The chamber had not seen a living soul set foot upon its stones in centuries until two days ago. But that portentous moment had been as musty as it was humbling, and the stench of stale air had still not left Doctor Frankle’s nostrils. Even after all their work and equipment to make the place safe for excavation, he took a deep huff from the rebreather hanging before his neck as he approached the central plinth.

‘Progress?’

Ensign Alikar was young and enthusiastic and had professed on their first meeting she’d read all of Frankle’s papers. He didn’t think that was true, but that was almost more use; her obsequiousness made her pliable. Even now she turned with tricorder brandished, eyes flashing with eagerness to have something to share. ‘Doctor! I didn’t think you’d be back down. Shifts should be…’

‘I couldn’t sleep. Not with a discovery like this beneath me.’ He’d waited until the rest of the landing party had bunked down for the night, made sure the campsite on the surface hummed with nothing more than their security gear and the gentle snoring of scientists, then returned to the entrance to these subterranean depths.

‘I know,’ Alikar breathed, handing him the tricorder without hesitation before she turned back to the dais. ‘It looks like our initial assessments were correct – the technology is significantly more advanced than our own. And yet it’s been here under the noses of the Drapians for thousands of years and they had no idea.’

‘They’re still proud of the printing press on Drapice. They’d struggle to even conceive of the technology of ancient forbears, let alone find it. Let alone harness it.’

‘Do you think the people who made this were natives? They must have been capable of interstellar travel – though I suppose without the right resources, without dilithium, maybe they never made it past their own solar system…’

‘I don’t know.’ Frankle lifted a hand and tried to sound like the ensign’s thoughts were worthy. In truth, they were nothing he hadn’t gone over in his head as he’d waited in his bunk above. ‘This was the only power signature we detected from orbit. Maybe they lived here and this is all we’ve found. Maybe they’re from somewhere else and left something here.’

The latter seemed possible. Eroded systems at the hidden entrance, itself nestled deep within a network of mountain caves, meant they’d had to attach a power source to open solid metal doors far beyond the design of the natives of Drapice, their settlements mere tens of kilometres away. Almost all they’d found deeper were a smattering of chambers full of degraded equipment and control panels, some more active than others, and all in a language he hadn’t recognised. They were still working on that translation.

But that could fall to the linguists. Greater curiosities fell to him. Like the main chamber, humming with energy even though its main control panels were inactive, and the central plinth to which they were connected. Or rather, the metal-and-stone repository that sat upon it, sealed tight. It was no more than four feet cubed, and yet everything in this place, constructed by an ancient and powerful and unknown civilisation on a world now inhabited by pre-warp primitives, centred around this box. Around whatever was inside it.

‘If they weren’t natives,’ Frankle breathed, eyes drifting from the brown-grey container and up to the chamber, ‘they still chose to make as much of this place as possible from the natural resources, carved it straight into the mountain. Was it easier for them? Or did it help keep the chamber discreet, to work it as little as possible?’

‘Ah, see, Doctor, it’s mostly but not entirely local limestone that they’ve used in this chamber.’ Alikar brightened, moving to gesture to the carved stone underfoot. ‘The walls, floors, ceilings; everything that’s not metal reinforcements – that’s all from the mountain. But there are some exceptions. Like the box.’

He glanced at her. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s not from around here. It might not be from Drapice, or if it is, it’s from far, far away on the planet.’ Alikar approached the metal-and-stone container, gesticulating with her youthful exuberance. Frankle watched and bit his tongue as he waited for her to skip to the end. ‘But it’s a metamorphic rock, with much higher levels of graphite in it. I assume to conduct the energies that are amplifying the box.’

Frankle frowned. ‘Amplifying? It’s sealing it.’

‘It is.’ She gestured enthusiastically at the tricorder in his hands. ‘But whatever’s inside it is also doing… something. I don’t think this is just a container. I think it’s a battery.’

Finally he read her scans. He had assumed she would be taking everything at the unbearable Starfleet pace, the incremental cowardice which was why he’d come down here while most of his colleagues from the ship were asleep. His eyebrows raised. ‘It looks like if we cut the power, it’ll open.’

‘I… yes. I was going to report that in the morning.’ At last Alikar hesitated. ‘We’ve not interfered with anything yet.’

‘We opened the chamber,’ Frankle pointed out, advancing on the container. ‘By being here, we’re interfering.’

‘But our mission was to find out if the Romulans had influenced the cultural development of Drapice when this was their territory…’

‘So that’s irrelevant, as we’re already off-mission, aren’t we?’

‘Only to find out the provenance of this construction, to see if it’s native to Drapice, to see what it might have done or might be doing…’ At last Alikar’s voice started to go higher pitched, her precious prime directive kicking in over any of her curiosity.

Over any of her professionalism as a scientist.

Frankle grunted with disinterest. ‘Can we cut the power?’

‘We – yes.’ Alikar winced. ‘We should discuss this in the morning, Doctor, when everyone’s down.’

‘Why?’ He tapped the tricorder, brought up the energy readings. She had a point. Not everything feeding into the container was keeping it sealed. ‘I’m the lead scientist. I don’t need the others, all of whom are far less-qualified than me, to come down here and be told the same things.’ He was a civilian consultant, but that was besides the point on an expedition like this, on as tiny a ship as theirs. They weren’t here to enforce Starfleet’s will. They were here to explore, with Starfleet resources backing them. He was tired of the distinction being ignored across his work.

‘The lieutenant won’t like it!’

Frankle rolled his eyes. ‘He’s here to keep archive managers happy. His authority is irrelevant. I see you’ve performed all necessary safety checks. If we’re to learn more, Ensign, the learning is in the doing. Or we can stand around and theorise who built this and what it’s for until the stars all die out.’

She looked hesitant, like she thought he needed her agreement, and that just made him tap the tricorder controls more firmly. They didn’t understand the systems here enough to manipulate them on a very sophisticated level, not without better comprehension of the technology or the language. But one thing they did understand was the power systems.

There had been a background hum to the chamber he hadn’t noticed until it faded. Lights overhead remained, though it felt as if they dimmed for a moment, casting jagged shadows across the gold-brown stone walls of the chamber, making the plinth and container loom larger. Then he blinked, and the effect was gone.

Approach. His excitement raged over his nerves, and Frankle stepped up to the repository. Metal was inset deep into the stone, the container doing more than just keeping shut whatever was inside. But it was light, much lighter than he expected when he laid his hands on the lid.

‘Doctor?’ Alikar’s voice was a harsh whisper of an interruption.

‘We’re here now, Ensign,’ he snapped.

‘No, sir, I -’ She sounded confused. ‘I thought you said something.’

Open, his excitement continued to rage over his nerves, and he blocked out the insipid officer. He’d worked in the field longer than she’d been alive, almost twice over, and here she was trying to tell him what to do. Frankle’s jaw set, and he shoved the stone and metal lid back.

The scraping echoed enough to make the shadows flicker, or so it felt. Alikar whimpered behind him, backing towards the walls, but he ignored her, his eyes falling on the darkness within. On the glint of bronze gleaming under the lights of the chamber and the lamps they’d brought.

‘See?’ he said, though his voice was barely above a whisper as his lips curled with satisfaction. ‘Nothing has exploded, and your precious prime directive is intact, Ensign.’

‘I don’t…’

Whatever she said was lost in the sea of his indifference, and Frankle peered down. It would have been underwhelming, were he a more dramatic and materialistic man, to open a repository of ancient technology and find so little within it. Just a metal circlet, brown-bronze in colour, gleaming in the light.

But it was perfectly smooth, had no obvious point of connection, and yet had to be what the container was also powering. But to do what?

Take, hissed his excitement, and Frankle at last glanced back at Alikar. He sighed with indifference. ‘Alright, Ensign, wake the others if you wish.’

Once she had scurried off, he reached for it.

At this distance and speed, she saw the fighter before she heard it, its hull and contrails tearing through the blue sky like a white scar. The boom seconds later felt like it hit her chest more than her ears, and Rosara Thawn winced and braced against the central panel in the flight tower. ‘Does she need to go that fast?’

Though the flight controller sighed and said, ‘Definitely not,’ the roll of his eyes made it clear she was not the first to make such a complaint, and he was tired of having this battle. ‘Landing pattern transmitted. You can find her on pad four, ma’am.’

Ma’am. It was technically correct; she outranked him, after all. But it had been some time since Thawn had associated so casually with officers she’d not served with for years. She was more accustomed to the gently dismissive glances thrown at junior officers – not to be the one giving them.

That brought sobriety, at least, which made it easier for her to slow her breathing and temper her frustration as she rode the lift from the tower to the surface. Hot air tasting of metal and sweat greeted her with the blazing sun, and she regretted not changing out of her duty uniform as she padded across the dusty steel of the ground base’s landing field. Some fifty kilometres east was the main facility of Erkanor III, with its shining towers of climate controlled research labs and conference centres. But jagged brown mountains blocked that from view, and all else was the endless scrubland of dust.

And peerless skies overhead broken by the operations and egos of test pilots.

The fighter had just come to a halt when she arrived, and Thawn waited at the periphery of the hubbub of the landing crew and the post-flight check, arms folded across her chest, trying to pretend she wasn’t sweating. She knew she’d been noticed, knew the pilot was taking their time, and again had to fight frustration. Because she’d been given the hardest mission of all: playing nice.

Why did the captain send me?

‘Lieutenant!’ Imiel Harkon shucked her helmet under her arm as she alighted, and sauntered over with one arm outstretched. ‘What brings you to our neck of the woods? Decided you wanted to catch some rays and, uh, go completely pink with your complexion?’

It was a low blow, and one Thawn could not rebut. She was pale and red-haired, and was already hot and uncomfortable in her uniform. It only made it worse that Harkon – taller than her, leaner, effortlessly graceful under any circumstances – was cool as anything in her flight suit and even this blazing heat. They had known each other some time, but never very well. Worse, Thawn was always used to seeing and treating Harkon like a junior officer, but now they were equal in rank and this wasn’t the time to look down her nose. ‘Lieutenant. That was some tight flying.’

‘You saw?’ Harkon beamed as she pulled out her sunglasses. ‘We’re shaving metres off the maneouvres out there, it sure is something.’

It sure is the most incidental of atmospheric flight tests. ‘I thought the flight course might get a little repetitive.’

‘Some day. I’ve been here a week, Thawn, give a girl a chance to get bored.’ But for all her flippant cheer, Harkon wasn’t stupid. ‘You’re trying to lure me away already?’

Thawn bit her lip. ‘I was surprised you transferred out here.’

‘What, to fly birds for cutting edge flight tests? That sure don’t sound like me at all; I hate the sky, me, famously…’

‘Atmospheric flight tests. You flew the King Arthur through Archanis battle lines.’

Harkon scoffed. ‘Two years ago. Not like the Hazard Team seriously deployed since then.’

Thawn’s nose wrinkled. ‘Dodging the Devore on Taxtose IV wasn’t exciting enough for you?’

‘That was the Delta Quadrant. The excitement tastes different there.’

‘…or flying the Talon for Commander Kharth at Agarath…’

‘In a once in a generation crisis…’ Harkon raised a hand. ‘This is great for my ego, I mean it. But I’m not coming back to Endeavour, Lieutenant. Captain Rourke really sent you all this way to get his favourite chauffeur back?’

‘Captain Rourke didn’t send me. Commander Valance did. She -’

‘Okay, sure, whatever. But no offence, there was nothing for me left on Endeavour. I don’t want flight control on her, and lead shuttle pilot was getting boring. We’re not all built for the big, slow, diplomatic missions.’

Thawn knew Harkon was being deliberately obstreperous, and still it made her huff. ‘Our last mission was anything but slow and diplomatic, but that’s not the point – honestly, Harkon, I’m surprised you’re wasting yourself on a backwater like this!’ In frustration, she’d raised her voice. Several nearby flight crew and passing pilots gave her filthy looks.

Harkon gave a bashful smile and clapped her on the shoulder. ‘I’m gonna have to disavow you in the mess, you realise, if I don’t want my salt in my morning coffee after that.’ But Harkon was not stupid, and she stepped in, voice dropping, and nudged her sunglasses down her nose. ‘This wasn’t my best and favourite choice of assignments. But I can have fun for a few months until something else comes along. It’s a new assignment, Thawn. It’s not marriage.’ She brightened. ‘Hey, congratulations on yours, by the way – how’s Rhade -’

‘I’ve left Endeavour,’ Thawn said bluntly. ‘As has Commander Valance. She’s got her own ship now. The USS Pathfinder. She wants you as her pilot.’

That stopped Harkon dead. ‘Oh boy. You got a transfer as your wedding gift? Valance is cold.’

It was unfair to let people blame Valance for this, but the alternative was explaining. ‘First of her class, brand-new explorer. One of the highest top speeds in the fleet and we’re on exploratory missions to territory the new Romulan borders opened up.’ Thawn’s eyes locked on hers. ‘This isn’t a big cruiser where you’re doing more management than flying. And you can finally take on something serious.’

‘Ouch.’ Harkon theatrically clutched her chest, but though her eyes brightened, a touch of suspicion lingered. ‘Valance wants me? Valance has barely said two words to me.’

