘You don’t?’ Valance looked sincerely confused. ‘You don’t see the link between Dakor holding a blade to Hale’s throat, and a Nausicaan holding your crew hostage on his bridge? I don’t know exactly how the phenomenon worked, but every other time, we saw how key points in our lives – our trauma – could have gone differently. Except for the Firebrand. We just saw a dozen realities where nothing you did could possibly save them.’

He tore his gaze away, because keeping it on her burned. They had barely talked about that experience, the first to truly bond them; how they, as rivals resenting working together, had been forced to see each other’s darkest times. ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that.’

‘I know this sounds obvious. But you should talk to Carraway, sir. Because I can’t imagine how seeing someone you’re responsible for – care about – being held hostage in front of you could be anything other than, well… horribly triggering.’

Rourke had to keep his gaze on the window, on the view of Agarath’s asteroid belt beyond Endeavour’s hull. He had not stopped in days, he realised; not properly, not in a way where he could let himself think or feel or do anything but act, act, act. He was not about to start, yet, but with Valance’s words he could begin to feel the edges of what was to come.

It tasted of bitter, ancient adrenaline, rotten inside him and still churning when he wanted it least. You’re a man of duty until your heart burns, he remembered again. And then he remembered that when he’d lost everything on the Firebrand, he hadn’t been anything at all, not for a long time. Just his pain.

At length he looked up, meeting her gaze wearily. ‘Agarath should feel more like a victory than it is.’

‘Victories aren’t usually as clear as we’d want them to be. This one was quite good,’ Valance said with surprising gentleness.

‘A political wedge driven between us and one of our closest border houses in the Klingon Empire, a new administration in Agarath bathed in the blood of innocents -’

‘Bathed in the blood of an extrajudicial murder. Innocents is perhaps a step too far. And Dakor drove that wedge in. You didn’t.’

He opened his mouth, and realised he had nothing to say that wouldn’t sound like he was demanding her validation, voicing the criticisms of Lotharn and Graelin and asking her to refute them for him. And he was, Rourke realised, very tired.

She tilted her head in his silence, and, as if reading his mind very badly, said, ‘I know you and Graelin served together a while…’

‘Graelin was an arsehole.’ Rourke swallowed. The least he could do was obey the man’s final wishes and not turn him into something in death. ‘We fundamentally disagreed on pretty much everything. He was a smug weasel.’ He scrubbed his face with his hands. ‘He was a good officer. I don’t know if he was a good man, but he died protecting hundreds of people. I have no idea if I’ll miss him.’ With a sigh, he dragged his hands down his face. ‘This campaign gave us strange bedfellows indeed.’

‘For what it’s worth, sir, I think it speaks well of you how you handled the Romulan Star Empire.’ Valance’s voice was still softer than usual. ‘Your tactics forced Lotharn quickly to the table. And when things went sideways, you made an alliance with him. Those two things defined our victory more than anything else.’

‘Maybe.’ Another sigh, and he looked up at her with an apologetic smile. ‘I’m very tired, Commander.’

‘Of course, sir.’ Valance inclined her head. ‘Get some rest.’

He closed his eyes once she was gone, slumped back in his chair and sat doing nothing more than listening to, feeling, the hum of the starship around him. His starship, whose crew he was responsible for above and beyond anything else. Even Petrias Graelin, whom he’d hated. Even Sophia Hale, who was not his crew, and yet to whom he had perhaps an even greater obligation.

When he tapped his combadge it was in a short, sharp move, as if he’d lose his nerve if he didn’t do it suddenly. ‘Rourke to Carraway.’

A beat. ‘Carraway here, Captain. Would you like me to make some time for you?’ Greg Carraway spoke easily, cordially – gentle without being pampering.

He gave a wry chuckle. ‘What gave me away, Counsellor? But not yet. Not until we leave the system. I’d just…’ The chuckle died in his throat, and Rourke gave a difficult swallow. ‘If you could familiarise yourself again with my records from Starfleet Medical, 2397. I think… I think that’d be helpful.’ Now his eyes opened, and he scowled at the bulkhead. ‘I think I’d find it helpful.’

‘I understand, Captain. I’ll slot you in as soon as I can once we’re underway, and get some reading done. Feel free to stop by for some tea in the meantime. Carraway out.’

Rourke knew the hidden meanings; Carraway wouldn’t just slot him in, he’d clear his schedule and if necessary drag Rourke down for counselling the moment he knew the captain was out of excuses. But he wouldn’t frame it like that until he had to.

He checked his console. The Republic relief team was six hours out. Even a few hours’ rest between now and then would be better than nothing.

And still his feet did not take him to his quarters. Nor to the Round Table, or the Safe House, or off the ship. After leaving his ready room, leaving the bridge where he again did not look at Lindgren if he could help it, he found himself sooner than he’d expected at a destination that did not, really, surprise him as much as it could have.

When Hale opened the door to her quarters, her gaze was unsurprised. ‘Matthew.’