‘She remembers flying through that asteroid belt with you dodging D’Ghor. She remembers you stepping up when Connor died, and she remembers you giving up responsibility as quickly as possible when Tar’lek stepped up more.’ Thawn sighed. ‘Honestly, Harkon, if you don’t want this, I don’t know why you’re still a Starfleet pilot because it doesn’t get much better -’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t want it.’ Harkon stiffened as she blurted that, and pushed her sunglasses back up. ‘I’m just… surprised. I thought Valance liked the likes of Tar’lek more.’

Thawn hesitated. When Connor Drake had died and Endeavour needed a new pilot, Harkon had taken on the role only temporarily and reluctantly, and been more than happy to make way for Tar’lek Arys, then the captain’s yeoman and a bright young officer expected to sneeze his way to captain. But nobody had really tried to get Harkon to step up, Thawn realised. They’d let her stay smiles and sunshine and irreverence, and let her be overlooked for an officer who’d fit expectations much more tidily.

‘I don’t know what Commander Valance likes – or liked,’ she said at last. ‘I know what she wants right now, and it’s you.’

Harkon’s expression creased. ‘You left Rhade. She left, like, everything on Endeavour. Cortez?’ Thawn shrugged again, and Harkon sucked her teeth. ‘Cold, cold, cold. That’s gotta be one fancy ship.’

‘Maybe,’ said Thawn, and straightened. The heat was cooking her patience as much as the conversation. ‘But there’s only one way for you to find out, Lieutenant.’

‘It looks like someone sat on an Intrepid.’ Kally had to brace her elbows on the rim of the docking bay viewport to properly see, and she couldn’t fight a tone of disappointment at this, her reward for being stuffed in a personnel transport direct from Earth to Starbase Bravo for days on end.

‘I – she is a little small.’ Doctor Winters had been her travel companion all the way. She’d spotted his name and face on the passenger manifest, seen they shared a destination, and gently badgered a petty officer in the bathroom queue to let them swap cabins so she could be next door. To Kally, this was a perfectly normal thing to do to get to know a future colleague. And while Ed Winters had been thoroughly taken aback, he hadn’t stopped her. ‘But we’re only talking a standard complement of one-twenty people…’

In the belly of Starbase Bravo was the main starship docking bay. Even some of the mightiest starships would fit in there, but while the USS Pathfinder wasn’t among that number, she was sleek and looked quick and was, above all, theirs. It was one thing to look at an image and another to see her in person, and though Kally’s initial reaction had included some surprise at the shape, there was no denying the heart-thudding excitement of seeing the hull, the lines, the lights and the silhouette for herself.

Her eyes went as big as saucers. ‘Oh, boy. That’s a lot of people to be stuck together with for months at a time, Doc. I wonder -’

A loud, theatrical clearing of the throat cut her off, and she snapped around to see a figure stood at the open airlock doors. Kally had insisted on rushing down the moment their transport got in, racing down two decks and five sections to get from transport to starship docking. She’d had to stop twice to let Winters catch up – being not even four feet tall, average for an Ithenite, sometimes made it much easier to get through crowds, especially as the doctor was a lot less willing to push through narrow gaps.

That lack of height now meant she had to crane her neck to look up at the officer she’d all but ignored in her rush for a viewport, in her excitement to see the ship. Winters was tall but gangly, while this gold-shirted officer was big and broad, rolled-up sleeves showing off forearms like pistons.

She spotted the frown on his face and the pips on his collar, and snapped off a quick salute. ‘Sir! Sorry, sir – I wanted to see the ship, sir -’

‘The ship you were just disparaging. My ship.’ The commander raised an eyebrow. ‘Hal Riggs. Chief Engineer, USS Pathfinder, but Skipper asked for someone to come play welcome wagon. You kids looking to board, or are you just tourists?’

‘Oh!’ Kally had to avoid a squeak as she fished about her uniform jacket for her PADD. ‘Yes, sir, Commander. Orders, right here!’

‘You never called me “sir” this much,’ Winters said with a hint of a betrayal as she dug it out.

‘You said you like to think of yourself as a doctor, not a lieutenant,’ she said guiltily. ‘I could start calling you sir, but I like calling you Doc, I don’t have to…’

‘No, you…’ Winters worked his jaw. ‘…I like “Doc.”’

Riggs looked like he was smothering a smirk as they both handed PADDs over. ‘Your transport must have got in, what, twenty seconds ago? What’d you do, bully the deck officer for an emergency transport?’

‘She is very fast,’ Winters said weakly. ‘Uh, Doctor Ediz Winters. CMO.’

Kally snapped to at that. ‘Oh, yeah, I should be – Ensign Kallavasu. Communications. But everyone calls me Kally!’

Riggs read the PADDs, and now he was outright grinning as he looked between them. ‘Right you are, Kally. Doc. All looks in order. Welcome aboard Pathfinder. As you can see by me being sent down here, we’re still takin’ on some folks, so we’re going noplace fast. Skipper will want to receive you and you should get settled in, but you might enjoy stretching your legs on Bravo before we depart, if you’re not used to starship life.’

‘It’s my first assignment,’ Kally said cheerfully, ‘but I’m sure the Doc’s been around.’

‘I – it’s my first, too. Actually,’ said a bashful Winters.

‘Figures.’ Riggs blew out his cheeks, then waved a dismissive hand at their expressions. ‘Staffing seems like it’s hell. Or I wouldn’t be here neither. Even if Pathfinder’s engine room sure is pretty.’

Kally wrung her hands together. ‘I’m sorry I said she looked like a squashed Intrepid, sir…’

‘I mean, she does. Trick is, you gotta love her anyway.’

Winters’s forehead creased. ‘The Pathfinder’s a vastly advanced ship, a cutting-edge design. Why on Earth would staffing be difficult? I would have thought officers would be fighting among themselves for the post – I honestly expected a doctor with more experience than me to be sent, even if she’s a small ship. We’re going to places Starfleet’s never been.’

‘I thought I was just gonna be a staff linguist,’ Kally agreed.

Riggs gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘I leave politics to the politicians. And command staff.’ He made a face. ‘Aw, hell, that’s me, these days. Listen, you don’t gotta sir me or nothing if it’s just us – plain Riggs is fine. I’m just here to make sure our engines purr and everyone’s having a good time. But I think the skipper might be a bit of a nut-buster.’

‘I think she might be a war hero,’ Kally said thoughtfully.

‘We’ve not fought a war,’ Winters pointed out. ‘For quite some time.’

‘That’s true, but she’s got lots of medals like you’d expect from an officer who’s been in a lot of dangerous situations, and if you just say “hero” it sounds kinda obsequious.’

‘I’m just saying.’ Riggs raised his hands. ‘Come aboard. Make ready to be comfy. But she’s all highly strung, and the Ops Chief she brought with her from her last boat honestly makes Vulcans seem chill. So maybe don’t tell her that her ship looks like a fat Intrepid.’

‘I said it looks like a squished Intrepid,’ Kally said defensively, but straightened at once. ‘And that’s fine, Riggs. I can behave myself, and I’m sure Doc Winters can, too. After all.’ She looked up at her two new colleagues and, whether they liked it or not, friends. ‘We’re all here for the same mission, right?’

‘We don’t, ah, know our first mission,’ said Winters.

‘No, silly.’ Kally beamed. ‘The Starfleet mission: adventure!’

His knee twinged as the turbolift oozed to life, the faintest shift in pressure from below enough now. Not to make it hurt, exactly. But he was keenly aware that his left knee existed, and that was enough to have him on edge with the old injury.

The bridge doors sliding open drew his attention, though, and Dashell straightened both posture and gait as he stepped into the beating heart of the USS Pathfinder, still berthed at Starbase Bravo and thus far quieter than he expected it to be soon. But it was not only their docking that made the bridge quiet, he thought with a tight jaw. Stations were manned by low-ranking officers or completely empty, and he got a rather blank look from the ensign at ops as he passed with a brisk, polite nod. These were not the faces he expected on a ship of this calibre. But then, neither was he. At least, not like this.

He drew a sharp breath as he hit the door chime to the captain’s ready room and stepped in at the muffled call. ‘Commander Dashell Antedy reporting for duty, Captain.’

Commander Valance, ship’s captain, had been caught staring at a blank wall. Considering the bareness of the room, still in its default configuration with a plain desk near the door and a bland seating area elevated by the window, he assumed she hadn’t had the chance to think about decorating, let alone getting started. She turned, stern gaze landing on him. ‘Commander Antedy. A pleasure.’

Dashell raised an eyebrow at the curt gesture to the seats at the desk rather than the comfy sofa but obeyed. They both sat. ‘Likewise, Captain. It’s a pleasure and an honour to be aboard a ship like Pathfinder.’

Valance’s lips thinned. ‘I don’t want to start on a sour note, Commander, but is that pleasure and honour why you objected to the assignment?’

He winced. ‘I object to my billeting, Captain. Executive officer duties on top of my science officer duties. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for both tasks to be rolled together on a ship of this level of scientific focus.’

‘And you’d rather just be my science officer.’ She was tall, taller than him; wiry and muscular and precise in her movements. Dark hair was tied back neatly to show off strong features and, particularly, the gentle forehead ridges betraying her Klingon heritage.

Dashell scratched his salt and pepper beard. ‘I’m a scientist, Captain. I’ve spent a long time studying to be the Starfleet scientist. I hold multiple degrees, I’ve taught at the Academy…’

‘I know your record. You sound perfect to be my XO.’

‘Because you have a background in starship management, piloting, diplomacy.’ He lifted his hands with another wince. ‘I absolutely mean no disrespect. Your record is stellar. And I am happy to provide additional experience, especially as neither I nor – so far as I’ve read – most of the senior staff have spent as much time in troubled frontiers like these. But I’m not a commander.’

Valance watched him for a moment, then her gaze flickered down. ‘I hear you, Mr Dashell. If you must know, it was not my choice for your positions to be combined. Even on a ship of this size. But if you’ve read the records of our officers, you have to have spotted we’ve had… staffing problems.’

‘I know,’ sighed Dashell. ‘A Chief Engineer who seems allergic to departmental positions. CMO and Comms both fresh out of the Academy. Have we even filled Security and Helm?’

‘My first choice for Chief Flight Control fell through,’ Valance said in a clipped voice. ‘I’ve dispatched Lieutenant Thawn to rectify that situation. I know Command has furnished me with a tactical officer, but I don’t know who, and at this point I’m not sure I have much right to argue.’

Dashell leaned forward, shaking his head. ‘How did this happen? Pathfinder is a highly-advanced scientific ship. Our crew seem qualified but for the most part untested. Officers should be fighting among themselves for this assignment.’

‘I have my suspicions,’ Valance said but didn’t elaborate further. Her gaze flickered across him, and he knew the tell-tale look of someone trying to figure out his injury. ‘I’m sorry, Commander, but you’ll have to stay on in both roles. I’ll do what I can to alleviate your workload.’

‘I’ll do whatever the ship needs. But please, Captain, do believe me – I was delighted to be assigned to Pathfinder.’ He paused at her expression. ‘It’s the right leg.’

She looked caught out. ‘I don’t…’

‘I don’t want a prosthetic. So it does slow me down. Not around and about on the ship, not really in everyday life. Though some days are better than others.’

‘Forgive me,’ said Valance, but it was the tone of someone who was about to plunge on, not back off. ‘How are you in the field?’

‘Don’t ask me to outrun someone,’ Dashell sighed. ‘Heavy carrying, the kind of fieldwork with a lot of standing and kneeling repeatedly… I’ll make sure our new doctor gives me a full assessment so you can make what informed decisions you need for assignments.’

‘I need your expertise,’ she said firmly. ‘But I hope you understand if I want to be a little more hands-on in away missions than policy would like.’

Dashell swallowed. It was the worst taste of indignation – the kind where he didn’t have significant grounds to object. So he did what he was best at in these circumstances: looked at the bright side. ‘We’re on a mission of exploration, Captain. Uncovering secrets in lands the Romulans never let us near. I would hope that, rather than plunging you into danger as my commanding officer, having you with us on away missions will only demonstrate the importance of our spirit of exploration. As it was in the Starfleet days of old.’

Valance’s expression flickered at that, and Dashell just smiled. He was not unaccustomed to younger officers, officers who had spent more of their career under the shadow of Mars than not, to finding him naive at worst, embarrassingly sincere at best. ‘That is important,’ she agreed at length. ‘I may be a hypocrite, fresh off serving as first officer and often stopping my captain from going in the field. But I’ve no intention of leading from the rear.’

His smile didn’t fade. ‘Then I hope Commander Riggs will be happy to babysit the ship a lot.’

‘I think he will actually hate that,’ Valance said, not without amusement. ‘I appreciate your honesty, Commander, as well as your cooperation.’ The door chime sounded, and she looked up with a frown. ‘I told the bridge I didn’t want to be interrupted.’

‘Something might be wrong,’ mused Dashell, pushing his chair back.

Valance checked her console. ‘Oh. Apparently, our new Chief Tactical Officer is here. I suppose this is how I find out who they are.’

‘That’s most fortunate.’

‘Indeed.’ They both stood, and Valance straightened her uniform. ‘Come in!’

The doors slid open to admit a mountain of a man – of a Klingon. He swaggered in as if he owned the room already, and Dashell blinked with curiosity to see the Starfleet uniform he wore. But if Dashell was curious, Valance looked stunned, her jaw dropping.

‘Gov’taj?’

‘Karana!’ Lieutenant Gov’taj paused and hunkered down, arms outstretched like he might charge the captain for a tackle of a hug. ‘It has been far too long.’

As Valance reeled, Dashell stepped in with a deep incline of the head. This was no moment, he knew, to speak a greeting – he was injecting himself into this exchange, and thus saying ‘nuq’neH,’ more literally translated as ‘what do you want?’ was inappropriate. Better with a Klingon, even one in Starfleet uniform, to cut to the chase. ‘I am Commander Dashell, first officer. You know the captain?’

Gov’taj turned to him and reached out a hand. Dashell did the same, wincing in anticipation of the tight grasp of his forearm, a gesture he was accustomed to Klingons using as their effort to accommodate the Federation – human – greeting of handshakes. ‘Know the captain?’ he echoed. ‘Far more than that.’ He looked at Valance and gave a toothy grin. ‘How are you, Sister?’

Valance thought she might come to like and respect Commander Dashell, as he left her ready room as quickly as he politely could once he realised who Gov’taj was. But that speed gave her little chance to rally, so she stood with the captain’s desk like a physical shield between her and a man she’d not seen in five years, scrambling for words.

Gov’taj’s hands dropped, his smile tensing. ‘Is that all the greeting I am to get?’

She worked her jaw. ‘You are my Chief Tactical Officer?’

‘That is not a “hello.” I thought Starfleet stressed the importance of courtesy.’

‘And you’re in a Starfleet uniform.’

Now he straightened with a flourish of indignation. ‘I am a lieutenant in Starfleet.’

‘You’re a -’

‘I was commissioned three months ago. After some training.’ At last, Gov’taj inclined his head, all ebullience evaporated in the face of sheer bafflement. ‘Did Father tell you nothing?’

‘We haven’t spoken. Not in some time.’ And we didn’t talk about the rest of the family. At last, she gave a lame gesture to the seat across the desk. ‘You will have to explain.’

If anything, Gov’taj looked hurt. He didn’t move, planting his hands upon his hips and straightening like if he puffed up, he would be shielded from the injury of her ignorance. ‘There is little to explain,’ he blustered. ‘I heard you were in need of a tactical officer. I inquired. It happened. You may have not followed my career, Sister, but I have followed yours.’

This wasn’t going to go like a regular meeting. Rubbing her temple, Valance turned to the cabinets behind her. Matt Rourke would have had a bottle of whisky stashed already, and two crystal glasses to serve it in. She’d thought that an indulgence, but she’d been in this office mere days and it was already feeling imperative.

Abruptly she moved to the replicator. ‘Raktajino,’ she instructed. ‘Two mugs.’

This made Gov’taj give a small, not especially amused snicker. As if taking pity on her, he took the seat that Dashell had vacated. ‘I expect the last thing you knew is that I was on a Starfleet exchange mission to the USS Mannheim when you left the qa’chaQ. You understand that was more than a gesture of goodwill? From me or Father?’

‘I understand you wanted to continue to work against the Mo’Kai, when the Klingon Defence Force has not always been sufficiently motivated.’ Valance took the two mugs as they materialised, and tried to not grimace as she brought them to the desk.

Gov’taj shook his head. ‘I can hunt Mo’Kai from either side of the border. Starfleet was where I could continue my work.’ At her blank look, he shifted his weight. ‘That we cannot simply hunt them. We must destroy their ideas. And to destroy them, we must assess them, know them. That… engagement was not always popular in the KDF.’

Her mind was spinning and at last, spitting out useful recollections. ‘With Starfleet, you could engage with Mo’Kai teachings. Develop measures to counter extremist ideology. You had the knowledge of Klingon culture, we had the frameworks.’ Her gaze turned apologetic. ‘I didn’t know you were still with Starfleet.’

‘I know you were busy rebuilding your career,’ he grumbled, but most of the complaint was hidden behind a gulp of piping hot coffee. ‘But yes. Five years on exchange programs and joint operations. We can learn a lot from each other as organisations and cultures. So when I was offered a training programme that would end in a commission of my own, I accepted.’

‘Now you’re in Starfleet. A lieutenant.’

Gov’taj shrugged. ‘If the Federation maintains the honour it has shown these past two years, returning to its spirit of understanding, and if the Empire remains its best self, a beacon of strength and stability in the galaxy rather than heeding the hunger of youthful bloodlust, then I see no tension here. ‘

You always were oathbound to the ideologies, not the structures, Valance thought, drumming her fingers on the mug of coffee. ‘Pathfinder cannot have been your first choice once you had a commission. Surely somewhere else, somewhere looking to the Mo’Kai -’

‘The Romulan Empire has fallen and you are heading for those territories it once held in an iron grip.’ Gov’taj leaned forwards, eyes lighting. ‘Many of the Empire cannot be trusted to set foot there lest they take the simplest understanding of strength and weakness, and stamp something out simply because it will fit under their boot. I wish to see.’ He saw her expression and harrumphed. ‘You think that is philosophical for a warrior.’

‘I remember you being more driven to know things so you could beat them.’

‘The Mo’Kai have made it clear we must know ourselves, know the rot in our society so we may dredge it out. Identity is as forged on knowing what we are not as knowing what we are. So yes, I want to see this unknown, Sister. Both what the Romulans touched mere inches from our border, and what they did not.’ He hesitated. ‘But you are right. Pathfinder was not my first choice.’

One thing people forgot in their consideration of Klingons, Valance thought, was that they could be uncomfortably emotionally open. Gov’taj met her gaze without hesitation, his point plain enough, and she had to have her own swig of coffee to hide her expression. It was not his willingness to be so honest about his emotions that lay at the heart of her discomfort. Far more powerful was guilt.

‘I have… struggled,’ Valance said at length, chin tilting up an inch, ‘to find good officers for this ship. This is my first command, and my last captain demonstrated enormous faith to put me forward for her. That’s been a point of discontent among some of his political enemies.’

Gov’taj’s eyes narrowed a hint. ‘Are his enemies our enemies?’

Our. She swallowed. ‘Yes.’

‘Then I am all the happier to thwart them by putting myself at your side.’ He gave a smile that was all sharp teeth. ‘I expect someone in personnel thought, “give the Klingon to the Klingon.” Let them underestimate us both, Karana.’

That made her sit up straighter. ‘I’m not here to “prove anyone wrong.” I’m here to be captain of this ship. I appreciate you volunteering for the assignment, Gov’taj, but there is no grand conspiracy or battle of politics here. Not now I have a crew. Our challenge will come across the border.’

He watched her for a moment, going quiet in that way she knew meant he was thinking. He placed his hands calmly on the desk. ‘You served on Endeavour for some years.’ She gave a stiff nod, apprehensive of what he was driving at. ‘And have left it all behind for Pathfinder. Left them.’

Left her, came the treacherous thought. ‘It was time to move on.’

‘Hm.’ Gov’taj gave a small nod, the faintest scoff in the sound he made. Then he stood. ‘You want to tell me to focus on my work and not think too much of our bond as a House. As family. As siblings.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Karana, you have kept the family at arm’s length all your life,’ Gov’taj sighed. ‘You did so even when you came to Qo’noS as a teenager, you did so when we served on the qa’chaQ together. You forget that I do know you. And I know that you would prefer it if the House of A’trok disappeared, or at least forgot you existed.’ The corner of his lip curled, the hint of a fang showing. ‘I did not come here to swear blood-oaths and drink blood-wine with you and make your heart sing like a warrior’s, or whatever it is you fear. I am here because I can help you. Whether you need the brother, the warrior… or the lieutenant.’

She was silent there, lost in the woods of figuring out how she even wanted to respond, let alone what would get her through this conversation quicker. And then his quiet sobriety faded, and Gov’taj gave a short bark of a laugh.

‘But my staff! Them, I shall put through their paces. I delight in watching young Starfleet officers confounded when I am not half so stupid as they fear.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘I am ready to serve, my captain. Everything else may wait. Shall I meet my team and begin reviewing tactical reports of beyond the border?’

He had injected himself into her life and work, chastised her for spending her life running, and then given a nod and wink and said it didn’t matter. The worst thing was that she thought he was painfully sincere about all of it, and would, at least for now, let her maintain the mask of uniform and rank.

Mouth dry, Valance gave a stiff nod. She wasn’t sure what she’d say as she fought for her voice, but she spoke without thinking once it returned.

‘Do so. Dismissed, Lieutenant.’

And her brother merely inclined his head with deep, formal respect. ‘By your command, Captain.’

Thawn remembered when they’d come aboard the new Endeavour, the Obena-class successor of the ship she’d served on for years. They’d been a united crew then, expanding but with a core that had been through enough to retain a sense of identity. That sense had been inflicted on the ship from the first; bringing with them what they needed, making deliberate changes where they wished, from furnishings to decoration.

Pathfinder had none of this. The ship had seen only brief operations after launching, returning to port for quick modifications to bring her in line with the other ships of her line deployed later, and the minor systems adjustments perfected in the field. She was as untarnished as could be after this long in service, and none aboard had had time to get comfortable. As Harkon put it, she had the ‘new ship smell,’ and nobody knew how to change it yet. They didn’t know what scent they’d prefer.

Even Valance looked oddly out of sorts at the head of the conference room meeting table. Thawn had never thought of the commander – the captain – as uncertain, as anything but a towering force of confidence, but there was a hesitation to her as she stood there now. Perhaps this was just what she looked like in the light, out from the shadows of Matt Rourke or Leo MacCallister.

‘Thank you for being here,’ she began. ‘I know this was a last-minute posting for some of you, and I appreciate everyone responding with the speed and professionalism I will expect in the future.’

Nobody, Thawn thought quietly, had ever accused Karana Valance of warmth. Thawn looked down the line of officers, unaccustomed to her relatively senior spot at the table – right next to Commander Dashell, and far fewer heartbeats from command than ever before. Once, the prospect might have stirred joy and excitement, might have felt like a sign of recognition and progress. Now she could only wonder how badly wrong things had gone to get her here. And if they could get worse.

‘We all know names and faces,’ Valance continued, with a slightly dismissive wave of the hand. ‘So I’ll get to business. Our long-term assignment is still pending, but we’re anticipating a briefing package of exploration on the Beta Quadrant frontier. With the Star Empire’s collapse and new agreements emerging with the Romulan factions – including the Free State and the Republic – there are opportunities for Starfleet to go where we’ve never gone before.’

Harkon made a face at that. ‘Isn’t that going to mostly be wandering into places the Romulans were oppressing everyone and seeing how bad it was?’

Valance paused with a hint of irritation, either at the interruption or the cynicism, and it was Dashell who answered, leaning forward with a gentle smile as he clasped his hands together.

‘The Star Empire was vast and did not have the same policies as the Federation on where to go, or why,’ he explained. ‘They cared if a system had resources, including, yes, potential labour. But that means there are hundreds, if not thousands of worlds they’ve paid little heed. Not to mention that most of their survey records are long gone, or anyone who has them isn’t about to share.’

‘It’s our mission,’ said Valance in a clipped voice, ‘to assess these regions. Initially, we’ll be conducting a survey of areas of the independent Romulan factions deemed stable, welcoming, or unclaimed.’ She paused and glared for a moment at a blank section of bulkhead. But then, they were all blank in here, this sterile, crisp briefing room in which they all sat, strangers or, at best, colleagues. ‘But we have yet to receive the strategic assessment of those briefings.’

‘Starfleet want us to explore,’ drawled Hal Riggs cautiously, ‘but they don’t know where?’

Thawn watched Valance and narrowed her eyes a millimetre. Some of Starfleet doesn’t want us out here at all, so people who make the assessments on borders and security drag their feet. ‘What do we do in the meantime, Captain?’ she asked, clear and crisp and sounding ready for action.

Valance inclined her head. ‘We do have a mission, about a sector out from Rator. The region has been quiet; the Star Empire of Rator is still gathering its forces and nobody is contesting their territory yet. The Aerie-class USS Kingfisher was conducting a quick survey of these worlds – specifically the planet Drapice.’

At her gesture, Dashell took over. A press of a button on his PADD brought the holographic projector to life, but all they had was the star chart. Drapice gleamed, barely a sneeze over the old border to the Star Empire. But that had been terra incognita to Starfleet since they’d first spotted it on long-range sensors, forbidden by treaties and force of arms, and now the deep unknown was right on their doorstep.

‘Despite its proximity to Rator, Drapice didn’t draw much of the Star Empire’s attention, so far as we can tell,’ Dashell began. ‘It has little by way of useful resources, and a pre-warp civilisation we think the Empire didn’t deem worth enslaving. It does appear the Empire sometimes had a policy of letting these cultures develop on their own to, well. See what happens, I suppose.’