Her name caught on his tongue, because he didn’t know if he wanted to speak to her as an equal or keep the barriers of formality between them. They had not talked properly since before the Romulan strike force’s arrival; since their argument on the fate of Agarath. ‘I know you’re just back from the surface,’ he said instead, voice grating. ‘But I only want a moment, if you have it.’

She looked tired, and still ushered him in without hesitation. She wore the usual formal-wear that acted as part of her shield in negotiations, the comfortable Federation respectability that made her look in control of herself, and representing an offer of a better future. But the jacket was off, the collar loose, and without anyone she needed to fool, her smile did not quite meet her eyes.

‘I don’t know if I can reassure you much about Zaviss and Korsk,’ she admitted. ‘They are, at least, cooperating. I think the Republic and Psi Velorum now exerting influence may help the situation…’

‘I didn’t come here to talk about Zaviss and Korsk,’ he said quietly, clasping his hands behind his back as his gaze swept around her dim-lit quarters. With the diplomatic suites and her offices, he realised she had so many places to bring official guests that there were no airs and graces here, no professional deliberation to the decor. It was spartan in a way that at a glance looked minimalist, and only when he truly looked now did he realise was instead quite bare.

He turned to her. ‘I wanted to talk about Petrarch.’

Hale hesitated. ‘I’m truly sorry about Juarez. Everyone liked him.’

‘Thank you.’ Juarez had served on the old Endeavour under Leo MacCallister, was one of their veterans. He would be heartily missed and hard to replace. Still, Rourke bit his lip. ‘I meant I wanted to talk about what I did. Shooting Dakor.’

Now her expression shifted for the mask to come down. ‘I’m not really sure I’m qualified to assess your decision -’

‘It was your life on the line. That makes you qualified.’ He drew a slow breath. ‘And I broke pretty much every single standard of regulation, guidance, or even… good judgement in what I did. The fact that it paid off is no excuse.’

Her brow furrowed a hint. ‘I agree,’ Hale said eventually. ‘But I’m not sure I would prefer to have been abducted by renegade Klingons.’

‘The House of K’Var couldn’t -’

‘It’s been a long time since my life was in danger like that. But I remember what it is like, and I remember that there are worse things than death.’

Her gaze did not waver, and he found his mind racing even as he tasted that bitter, rotten adrenaline again. ‘You were in the shuttle crash that killed your husband and son,’ he realised in a hushed voice. And he remembered how she had barely blinked on Petrarch in the face of death, had been shaken but quick to recover after his irresponsible phaser shot, and he opened his mouth but couldn’t quite find the words to form the question.

Did you care that much if I hit you or not?

‘I trust you,’ she said instead of responding to his point. ‘I may have called you a – a problem-solver, Matthew, but sometimes there are problems and sometimes they need solving. And I trust you to do that.’

‘I’m not…’ It felt like the deck was slipping away from under him. ‘I am not cavalier with your life, Sophia. I couldn’t – the idea of letting Dakor take you away was, was unimaginable.’ At last the burning was coming again, but it was with a more desperate fear at her reaction than the blazing guilt for his own actions that he’d expected.

‘I know.’ But he couldn’t find comfort in her soft smile, or how she advanced on him to bring a hand to his arm. ‘And I appreciate that you care that much. I truly do. I may have had better things to worry about, but I’ve spent days despising how we argued. And I’m sorry for what I said.’

He didn’t know if she was trying to appease him to make the conversation go away, or if this seeming indifference dripping from her was sincere, and he didn’t know which of the two he hated more. And still he tasted his own bitter failures, and knew they were blinding him to what was real, to what others needed, and try as he could, he couldn’t force them away so he could see clearly or say whatever would help.

So instead he said, ‘You know I’ve trusted you with Agarath, right? That I never thought you were working against me. But you’re the only person aboard I can have these conversations with – these disagreements with…’

‘And that’s a double-edged sword,’ she finished for him, again with that enigmatic smile that couldn’t bring comfort. ‘Because you’re master of this ship, and if I am to be your equal, sometimes that means you are not master of its fate.’ She paused, and her hand fell from his arm. ‘We’ve done good work here, Matthew. If Zaviss hadn’t been motivated to help in the battle, I think she and Korsk wouldn’t be cooperating now. However difficult that is, it is what Agarath needs above anything else – unity.’ Now the sadness entering her smile felt more sincere. ‘I think that, for once, I’m the cynic here. Because unity and agreements dipped in blood are regrettably common in diplomacy, and something we must live with.’

‘I think everything gets dipped in blood from time to time,’ Rourke found himself murmuring. ‘And still we have to live.’

It had taken him a long time to learn that lesson. Through years of counselling, years of licking his wounds; through coming to Endeavour and finding purpose and drive again. It was terrifying how quickly those wounds could reopen, how easily that blood could run anew, and by now Matthew Rourke knew that staunching the bleeding was not something he did on his own. Just as Agarath would not be left alone to staunch its bleeding; just as Endeavour had carried them through their darkest days and brought them to a point where they could be helped by others.

‘Still we have to live,’ Sophia Hale repeated, but the echo was in her voice as much as her words. Because sometimes the blood took years to wash away, and sometimes it never did.