‘If they aren’t physically strong,’ rumbled Gov’taj, ‘and lack technological sophistication, then enslaving them is not always cost-effective.’ Eyes turned to him, and he straightened with a slightly startled air. ‘Forgive me. I do bring more than deep knowledge of atrocities.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Two crewmen arrive on Qo’noS…’

‘Lieutenant.’ Valance’s expression had set in a way which looked neutral to many, but Thawn knew it masked intense disapproval. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m telling a joke,’ Gov’taj said. ‘To make a better first impression than demonstrating my understanding of the economics of slavery.’ He looked back to the table. ‘They meet a guard…’

‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’

Gov’taj shut up with an apologetic look to the table. ‘I think it would have lost something in the translation. I assure you, I am very funny.’ Further down, Ensign Kally clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

Valance bit her lip before pressing on. ‘The Kingfisher’s mission was to assess if the people of Drapice had been influenced by the Star Empire – we have heard of some such civilisations being cultivated to be more easily integrated later. With Drapice’s technology, it seemed unlikely. But the Kingfisher and her crew have gone dark. We’re to find out what happened. And, if feasible, complete their mission.’

‘So close to Rator, and Starfleet worried about the strategic implications of our mission.’ Thawn reached for her PADD. ‘Aren’t we concerned the Romulans got them?’

‘We have a lot of sensors directed at that border,’ Dashell said. ‘There’s no sign of another ship showing up. The Kingfisher arrived and then… nothing.’

‘If we run into trouble – the Star Empire of Rator, another Romulan faction – we’re to withdraw,’ Valance said unhappily. ‘But there are missing Starfleet officers and the risk of a Prime Directive breach.’

Doctor Winters tapped his fingers on the edge of the briefing table. ‘Do we know much about the physiology of the people of Drapice?’

‘Some,’ said Dashell. ‘Enough for the Kingfisher to plan a program of genetic metamorphosis for infiltration if necessary. That’s lower on our priority list.’

‘We might not have a choice,’ Winters pointed out, ‘but honestly, I was wondering about the odds of us identifying non-natives from orbit with our sensors.’

Valance raised a hand to cut them off. ‘We don’t know much yet. But it’s possible. The Kingfisher had a small complement: eight people. We find them, and find out what happened. Their mission is a secondary priority.’

‘I’ll, um.’ Ensign Kally spoke, then shut up the moment all eyes were on her. ‘Sorry, Captain, ma’am. I thought that was a gap where I could – do I talk?’

‘You clearly do,’ said Valance.

‘I was just gonna say – do you want me to start scanning local comms once we’re in the region, see if there’s any chatter that could be about an Aerie?’

Thawn glanced at Valance, then looked quite intently at her PADD. Elsa wouldn’t have asked, she’d have just done it, she thought. But it hadn’t occurred to Valance that she’d need to ask this very green officer to begin processes she was used to her subordinates doing as naturally as breathing.

‘Do it,’ Valance said after a moment. ‘And liaise with Commander Dashell, who’ll be monitoring our sensors.’ She glanced down the table. ‘Doctor Winters, make ready in case we do need to infiltrate Drapice. Prepare protocols for any of the senior staff to deploy if necessary – I won’t know what composition of away team I’ll need until we get there.’

‘Of course. I’ll need to then prioritise everyone in Sickbay for a full medical,’ said Winters, and glanced apologetically at Gov’taj. ‘Especially you, Lieutenant; I don’t have records yet from the KDF.’

Gov’taj waved a hand like this was no issue. ‘My blood is your blood, Doctor.’

Winters paused at that. ‘Oh. Good?’

Harkon snickered. ‘You did say you were very funny.’

‘Officers.’ Valance looked up and down the table. ‘You’ll have the full information on the Kingfisher’s mission sent to you. We depart at 1400 hours. Any questions?’

Kally raised a hand this time. ‘Do we know when we’ll be back at Starbase Bravo?’

‘With any luck, not for some time,’ said Valance. ‘We are supposed to be on a mission of exploration.’

‘We’re one of them ranging ships,’ mused Riggs. ‘So long as someone lets us, y’know, range.’

‘Of course, we might have to bring the crew of the Kingfisher back,’ Thawn pointed out.

Valance sighed, planting her hands on the table. ‘We’ll see. Dismissed.’

Others got to their feet, hurrying off. Commander Dashell at once cornered the diminutive Ensign Kallavasu, likely realising he needed to make sure she had direct guidance on her first official duty as a department head – as a commissioned officer. Gov’taj hovered for a moment, looking unsure of himself, but left as Thawn stood her ground.

Valance waited until the door was shut, leaving the two alone, before straightening in her seat. ‘Something on your mind, Lieutenant?’

Thawn hesitated. ‘I hope you know that I’m on your side, Captain,’ she said tentatively.

‘I didn’t know there were sides.’

‘Our struggle to fill all billets. It’s no secret, Captain, I know it’s why you sent me to bring in Harkon. And now regional leadership is being slow to give us clearance on the mission we were assembled for -’

But Valance raised a hand and Thawn, however much she felt like she stood on burning coals these days, fell silent at the slightest exertion of authority. ‘I don’t want you to worry about this, Lieutenant. Pathfinder will perform her mission and duty. Focus on the ship.’

‘If Fleet Captain Jericho is issuing any orders about what happens here, in his area of operations, and wants to continue to wrong-foot Captain Rourke, then it makes sense he wouldn’t want the Pathfinder as an asset to -’

‘Lieutenant.’ This time Thawn did shut up properly, shoulders sinking as Valance regarded her. The captain waited for a moment to make sure she was done before she spoke. ‘These are growing pains with a new assignment. Starfleet Science signs off on one thing, but Tactical wants to check affairs before giving the green light. That’s all.’

In the weeks since the Gradin Belt, Thawn had felt like she was cramming her telepathic senses back in her head. Ever since leaving Betazed a decade ago, she’d been expected to know – told – that what was socially acceptable there was an intrusion, even a violation. And so she’d locked away a part of herself to live in the wider Federation, because Rosara Thawn was an absolutist, and not good at doing things by degrees. She’d had to bring it all crashing back out in the past months, and while she knew she now had to pack it away again, on some level she resented the need.

It wasn’t just her telepathic sense that told her Valance was lying, though. She’d worked with her for almost four years now, and knew her many masks and methods. More than that, she’d picked up on the dynamic aboard Endeavour when Fleet Captain Jericho had forced so many changes. This response was like getting a door slammed shut in her face.

Captain Rourke sent me with you, she wanted to say – no, shout, rage. But Karana Valance was the captain now and had to make sure everyone knew it. Even, or perhaps especially, an old colleague from before.

Thawn straightened, demeanour settling into pitch-perfect professionalism. ‘As you say, Captain. I’ll make sure our supplies and equipment are ready for long-term deployment. We should prepare for the possibility, after all.’

It was possible Valance looked a little guilty as she left. Possible, but ultimately unimportant. After all, this was a fresh start, wiping the slate clean. For all of them.

Like the rest of Pathfinder, the lounge directly under the shuttlebay lacked any personal touches. Everything was the standard furnishings of greys and blues, the fixtures in bright steel or polished black. It didn’t even have a name, Thawn thought as she padded in – it was just ‘the lounge.’ Another four of similar size were scattered about the ship, each favoured by a different group among the crew, like the engineers preferring the one nearest main engineering itself. The tall windows curving up towards the shuttlebay and the stars streaming away as Pathfinder left them behind granted a stunning enough view that this lounge had rapidly become a favourite among the senior staff. At least, that was what Commander Riggs’s ‘casual’ invitation suggested.

The burly engineer had a big booth by those windows and gave an animated wave of summons as he spotted her. Harkon, Winters, and Kally were already there and Thawn felt something ancient and embedded flicker in her gut. All but the doctor were plainly good with people, cheerful and friendly and socially confident, a far cry from what anyone ever said about her. That she hadn’t felt anxiety this mundane in a while brought no comfort.

There was no bar, only a replicator, and Thawn took longer than she needed fussing over her drink choice before she approached the booth. A few junior officers were scattered about, but the lounge wasn’t big and the senior staff felt like a singularity in such a narrow space, the focal point of anything. It likely wasn’t true – the science officers probably wanted nothing more than to unwind after a long day – but it was a difficult sense to shake.

‘Thawn!’ Harkon pushed the opposite chair back with her foot so she could sit down. ‘Wasn’t sure we’d see you.’

Thawn sat primly. ‘Commander Riggs invited us all.’

‘I mean, I wasn’t sure you’d come.’

‘Oof.’ Riggs had a swig from his bottle of synthale, sleeves rolled up. She suspected by now this happened the moment nobody senior was looking at him. ‘Everyone’s welcome. So long as we’re clear on one thing: this ain’t a time or place for rank. Riggs is fine.’

Lieutenant Thawn, perennial pleaser of superior officers, never knew what to do when they told her this. So she sipped her drink and simply nodded. ‘I assumed this was the usual new crew mixer.’

‘Without the skipper or XO anyplace in sight. No offence to them, but folks get all stiff if they’re around,’ Riggs groaned.

‘Valance never unstiffens,’ grumbled Harkon.

‘Commander Dashell seems nice,’ Kally said brightly. Then she paused. ‘Not that Captain Valance doesn’t. I mean, nice isn’t the word I’d use. But I think she doesn’t want to seem nice. She’s very cool.’

‘Very cool and cold as ice.’ Harkon clicked her tongue. ‘Oh man, Thawn, remember planning to run the Romulan border to rescue the captain from Tagrador? We could have started a war and she didn’t bat an eyelid.’

Kally turned to them both with huge eyes. ‘You know the captain?’

Harkon visibly swelled at how obviously impressed the young ensign was. ‘Know? We’ve been in a load of scrapes with her, Thawn and me. Racing D’Ghor fighters through an asteroid field. Fighting the Star Empire at Agarath.’

‘Commander Valance was on Endeavour at Agarath,’ Thawn said flatly, sipping her drink. ‘We were on the Talon with Commander Kharth. That was, as you say, a scrape, but it’s not like we’re fire-forged comrades.’

Doctor Winters was watching her with a quiet, assessing air. ‘Endeavour’s a good ship. It wasn’t loyalty to Captain Valance that had you leave?’

‘I got a promotion out of it,’ Harkon said smugly, then sobered. ‘But, uh, Thawn didn’t have much choice. No offence to any of you.’ She waved a hand quickly, apologetically. ‘She just got married, and he’s still on Endeavour, so…’

Riggs frowned gently at that. ‘That must be rough.’

‘It’s fine,’ Thawn said, more bluntly than she meant. ‘I wanted a new opportunity. Anyway, that’s all the past. You’re my crew now.’ Were she smoother socially, she might have changed the subject. But her mind went unhelpfully blank, leaving her statement more ominous than bonding.

‘I don’t know if we’re gonna get exciting rescue missions into enemy territory,’ said Kally, still rather star-struck. ‘But I sure hope we can help this science team. There’s no chatter from anyone on comms about them.’

Riggs seemed to have noticed Thawn’s discomfort and leaned forward, eager to keep the conversation moving. ‘So, who reckons they’ll get on the away team?’

‘You, obviously,’ sighed Harkon. ‘The Aerie probably needs repairing after all.’

‘Surely you will,’ said Kally, turning to Winters. ‘They could be hurt.’

Winters pursed his lips. ‘It’s possible.’

‘I bet I’ll be left keeping the ship in orbit,’ Harkon grumbled. ‘XO will take Thawn, of course.’

Thawn raised an eyebrow. ‘Why “of course”?’

‘You’re like a second science officer.’

‘Not of anthropology.’

Harkon waved away the disagreement. ‘And Lieutenant Gov’taj, of course. You want muscle.’ She frowned at that and looked to Winters. ‘Actually, can you gene-shift him? As a Klingon?’

‘Certainly,’ said the doctor with a shrug. ‘We have far more in common than not.’

‘I wonder why he’s here,’ mused Kally. ‘A Klingon warrior like him on a Starfleet science ship like this.’

‘I heard,’ said Harkon, leaning forward with a glint in her eye, ‘he and the captain are related.’

Thawn gave her a flat look. ‘You can’t just say all Klingons are related.’

‘That’s not it! I swear! It’s going around the lower decks.’

‘They can’t just say all Klingons are related.’

‘Wow,’ said Kally. ‘I guess you guys don’t know the captain that well.’

Riggs laughed loudly at that, and despite herself, Thawn had to smirk. Not just because it was an infectious sound, but Harkon’s visible deflating was quite funny. ‘Then that makes this,’ he said, leaning forward and brandishing his bottle, ‘a new start for sure.’

Harkon bit her lip with guilty amusement, and looked to Kally. ‘We’ll get our own adventures. In a couple years’ time, someone will be telling stories about how cool it was when they were in a scrape with you.’

‘Not too many scrapes, I hope,’ Winters said apprehensively.

‘Come on, Doc. Live a little.’ Harkon grinned wickedly.

‘I would like it if you all live a lot.’

Thawn looked to Riggs. ‘What do you know about Commander Dashell?’

He looked a little nonplussed. ‘Probably about the same as you. Scratch that, I bet you read his record more than I did. Sorry, Thawn, there weren’t no super senior staff club meet where we braided each other’s hair and shared our secrets.’

‘I hear he’s been everywhere,’ gushed Kally, who Thawn was starting to think had swallowed every inch of gossip wholesale so long as it was exciting. ‘Like, of places Starfleet go.’

‘He is exceptionally well-qualified,’ said Thawn cautiously, ‘but about a decade of his career was spent in a starbase or at Starfleet Academy. I’m sure his experience is more than adequate, but he doesn’t have much more starship experience than I do.’ At their looks, she wilted. ‘I don’t mean it as a criticism.’

‘Thawn,’ said Harkon to the others with a rather knowing look, ‘is top of the class when it comes to dumping on fun.’

‘I’m just… he’s not been everywhere,’ Thawn said, a little crestfallen. ‘I’m not questioning him.’ But the chatter was moving on, Harkon effortless in dragging people with her in cheerful chatter – Kally eager for the ride, Winters caught up despite himself, and Riggs just enthusiastic to get stuck in as the gathering proved the early-stage social bonding he’d likely planned. It was almost textbook. And, as with most textbook social bonding occasions, Thawn found herself sliding more into sitting and listening, lest she say something else someone took the wrong way.

Pleasantly mundane as it was, perhaps not everything got a fresh start on Pathfinder.

Valance had sat on a bridge dropping out of warp a thousand times and done so plenty from even the centre seat. But she was not the first officer holding the CONN on some routine travel any more, and the apprehension tightening her throat as she felt Pathfinder slide to impulse was new, tart.

Drapice rushed up on the viewscreen as the stars stopped streaming, a blue-brown orb of suspicious peace in the quiet of space. So often when they arrived at a system, comms and sensors would chitter and beep as local traffic or defence infrastructure flagged them. Out here, where the natives had not yet broken orbit, the rumble across the bridge was quieter.

‘I detect no ships in this system,’ Gov’taj reported. ‘Including the Kingfisher. Any vessels on long-range sensors are maintaining their speeds and course. Paying us no mind.’

Commander Dashell’s lips pursed. ‘They may have landed the Kingfisher. For all sorts of reasons.’

Valance nodded. ‘Bring us into high orbit, Harkon. Thawn, see if you can find any sign of the Kingfisher or our people on the surface.’ She reached for the controls on her armrest. ‘Commander Riggs, report to the bridge.’

Pathfinder’s deck rumbled only an iota as Lieutenant Harkon brought them into the planet’s gravitic pull, then gently fired the engines to stop them from surrendering to it. But Thawn’s response, after a few taps of her controls and a tightening of the operations officers’ shoulders, was less positive.

‘There’s unusually high ionic interference in the atmosphere,’ she said in a clipped voice. ‘It’s not blocking sensors completely, but I’m having to run a high-energy scan.’

Dashell leaned forward. ‘Filter for something distinctive you won’t find elsewhere on Drapice, like the Kingfisher’s fusion reactor or -’

‘Yes, sir.’ Thawn audibly caught her own snap. ‘Thank you sir, I have it.’ The XO settled back with visible embarrassment at his micro-management of a prickly officer. Valance tried to convey reassurance with only a look.

It took a minute before Thawn spoke again. ‘I have the Kingfisher,’ she said, and while relief loosened Valance’s chest, that just left room for fresh anxiety to creep in. ‘She’s settled in the basin of a mountain range just north of the equator. It’s all but impossible to pick up specific life signs, but I can detect clusters. The nearest settlement of note is some eighteen kilometres away.’

Harkon gave a whistle. ‘In clear conditions, they’re gonna need to have brought the Kingfisher down some distance away and kept to a low-altitude to get to their landing spot to avoid being spotted.’

‘Boost power to the comms,’ Valance instructed and glanced over her shoulder to Kally’s station at the rear of the bridge. ‘Try to hail them, Ensign.’

The young officer nodded, finger pressing to her earpiece, but a few moments later sighed. ‘I’m not getting through this interference. Sorry, Captain.’

‘This isn’t necessarily bad news,’ Dashell mused. ‘If they set down and just had simple mechanical problems with the ship, it could have stranded them here.’ Across from Kally, the turbolift doors slid open and Riggs walked in, rolling his sleeves back down. He had picked up that Valance found that irritating, at least.

‘Let’s not get too far into conjecture, even of the optimistic kind.’ Valance lifted a hand. ‘Thawn, what’s your assessment on transporters?’

This response came much quicker. ‘I’m confident I could get you down there,’ Thawn said without audible pride. ‘But I’m not confident I could pick up your signal to bring you back, and with even less certainty in an emergency.’

‘Understood.’ Valance pushed to her feet. ‘Then we’re taking the Watson, and we’re packing pattern enhancers. Dashell, Thawn, Harkon, you’re with me. Direct Doctor Winters to join us with his equipment for gene-shifting disguise.’ She paused and looked to Gov’taj. ‘And you, Lieutenant.’ Ignoring Kally’s disappointed look, she turned to Riggs. ‘Pathfinder is yours while we’re gone.’

The engineer openly made a face. ‘Skipper, if the Kingfisher’s too dinged to fly, mightn’t she need repairs?’

‘I can handle that, sir,’ Thawn said briskly. ‘Between us, Harkon and I can make a full assessment and determine if we need an engineering team.’

‘Yeah,’ said Harkon with a wince. ‘Sorry, Riggs. Responsibility’s yours today.’

‘If it helps,’ said Dashell with a gentle smile, ‘these chairs are suspiciously comfortable. They might be here to lull you into a false sense of security, but you can enjoy it while it lasts.’

‘No cupholder,’ Riggs complained as he approached, but raised his hands at Valance’s sharp look. ‘I’ll babysit, Skipper, you got it. Pathfinder’s safe with me an’ acting XO Kally.’

While Valance didn’t smile at Kally’s obvious delight at this shift, it was only because she fought hard to keep her expression level. ‘Very good, Commander. Away team, with me.’

‘Oh boy.’ Harkon clapped her hands as they trooped to the turbolift. ‘This means I get to bring us down a distance away and bring us to the Kingfisher at stupid-low altitude?’

‘Cautiously low,’ Valance warned. ‘Not stupid low. We have to stay in one piece to be any use as a rescue party.’

‘Don’t worry, Captain.’ Harkon’s grin hadn’t faded when they stepped into the lift, the doors sliding shut behind them. ‘This is exactly the kind of heroics you picked me for.’

‘Proximity alert.’

‘Hey, Thawn? Do us a favour and kill that thing,’ Harkon called from the pilot’s controls. Blue skies stretched out beyond the canopy, but it was a view peppered by the occasional brown-grey tip of a mountain, sometimes reaching higher than they flew.

Thawn had an iron grip on the safety harness strapping her to the co-pilot’s seat. ‘I am not disengaging any safety protocols.’

‘I don’t mean disengage, I just mean… make it pipe down a bit. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Lieutenant.’ Valance’s voice from further back in the cockpit was tenser. ‘There are no prizes for getting us there fast. Only getting us there in one piece.’

‘Hey.’ Harkon could look hurt and still not turn away from the controls as she guided the Watson through the dips and valleys between the rugged mountain range on their low-altitude approach to the Kingfisher’s location, far from anywhere they might be spotted by locals. ‘I’m just having a little fun, Captain. I’m not being irresponsible.’

She did slow down an iota, though, and Thawn gave a gentle exhale of relief. The Watson was the Pathfinder’s Waverider-class integrated auxiliary vessel, larger than any of their shuttles, boasting all the facilities they might need to provide medical and engineering assistance to the Kingfisher’s crew, and the most capable atmospheric craft they had. It was also, she felt, being treated like Harkon’s personal adventure vehicle.

At the sensor controls Dashell made a satisfied noise. ‘I’m not picking up any life signs anywhere nearby. It looks like this range is too inaccessible for natives to come here lightly.’

Gov’taj gave a small grumble. ‘It would only take one wandering mountaineer, though.’

‘We pick our risks. Bringing the Watson has the highest chance of us recovering the Kingfisher quickly and safely,’ Valance said coolly.

‘Coming up on her now,’ Harkon called to confirm, and the Watson slowed again.

They had been working their way through a valley, zig-zagging between the peaks, and Thawn heard Dashell give a low, ‘huh,’ as the valley widened even more to a level basin nestled among the dusty brown mountains. But anything he’d noticed was lost among the crew as they saw, sat safely on the ground, the lurking shape of an Aerie-class craft.

At once the science officer was back at his console. ‘No signs of damage,’ he reported. ‘But she’s powered down.’

‘And I’m picking up no life signs still,’ reported Doctor Winters in a clipped, worried voice.

‘One step at a time. Our sensors don’t seem the most reliable,’ Valance pointed out. ‘Bring us down, Harkon.’

Now the pilot was all business, setting the Watson on the ground a short distance from the Kingfisher and what they could now see was a small campsite between the ship and the nearest rock face. As Harkon finished post-flight checks, Valance reached for the comms. ‘Any Starfleet personnel, come in. This is Commander Valance of the USS Pathfinder.’

Only silence met her call. Behind her, Commander Dashell stood. ‘I suppose we should see what’s out there.’

The air was hot and dusty, and Thawn watched as Gov’taj’s boots left prints in the dirt as he advanced from the landing ramp, the first to set foot on the surface as the whole team disembarked. Valance moved up to him with Harkon, while Thawn slipped back to join Dashell and Winters, both with their tricorders ready. ‘Are you really getting nothing?’ she asked in a low voice.

‘Worse than nothing,’ said Dashell, lips thinning.

‘I can pick us up,’ said Winters, sounding surprised by the XO’s grim demeanour.

‘That’s what I mean. Our sensors are functioning. I can find us, our ship, the Kingfisher. But there’s nobody else in range to be detected.’

‘Commander, check the camp,’ called Valance. ‘Harkon, we’re going to check the Kingfisher. Lieutenant Gov’taj, secure the perimeter. I want to be certain we don’t get surprised out here.’

‘Oh,’ said Winters quietly, following Dashell and Thawn towards the campsite. ‘I hadn’t thought that they might have been attacked.’

‘We don’t know anything,’ Dashell said firmly. ‘Let’s see if we can find signs of life, or understand why they landed and why they set up facilities outside the ship. It usually means there’s something closer to investigate.’

It was all standard-issue Starfleet equipment in the camp. Lights had been erected in a perimeter ring around four large canvas tents, at the centre of which was the usual beacon that acted as a campfire for light and warmth, with steel benches arrayed around it. To Thawn’s eyes, it looked like the usual arrangements for any team settling into a location for some time. A glance into one tent showed a couple of bunks laid out, equipment tidily stowed nearby.

She turned to Dashell. ‘You were struck by something when we saw the landing site.’

His eyebrows raised as he recalled. ‘Oh. Yes. This basin.’ He looked around the wide area, the looming peaks blocking off wind and a good deal of light, but not enough to kill the gently stifling and dusty warmth. ‘The valley is clearly the product of erosion; it followed recognisable patterns. This basin is a little odd in location and size.’

‘Do you think that’s what the crew were investigating?’ She followed him into the first tent, Winters staying outside to sweep about with his tricorder.

‘Impossible to say,’ said Dashell, and straightened as he saw the layout of the interior. A field console had been deployed, its lights dim. All around, equipment had been neatly ordered – but not packed.

Thawn wrinkled her nose. ‘They were working here. Living here. There’s no sign of disturbance, no sign they stowed gear to move on. They just… vanished.’

Dashell nodded at the field console. ‘This should tell us more if we can power it up. They’ll have linked their tricorders to it and all their readings will be recorded. Probably.’

She unslung the toolkit from her shoulder. ‘Then I should get to work. You can keep looking around, sir.’

It was soothing to work in the shade of the tent once Dashell had left. Drapice’s heat was not too stifling, but the uneasy tension of the empty camp had blended with the whisper of anxiety at working with a new superior, of being aware she’d have to prove her worth to be sure she’d be listened to. This narrowed the broad puzzle, the missing officers, the possible Prime Directive breach, to a simple, technical challenge.

The console didn’t boot up at her command, so she had to crack open a panel. At once she saw the drained power cells and made a face at their condition. These were rated to last months, not days. But she had spares in her kit, and it was incidental to replace the busted components. Thorough in her work, it took a few minutes before Thawn was done, hit the power key, and brought the console flooding to life. The holographic projector flickered in the air before steadying before her, and with a flutter of satisfaction, Thawn focused to read the records of the crew of the Kingfisher.

She had not gotten far before there was a call from outside. ‘Captain! Everyone!’ It was Dashell.

When Thawn ducked back into the bright light, Dashell and Winters stood near the sheer rock cliff the camp was nestled in the shadow of, tricorders in hand. Valance and Harkon jogged over from the Kingfisher, Gov’taj still out at the perimeter of their ships and camp.

‘There’s nobody aboard,’ Harkon was grumbling. ‘And I’m having to do a full reboot on the ship systems. No idea what happened there.’

‘I had to replace a power cell in the field console,’ Thawn said with thin lips.

Valance frowned. ‘There are redundant cells. They were all blown?’

‘Drained.’

Dashell tilted his chin up as they gathered, eyes tense. ‘I believe,’ he said when they turned to him, ‘that a dampening field has been active in this basin at some point in the last, oh, seven days.’

‘That matches when the records end on the field console,’ Thawn said. ‘I’m still going through them.’ But Dashell looked like he wasn’t done, and despite what she’d found, she quietened.

‘The doctor picked up an energy reading,’ the Bajoran science officer continued, then nodded to the sheer cliff face beside them. ‘Coming from here.’

‘It’s very faint,’ Winters said apologetically like this was his fault. ‘I’d ended up just scanning everything, then I came over here. But I don’t know what’s possibly happening here in the mountain.’

‘I have a suspicion,’ said Dashell, and raised his tricorder. ‘Even a minor disruption of the energy field here should be enough…’

As he tapped buttons on the device, Thawn drew a sharp breath. ‘The commander is right,’ she pressed on, ‘because the Kingfisher crew did find something here. They detected an energy signature from orbit, something that we didn’t find or isn’t there any more, and shouldn’t be technologically possible for the people of Drapice to generate. So they landed to investigate and -’

And as Dashell worked, the seemingly sheer cliff face shimmered before them, like air rippling above flames. When it steadied, it was no longer a rock wall, but a solid, sealed metal doorway set into the cliff itself.

Harkon swore. ‘A cloaked, underground Romulan facility?’

Dashell grimaced. ‘This is not Romulan. If nothing else, it is far, far too old.’

‘Oh my.’ Winters was looking at his tricorder, though, not the door. ‘Captain, I am picking up life signs now. Some way ahead and below us – humans, a Tellarite, a Rigellian… it must be the away team.’ He again tapped his tricorder, then shook his head. ‘I can’t establish a comms connection, something else is disrupting that. And, Captain… I’m only reading six life signs. That’s two missing.’

But it was not the appearance of the doorway that had silenced Thawn. She’d taken a sharp step back, pressing a hand to her temple as something else slipped into her awareness. It came with the taste of bitter metal on her tongue.

Valance spotted this, turning. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘Something telepathic is going on,’ Thawn said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m trying to focus through it…’

The captain turned to Dashell. ‘How old, Commander?’

He made a face. ‘Thousands of years. Long before the Romulans ever reached here. I expect there’s more information on the field console Lieutenant Thawn reactivated.’

Thawn had moved to lean against a nearby rock. ‘There was a lot,’ she said through gritted teeth.

Thumping footsteps heralded Gov’taj’s hurried arrival. ‘I apologise for the delay. There was something curious out there.’ His eyes landed on the door. ‘And here, I see.’

‘Go on,’ said Valance.

‘The basin is well-sheltered. Tracks in the dirt are well-preserved.’ He grimaced. ‘Two sets lead to a passageway out of the basin. Starfleet-issue boot tread. They are among the freshest sets of tracks that appear to be left by the Kingfisher’s crew, they are the only ones leaving the basin, and they do not return.’

Valance frowned. ‘What’s their heading?’

‘South-west.’ But it was Thawn who answered, not Gov’taj, and she blinked as she realised she was saying it without thinking. She straightened. ‘I think… I think what I’m feeling here is some sort of telepathic echo, Captain.’ At Valance’s face, she drew a slow, careful breath. ‘Whatever I’m sensing, it’s not currently active. Not here.’

‘But maybe where the two crewmembers went.’

Harkon swore. ‘So the Kingfisher lands, most of the crew get themselves locked in the underground facility of an ancient civilisation, and the last two run off with some telepathic thingy hanging around them? Oh.’ Her frustration faded for horrified realisation. ‘South-west is the direction of the closest settlement. Eighteen klicks out.’

Valance rubbed the back of her neck with a frustrated sigh. ‘We have to find them. And we have to find the rest of the crew. And figure out what’s going on here. And either stop or ascertain the extent of any cultural contamination.’ She turned to Dashell. ‘You, Doctor Winters, and Lieutenant Harkon will stay here. Use whatever equipment you need, whatever records the Kingfisher crew left behind. Rescue the crew and find out what you can.’

Harkon looked disappointed, but before she could voice that, Dashell nodded. ‘Of course, Captain.’

‘Doctor Winters,’ Valance pressed on. ‘Before you render assistance here, you’re going to help prepare me, Gov’taj, and Thawn to enter Drapician society.’

It was Thawn’s turn to be dissatisfied with the personnel assignments. ‘Me? Captain, I’ve only skimmed the cultural brief.’

‘I’ve read it in-depth,’ came Valance’s cool response, ‘and it wasn’t very long, because we know almost nothing. But if something telepathic is affecting Starfleet personnel headed towards a pre-warp civilisation settlement, then I want you with us.’

Gov’taj gave a low grumble, but at his sister’s sharp expression, his gaze turned wry. ‘I was simply thinking,’ he mused, and ran a finger along his forehead. ‘I wonder if I will still be handsome without ridges.’

Limited records on Drapice scrounged from Romulan assets meant Starfleet had learned a little about the natives before sending the Kingfisher, including what they looked like. Developing a temporary genetic modification programme to allow infiltration had thus been required ahead of any mission, so it was simple for Doctor Winters to bring Valance, Gov’taj, and Thawn to the small medical section aboard the Watson and give them the hypospray injections to begin the process.

‘I hope that didn’t sting too badly, Captain,’ Winters said apologetically as Valance swung her legs over the biobed to sit up.

‘Nothing I’ve not been through before,’ she said, gingerly lifting a hand to her forehead. She could not feel the patterned mottling of her skin she knew was there, but the smoothness of her brow, the absence of her forehead ridges, made her throat tighten. ‘How long will this last?’ she pressed, gaze snapping to Winters so she could focus on the job and not the swirling tug on her sense of self.

‘Your body will be trying to fight this off, but you shouldn’t feel anything for at least a week,’ said Winters. ‘Even then the symptoms would be mild, but increasing over the rest of the month, by which time your genetic pattern will have likely reasserted itself against the modification -’

‘Good,’ she said, hopping to her feet. The deck was only marginally unsteady under her. ‘We won’t need a week.’

Commander Dashell stood at the top of the rear hatch, arms folded across his chest. ‘We’ll go through the records from the Kingfisher’s investigations and get to work. Don’t worry, Captain – we’ll find a way to get them out.’

‘I know. I’ll try to establish contact daily. Inform us if you learn anything useful about the provenance of this technology, though.’ Valance grabbed the leather backpack they’d replicated and felt around inside for the discreet compartments where she could hide equipment like the tricorder. It would survive a cursory look, but not a close investigation if the bag fell into the wrong hands.

‘And if we don’t hear from you?’ His eyebrows raised.

‘Then focus on rescuing the crew of the Kingfisher as your priority.’

‘If you go missing, then that’s an additional threat to the Prime Directive,’ Dashell pointed out. ‘Regulations say that should be my priority, above even the lives of the missing officers.’

Her lips thinned with faint amusement as she slung the bag over her shoulder. ‘Then it sounds like you don’t need me to tell you what to do if this goes wrong.’

He sighed. ‘Stay safe, Captain.’

‘We will. Help these people, Commander.’

Gov’taj and Thawn waited at the foot of the ramp, both of them in the clothing their records suggested would help them pass unobtrusively in Drapician society. Garments like rugged brown linen tunics and jerkins over light woollen breeches, all replicated to appear a little worn-in, had minor quirks of invisible, modern design to make them sturdier. The boots had better grip, the fabric was more breathable; all changes invisible to the naked eye.

But while Thawn didn’t otherwise look too different – her eyes a little less dark, her face now changed by a rippled pattern weaving across the skin of her jawline and temples – Gov’taj was striking without his forehead ridges. As Valance’s eyes fell on him, he scowled and said, ‘I have lost my good looks.’ Neither Valance nor Thawn laughed, and that only made him grumpier as he hefted his large backpack. ‘We have some hours’ walk to the nearest settlement. I have studied our orbital scans and records and ascertained a path. We will have to move quickly to reach there before nightfall.’

‘Then let’s not wait,’ Valance said briskly and followed as her security chief led on.

There seemed some merit to Dashell’s concerns about the basin’s provenance as they left. The route they took into the lower reaches of the mountains was through a passageway that remained equally wide and even, and reasonably direct as it took them from this secluded stretch of elevation and down towards the reaches of inhabited Drapice. Within an hour, rugged brown rocks and dust turned to scrublands of scattered pale trees and thin brush on an open path leading down.

After two hours there was more greenery, scattered tufts of bush and grass, and thin, intermittent trees bowing over them. Gov’taj reached up to one as they passed under the increasing shade, and pulled off a dark brown fruit. He sniffed it. ‘Smells like a joruba,’ he mused.

‘Don’t eat it,’ said Thawn in a clipped voice.

Gov’taj harrumphed. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. I was eager to consume mysterious fruits on a new world.’

Valance’s eye had been on the horizon tumbling before them. It was not all flat, with rises and falls that made the view beyond a score or so of kilometres unclear. A winding river split the dusty landscape, green following it like a thread of blues and emeralds amid rugged brown. ‘Thawn,’ she said, as much to interrupt any possible argument as anything else. ‘Can you sense anything?’

‘There’s a settlement less than fifteen kilometres away,’ came Thawn’s cautious voice, ‘but I know that because I can see it.’ Indeed, when Valance squinted she could see tufts of smoke drifting to breach the blue skies, and the darkened knot of what could have been the settlement nestled around the river snaking in the distance.

Gov’taj’s eyes dragged from horizon to sky. ‘We will have to keep a good pace to beat nightfall.’ They pressed on, picking up their gait as well as they could on a decline along what could barely be called a path, scattered with loose scree. He waited until they had navigated a particularly treacherous stretch before speaking again. ‘What do we know of the people of Drapice?’

Valance tried to not sigh. She was comfortable with her decision to leave Commander Dashell at the dig site, but this meant she had not brought the team most qualified at anthropological infiltration. ‘Beyond these stretches of land along the equator, much of the planet is too cold to comfortably sustain life. There are smaller pockets of cultures elsewhere, including in those harsher and remote climates, but most of the population is on this continent. From what limited records we secured from the Romulans and scans from before the Kingfisher’s mission, we have reason to believe the different societies and settlements are in communication, are roughly equivalent in technological development, and from initial observations of architecture, fashion, and so forth, have close cultural ties.’

Thawn frowned as she picked over difficult ground. ‘This is quite the large continent for a relatively homogeneous culture, isn’t it?’

‘It happens sometimes,’ was all Valance could offer. ‘Regardless, we might hope to beat nightfall, but we would do well to camp outside any settlement. We have no information on economics or coinage, and I’d rather we don’t talk to anyone. Just pass through and see what we can hear. And, perhaps once we’re closer, scan.’

‘I am aware,’ mused Gov’taj, ‘of Starfleet protocols in these circumstances.’

‘There’s no reason for the Kingfisher’s officers to go anywhere near a settlement,’ Thawn pointed out. ‘Should we?’

‘There’s no reason for them to flee the basin, so far as we can tell,’ countered Valance. ‘Something is wrong.’

‘Flee is…’ Gov’taj’s voice trailed off. Then he grunted. ‘The tracks did not look like they left at speed. The tracks did not look like they left together – one set had a considerably different gait to the other.’

‘One officer left, another followed?’ wondered Valance.

‘Possibly. But it does not look like something happened and they ran away.’

‘In short, then,’ she said, ‘we shouldn’t assume that rational minds are at work. Especially not with whatever you’re sensing, Thawn.’

‘I don’t know what I’m sensing,’ came her stiff response.

That shut them up, as did the path taking them through a sharper, rockier decline that took them the next half-hour to navigate. But they were moving out of the hills and into the plains now, and while the sun was getting heavy and fat in the sky, the going was much more manageable. It did not take long before the greenery and wildlife increased, and they were kept company by more than mountain birds. Horned, shaggy-coated, four-legged beasts shambled in small packs nearby. Coming no higher than Gov’taj’s waist, they eyed the travellers with recognisably goat-like suspicion and seemed wary rather than wild. Their rough track eventually brought them to a dirt road heading deeper into the plains, past distant clusters of buildings made of the same sandstone of the nearby hills and alongside blossoming fields of what looked not dissimilar to wheat.

Gov’taj reached for them, pulling away grains from the heads of the grasses, and popped in his mouth. ‘Not unlike barley,’ he mused and grinned wickedly at Thawn’s gaze. ‘These are farmed, cultivated. And we shall have to take some risks, Lieutenant, wandering into a society we do not know.’

It was not long before their journey reached a wider road, and the three clustered at the increasing signs of life. There was little more than farmland around, but they were only a few kilometres from the settlement, and as they walked they saw Drapicians toiling in the field, going about their business. When the first wagon, dragged by a long-limbed beast of burden, trundled down the road the other way, Valance ushered them to the edge and felt her back lock up in apprehension, but they received a cheery nod from the driver in the wide-brimmed hat.

‘Perhaps they are welcoming. That would make a pleasant change,’ Gov’taj observed.

He had a point, which was why she did not break off from the path or watch from a distance when they spotted a cluster of activity further down the road a half hour later. By now the road was lined with what reminded her of olive trees, their thin trunks rising for the boughs of thick leaves to offer some modicum of shade, but it looked like little reprieve to the gathering ahead. Three Drapicians in drab farmers’ clothes huddled around a wagon that had lost a wheel, its back sagging and threatening to spill barrels of cargo. Awkwardly, they attempted to fit a replacement but struggled to raise the loaded pallet.

Thawn reached for Valance’s arm as they approached. ‘We should give them a wide berth.’

‘We should help,’ Gov’taj countered. ‘They look like they need it.’

‘And a good first impression with locals could be everything,’ Valance agreed. ‘Come on.’

Heads turned their way at the approach, eyes landing warily on the hulking figure of Gov’taj in particular, but Valance raised a hand in mollifying greeting. ‘Can we assist?’

A weathered Drapician woman regarded them a moment more, then gave a curt nod. ‘If you can lift.’

‘That,’ said Gov’taj as he swaggered forward, ‘we certainly can.’

It was, perhaps, the best way to make first contact. There was a simplicity to coordinating physical labour, where names and nature mattered less than putting in effort and listening to instruction. Valance had to give Gov’taj a warning look when he put his hands on the wagon, and he gave the slightest nod; it would not do to look remarkably stronger than the locals. Still, the two of Klingon heritage made short work of raising the wagon high enough to fit the new wheel, while Thawn lurked in the background in her usual awkward way.

As they eased the wagon back on the road, the Drapician woman dusted off her hands. Her eyes were might brighter now, and Valance thought the mottled skin on her brow had turned lighter as well, perhaps some reflection of her mood. She quietly hoped both had been accommodated in Winters’s modifications, yet would not betray them.

‘You’re more helpful than most vagrants,’ she mused but pressed on while Valance wondered how best to answer that. ‘I expect you’ve heard the call and are joining the pilgrimage.’

Valance hesitated. ‘We’ve heard rumours,’ she said, deciding that was safest. ‘We want to see for ourselves. Have you seen more?’

Now the woman smiled outright. ‘Rumour doesn’t begin to cover it, friend. I saw it with my own eyes. It was market day in town, and he walked in, bold as sunlight. At first, we thought he was mad, some hermit who’d studied the texts but gone soft in the head. But he knew it all.’

Thawn had made herself smaller, shoulders slumped, and when she said, ‘All?’ it was with a hesitant air that Valance thought was a little more affected. If she could look younger, she was likely more able to get away with looking stupider.

‘Scripture, child,’ said the Drapician. ‘But a learned man spouting words might be just that. No, we ignored him at first. But then he walked among the crowd, and them he laid his hands on he… well.’ She shook her head in wonderment. ‘He knew the secrets that burdened them and knew what words would lift them. Knew things no man could know, knew what clouded our hearts and knew how to clear them.’

Valance’s gaze flickered back to Thawn for just a heartbeat. Cautiously, she focused on the Drapician again. ‘So it is true?’ she said, aware of the careful line of asking questions without being curiously ignorant.

‘I’d say you can see for yourself, but you’re too late. The Prophet has headed to the capital. The Pontifex wants to see him for himself, so they say.’

‘It’s all true,’ another of the Drapicians, a younger man, grunted. ‘A time of revelation, they say.’

‘So maybe you can join the pilgrims who’ll follow in the coming days, and see him for yourself,’ said the older Drapician woman, but her eyes narrowed a hint. ‘Just be sure you behave yourselves if you come into town.’

Valance winced. ‘Travellers from all over must bring troublemakers too. We don’t want trouble.’

‘I’m sure you don’t. But folks are on edge about outsiders after the Prophet’s last night.’

‘What happened?’ Valance frowned.

‘We didn’t have much of pilgrims,’ said one of the other Drapicians. ‘Word was still getting out. Still, the young man came in, first of the flocking to see for themselves. Polite as anything, they say. Then at night tried breaking into the rooms where the Prophet was staying and… I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘Hurt him? What do heretics want anyway.’

One outsider coming into this town from seemingly nowhere, seeming to know people’s secrets, when Thawn was sure of a telepathic element to whatever was going on. Another following later and attempting to intercede. Little of this made sense to Valance, but she knew she had two missing officers and at least two mysterious local figures in what was lining up to be a Prime Directive disaster.

‘What happened to the heretic?’ she asked.

‘Rounded him up and killed him. Yesterday, weren’t it?’ the Drapician woman grunted, and Valance’s chest tensed.

‘Nah,’ said the younger man. ‘Trial was yesterday. They execute him at sundown.’

Valance turned to the other two, tense in the same way. ‘I think,’ she said, trying to not sound too urgent, ‘we want to be there for that. And understand this for ourselves.’

The Drapician woman sucked on her teeth for a moment. ‘Well, then,’ she said at length. ‘Guess you’ve earned a ride into town for helping us, then. And a reminder that there’s still good folk out there come to hear the truth of the Sun Lord, and the words of his prophet.’

The older woman’s name was Dazir, Valance discovered as they rode up front on the wagon trundling down the unevenly-paved, sandy road. She grew olive trees at her farm, which were pressed into precious oil that she sold at the market in the nearby town. From there, many barrels were sold on through the road and river network snaking across the country, the hard work of Dazir and her family shipped far and wide, or so the woman claimed with calm pride. She’d been making a local delivery with her two adult sons when their wagon had thrown a wheel and they’d struggled to fix it back into place, so her gratitude for the away team’s assistance was clear.

‘Sorry if we weren’t the most welcoming,’ Dazir said at last. This apology came only after a lengthy conversation, where Valance used every social skill she’d left frozen in ice to keep the other woman talking. ‘So many pilgrims coming from all over to here, where the Prophet first showed himself, that you can’t be too careful. Not everyone’s the holy sort.’

‘I just want to see for myself,’ said Valance, because it wouldn’t do to pretend to be too zealous about a faith on which she was profoundly ignorant. ‘Sometimes it feels like hope’s in short supply.’ It was a safe thing to say. Very few entities in the galaxy felt they were getting their due, and Dazir indeed grunted, steely eyes on the dusty way ahead. The road took them past clusters of red-tiled buildings and worked fields, with the squat brown shadow of the town lurking on the horizon some kilometres away still.

‘The Sun Lord teaches us to take care of ourselves and our own if we’re to help others,’ came the terse response. ‘I think too many folks forget that.’

In the back, Dazir’s adult sons sat on the casks with Gov’taj and Thawn, and were proving a little more philosophically loquacious.

‘…but how does anyone know he’s the Prophet?’ asked stocky Hollan, leaning precariously over the edge of the wagon with practised ease, strong arms holding him in place. ‘Anyone can walk in and spout scripture.’

‘Not anyone,’ countered his brother Mivel, long legs dangling off the back. ‘You couldn’t if your life depended on it, way you slept through the priest’s sermons last week.’

‘Unjust of you, Brother – I was working late to repair the south fence…’

‘Is it that simple?’ asked Thawn, bringing her knees up as she looked between them. ‘A man walks into the market, shows such a deep knowledge of scripture and the ills of some people, and we now think he’s the Prophet?’

They looked uneasy. ‘We’re not idiots,’ Hollan said a little hotly. ‘I don’t know how they do things in Rivarran, but we’re no bumpkins. We know a con man when we see one, and he did more than… I don’t know. Tell people he knew they were worried about the upcoming harvest, because everyone’s always worried about that.’ Rivarran was, they had surmised, a city to the distant east, and the location Dazir and her sons had assumed the trio had come from.

‘We’re curious,’ Gov’taj reassured them. ‘That’s all. It’s why we’re here.’

‘Folks should ask questions,’ Mivel pointed out. ‘Lord knows the church will.’

‘And what happens next, do you think?’ asked Thawn. ‘If the Prophet’s in the capital to see the Pontifex, if he is a Prophet…’

The two farmers exchanged looks. ‘Not for us to say any more than you,’ Mivel said at last with a shrug. ‘But if he’s been sent, he’s been sent for a reason. There’ll be changes, won’t there? The virtuous put in their rightful place. The overmighty struck down. It’ll be time that any one of us can commune with the Sun Lord, listen to his word and spread it, so long as we’re free from the trappings and distractions of indulgent wealth -’

Hollan leaned down to clip his brother around the back of the head. ‘Enough of that, or you’ll get yourself in trouble. The Prophet was welcomed to town by the church and Priest Riggoria. They weren’t going to do that if he was spouting your ascetic nonsense.’ His eyes fell on the other two, beady and suspicious. ‘You’ll have to see for yourselves.’ They said nothing more for the rest of the journey, the brothers wary of sharing too much after Mivel’s contemplations.

The sun was fat and gold in the sky when the wagon passed through the gated wall to reach the unevenly paved streets of the town. Its rays were enough to paint the pale, squat stone buildings even more yellow in the late afternoon light, but the streets fizzed with people in darker, coarse, and hardy travelling clothes, and greater in number than Valance would have expected for this cluster of buildings.

‘Pilgrims,’ Dazir grunted. ‘Everyone’s come flocking, looking for answers. You’ll have difficulty securing lodgings for the night.’ But she pulled up her wagon at the periphery of the town square and made no offer of further assistance. While she looked a little awkward about it, Valance simply gave a sincere smile. It could have been awkward to refuse.

‘We’ll make do.’

‘That you will. You know how to work to earn help. The right way.’ She glanced up and down the street. ‘If you want to see the heretic’s fate, you’ll want the north walls. Anyway, we better drop this off. Safe travels to you.’

‘We were fortunate,’ mused Gov’taj as the wagon with the three Drapicians and their wares trundled down a different turn, ‘to find such blunt assistance. But these people seem hard-working by nature.’

‘Cultures and peoples aren’t just one thing,’ Valance said, jaw tight, but she turned down the main street. ‘Let’s see about this heretic.’

The square itself was a bustle of evening life, even as stands from the market were tidied away, unsold wares loaded into crates and wagons. Most sellers had little left to pack, the influx of pilgrims for now booming local trade. Valance wondered if that would remain the case as more and more people came in, perhaps from further away, perhaps looking for difficult hope for which they were less able to pay. Drapes of bright colours hung from windows around the square, and even from the squat building of what looked like a town hall, but despite its hefty construction and the grand work of carved masonry around its doorways and windows, it was not what drew the eye.

By its tower alone, the church loomed over the square and the town alike. It had plainly received the lion’s share of quality stone and craftsmanship, shining golden in the late afternoon light, and a gleam in the belfry suggested more than one bell at the top of those highest reaches. Intricate carvings on the archways spoke of great skill in masonry, while the door itself was a darker wood than she could see elsewhere, likely imported at some expense.

But with the market ending, neither town hall nor church was drawing the attention of the gathered. Neither were any streets behind them that had a look of drinking houses or eateries. Dispersing from the town square, the crowd had begun to shuffle towards the north, just as Dazir had told them.

‘Why,’ murmured Thawn, ‘wouldn’t they execute someone in the town square? Especially a heretic?’

‘Perhaps they don’t kill people within the walls, or near the church,’ replied Valance quietly as they slipped into the back of the crowd. ‘This faith follows a lot of patterns observed by xeno-anthropologists, but let’s not make assumptions.’

The explanation came quickly. The gates to the north wall were open and led directly onto a sturdy stone bridge crossing the wide river. Burly figures in pale robes and cudgels lined up across the bridge, blocking the way, while behind them stood a trio of figures: another broad-shouldered Drapician in an ornate steel breastplate, a tall, thin man in rather fine robes bearing symbols they’d seen about the church, and a prisoner. Their hands were bound behind their back with rope, and tight bindings at their ankles let them only shuffle. A sackcloth hood had been tied around their head, but Valance’s jaw tightened as she took in the generic, simple clothing.

‘That could be one of ours,’ she muttered to Thawn and Gov’taj as they tried to get a good view through the clamouring crowd.

‘On it,’ Thawn murmured, slipping behind the big Klingon and adjusting her jerkin so she could discreetly consult her tricorder. Gov’taj obliged, helping her move to the shadow of a building to be better obscured as she worked.

Valance turned to someone nearby in the crowd, a sallow-faced Drapician woman who wasn’t in travelling garb like most others. ‘Is that the heretic?’ she asked.

The woman scoffed gently. ‘That’s what Riggoria says he is. Not sure his crime. Worrying Riggoria for getting too close to this so-called Prophet and asking questions?’ Despite a curt, dismissive tone, she still kept her voice down.

Valance leaned in. ‘We just arrived. I’ve only heard stories. Who is this Prophet?’

‘Long gone,’ the woman sighed. ‘You won’t get sight of him here. But whoever or whatever he is, he’s also how Riggoria will march into the capital and be seated at the right hand of the Pontifex, and nothing stops our local esteemed priest.’ She gave a sallow smile. ‘Sorry, Newcomer. Church politics are the same everywhere.’

Valance narrowed her eyes at the figure in the most ornate robes. ‘Is that Riggoria?’

‘No, Riggoria left with the Prophet. Sandton here is just reminding us all of our place.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe he is a heretic, maybe he did try to hurt the Prophet. Not sure he needs drowning.’

‘They’ll just throw him in?’

‘Tied and bound and hooded. He’ll drown. It’ll be nasty. Anyway, I want a better view.’

The woman shouldered her way through the crowd, and Valance reflected glumly on how someone could question the justice of an execution they deemed politically-motivated, and still want to see it. She moved to the nearest wall and reached up to grab a windowsill, hauling herself up a few feet to get a better view. The waters beneath the river looked deep, the fading sunlight casting them into shadow. There was no way she could see to get past the burly enforcers.

When she dropped back down to street level, Thawn and Gov’taj were waiting for her. ‘He’s human,’ Thawn said, lips tight.

‘I don’t know if I can fight all of them,’ Gov’taj mused, eyeing up the row of enforcers. ‘But we can try.’

‘We have to maintain the Prime Directive above anything else. Every time we draw attention to ourselves, even a little, we threaten it,’ Valance hissed.

‘So we let him die?’ Thawn challenged.

‘I’m thinking, Lieutenant.’ Valance’s lips thinned. They could not allow anyone’s body to be found and studied, lest they realise someone among them wasn’t Drapician. But with the officer being dumped in the river to drown, the simplest and most callous option was to recover their corpse later.

What would Rourke do? she wondered with a flash of guilt. He probably would have left Thawn at the dig site and brought Dashell, and so had an anthropologist to help figure out how to navigate this problem. Or he’d come up with a dramatic physical rescue that might cause disruption but not make anyone think they were aliens. Or…

Her eyes flickered back to Thawn. ‘Transporters from orbit can’t reliably pierce the atmospheric interference. What about site-to-site from the Watson?’

Thawn hesitated. ‘Not easy. I’m not picking up a combadge. I’m going to have to calculate his position exactly if I’m going to connect my tricorder with the Watson’s systems and handle it remotely.’

Gov’taj frowned. ‘You cannot simply communicate with Commander Dashell, send him your tricorder readings, and have him do it?’

‘Even remotely, I’m better,’ Thawn said simply. She looked at Valance. ‘What about the problem of making him disappear in front of everyone?’

‘You won’t,’ said Valance, and winced. ‘You’ll wait until they drop him in the river. Then you’ll beam him out.’

Thawn’s eyes widened. ‘He’ll be moving, it’ll be all but impossible to calculate his exact location without any better study of the river flow, even with the tricorder scans – he might be moving pretty quickly or…’

‘Can you do it?’ Valance cut her off.

The Betazoid’s breath caught. ‘I suppose I have to, don’t I.’

‘Yes.’ Valance turned to Gov’taj. ‘Find her somewhere discreet and hidden. I’ll keep watch and an open comm, so you know when they throw him in. Move fast; we might not have long.’

Even as her two officers peeled off, heading for quieter streets further away, Valance turned to the gathering and the bridge just as the holy man the local had called Sandton stepped up to speak.

‘Friends! Faithful!’ He raised his hands, and almost at once Valance understood that this was not the spiritual leader of the local town, that he was only the right hand to the priest Riggoria. There was a waver to his voice, and the attention he commanded of the crowd was not absolute. They were curious in their own right, not spellbound by him.

Still, he had a spectacle and a group of armed enforcers, and that counted for a lot as he spoke on. ‘You have come here to see justice. We live in a time of revelation. Only days ago were we graced by an emissary of the Sun Lord, come to ease our pains as foretold, possessing deep knowledge that only one of the chosen could possess.’

Near Valance, someone coughed. On the other side, two old women continued nattering with each other. Discreetly, she slipped her hand into the folds of her disguise and tapped the combadge to open a channel for Gov’taj and Thawn to hear.

‘Our blessed guide Riggoria has taken the Prophet to the Pontifex, so all might hear his words, and all might hear the message. We will enter a new era of light and hope. But there stand among us enemies – enemies of that hope.’ Sandton’s words faltered a little as he pulled himself out of clunky rhetoric. Cutting to the chase with a hint of shame, he waved a hand to his left. ‘Behold, heresy!’

Heresy looked more like a bound and hooded figure, but whoever they were, they knew they were being addressed, shuffling their feet and struggling against the grips of the man in the breastplate. They did not, however, speak.

‘They have chosen silence since we cast them into the cells, for they know their forked tongue would show them an agent of evil,’ Sandton hollered, a little more in his stride now he had something to rail against. ‘But he came to our fair town when we sheltered the Prophet himself and was seized trying to slay him! And how can we bring faith and light if we do not cast down shadow!’

It sounded to Valance like an officer whose combadge – whose universal translator – had been ditched or taken. But that was a question for later, as Sandton grabbed the hooded human by the shoulder and pushed them towards the edge of the bridge. ‘Stand by,’ she muttered into her own combadge, nestled inside folds of her jerkin.

If Thawn needed more time, she could not communicate that – and Valance could not give it.

‘As the Sun Lord cast the dark gods to the deepest depths upon his ascent, so do we cast down those who stand against him.’ Sandton sounded much happier full of fire and brimstone, and he clutched the human by both shoulders now. ‘Behold, judgement! Behold, justice!’

There was the briefest struggle. It was not the simple act Sandton had likely hoped for. The human tried to break free, got one shoulder loose, turned to push back at Sandton. But then the man in the breastplate intervened, and both Drapicians bodily shoved the hooded human over the side of the bridge. There was a gasp from the crowd, a splash – then nothing.

‘Now,’ Valance hissed into her combadge under the hubbub of the audience.

The crowd was pushing forward, and now the enforcers let them as they raced to the riverside and the bridge. Valance moved with them, heart thudding in her chest, aware of so much that could go wrong – that Thawn might fail, or that someone might spot the lights of a transporter. But as the sun sank deeper behind the rooftops of the town, the wide river’s fast waters settled into an inkier darkness.

Perhaps, by the time she got to the side of the bridge and could look down, there were bubbles. Perhaps there was a shadow. But there was no sign of outside interference and, with her heart in her throat, Valance knew that was the most important thing. She just had to hope she hadn’t stood by and watched a fellow officer die.

It took a few minutes for her to find Gov’taj and Thawn. They had skipped back a few streets and found a narrow alleyway with a cart they could shroud behind. And still, when she got there, Gov’taj was pinning down a struggling, bound, hooded, soaking wet figure whose muffled gasping was incomprehensible, and an irritable Thawn was fiddling with her bag.

‘If you just – give me a moment, please!’ she pleaded.

Valance pushed past, kneeling. ‘Here,’ she said curtly and reached to her side for the knife she’d made sure to bring. From there it took seconds to cut the bindings, and the figure at once relaxed, and stopped thrashing so she could reach up for the hood. ‘You’re safe. You’re with friends.’ She pulled the hood off and stared. ‘What the hell?’

Thawn’s breath caught. ‘Beckett?’

He looked like a Drapician because he, too, had received the same genetic modifications to infiltrate the local society. But he couldn’t summon a response at first, doubling over and trying to both evacuate his lungs of river water and gasp for breath at the same time. Only at length, on his hands and knees, still dripping wet, did Nate Beckett finally rasp, ‘I gotta say, Commander. You’ve got great timing.’

They threw a blanket around Beckett and rushed westward out of town until the gathering dusk forced them to make camp. They stopped just as the road curved along the river, and bowing trees offered a little shelter from the wind that during the day was a refreshing breeze but at night threatened to cut to the bone. Valance instructed Gov’taj and Thawn to make the fire and set up the tents, even though she knew she would be of more use than the Betazoid, while she sat the tired Beckett down for answers.

‘I thought you were at the archives on Starbase 26?’ Thawn had demanded the moment they’d been out of the gates.

He’d just given a tired smile, his common expression when he was going to be, in Valance’s opinion, a pain in the ass, and said, ‘Of course, you remembered exactly where I was meant to be.’ Valance had shut them both up before they could fall into another one of their arguments as if a month hadn’t passed. Now they were secluded from the prying eyes of locals, she repeated Thawn’s point.

Beckett quickly swallowed the ration bar he’d been given. ‘I was, Commander.’ He had a swig from a water flask to wash it down, then straightened up. ‘A few Starfleet ships have scoped out this region of formerly Star Empire territory. They’re not equipped for significant archaeological research, so if they find anything, they ship it back to Starbase 26. I’ve seen a lot of disparate data come in for analysis and archiving and I spotted a pattern.’ There was a spark in his eyes despite all he’d been through, a hum of excitement. ‘A highly advanced species was active in this region thousands of years ago. One Starfleet never heard of, thanks to the Star Empire not sharing their research. So when the Kingfisher was sent to this region to find out if the pre-warp people of Drapice had experienced any external cultural influence or contamination, I was assigned last minute. Not to study any Romulan involvement. But to study their involvement.’

Valance narrowed her eyes. ‘Who are they?’

‘We don’t know a lot,’ Beckett admitted. ‘They were active no more recently than three thousand years ago. Then they died out. Their influence stretched over multiple star systems. I was working on a theory that they were telepathic, though I don’t know what to think now. We didn’t think they had technology particularly more advanced than our own, but I don’t know what I think about that now, either.’ He drew an apprehensive breath. ‘The only Romulan research we could buy called them the “Vorkasi.” And they are certainly the ones who built the site in the mountains and whatever’s taken over Doctor Frankle. Did you get the crew out?’

‘My science officer and the rest of the away team are at the basin.’ Valance shook her head. ‘We found the Kingfisher, no sign of the crew, and these sealed doors to a subterranean facility. We couldn’t hail the crew, but we could detect their life signs. Commander Dashell will get them out. We had to follow your tracks.’

Beckett frowned. ‘Dashell? Endeavour got another new chief science officer?’

Valance couldn’t help but glance at Thawn at that. She was trying to help Gov’taj erect these traditional tents, and wasn’t necessarily much more use than if he’d been left to his own devices. It wasn’t helped that she was plainly eavesdropping, and their eyes met for a moment before Valance looked back at Beckett. ‘Endeavour didn’t come after the Kingfisher, Lieutenant. I command the USS Pathfinder, and we were sent to find you.’

The young officer’s eyes snapped to Thawn. ‘You left Endeavour –’ But he quickly shut himself up and, still agitated, turned back to Valance. ‘You left Endeavour? I thought Cortez was -’

‘What happened here, Lieutenant?’ Valance had to work hard to not snap this.

He hesitated, then his shoulders slumped. ‘I expect you’ve seen the crew roster for the Kingfisher. One of them was a civilian expert, Doctor Frankle. He wasn’t in command, but he was easily the most experienced and knowledgeable scholar aboard and thought he should be calling the shots. He especially didn’t like me. Thought I’d steal things from under his nose to send back to the archives on 26. This is relevant, I promise.’

Valance settled down to listen. ‘Go on.’

‘We detected an energy signature in orbit. Something the people of Drapice shouldn’t have been able to produce. We had to land the ship in the basin and quickly found these constructed passages underground. So we set up the camp. After about a day, we found the deep chambers.’ Beckett sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands wearily. ‘They were artificial and clearly with a lot of computerised systems to do something, but most of them were down. We had to restore power to a bunch of them to get access to the chambers, then to try to access the systems themselves. But while it was definitely Vorkasi, we still haven’t got enough information yet to translate their stuff.’

Gov’taj turned away from the small tents and advanced on the campfire. He’d set up a kettle to boil and sat beside them to pour into metal mess cups. ‘Tea,’ he explained, passing the mugs over to them both. Gingerly, Thawn moved to sit beside him – on the opposite side of the campfire to Beckett.

Beckett took the mug with a grateful nod, wrapping his hands around its warmth. ‘The energy signature led to some sort of sophisticated container at the heart of the chamber. That was all I last knew for sure. I wanted to study it further. Frankle was convinced this was the find of the century and I’d take it from him.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Then one night… I don’t know. Something happened down there. I was asleep, and when I woke up I found everyone else had gone into the facility. The facility doors had closed. And Frankle had run off. I couldn’t open the doors, so I went after him to try to find out what the hell had happened.’

Gov’taj frowned. ‘You left no mention of this at the landing site.’

Beckett waved a hand. ‘It was night and Frankle was running off. I thought I’d lose him in the dark. And I didn’t expect to be gone for days, I thought I’d just run after him, he’s not exactly a young man.’ He shook his head. ‘I followed him to the town. And that’s when shit got really weird.’

‘We heard he’s been hailed as a “prophet” by the locals,’ said Valance.

‘Yeah.’ Beckett smacked his lips. ‘I didn’t know much about Drapician society. But by the time I caught up with Frankle, he was walking into the middle of the market, spouting scripture from the Drapician holy texts and demonstrating he had, well. Telepathic capabilities. And more than that; that he knew things about Drapician history and culture that there’s no way Frankle did. Ignoring the fact Frankle, for all his ego, was never going to run into the middle of a pre-warp settlement. It was only when I snuck closer to him that I saw the circlet.’

‘The circlet?’

‘Yeah – metal, quite chunky. Pretty plain. Never saw it before in my life. But I think it was in the container in the facility. I think it opened itself, or Frankle opened it, somehow wound up wearing it, and is now…’ Beckett made a face. ‘Permission to give wild conjecture, Commander?’

Valance sighed gloomily. ‘You may as well.’

‘Something’s making Frankle present himself as a holy figure of these people. I think the Vorkasi – or one of them – set themselves up as the Drapician god via this telepathic circlet, and it’s now taken him over.’

Thawn leaned forward. ‘You think the Vorkasi were controlling Drapician society?’

‘I don’t know why else they’d keep a psychic god in a box,’ Beckett countered, a little sharply.

Gov’taj leaned in to cut them off. ‘How were you captured?’

Beckett’s gaze drifted back to him. ‘I spent a few days trying to figure out what was going on,’ he continued after a beat. ‘Scoping out the town, talking to locals. It’s not easy to learn about simple things about a culture, or their religion, without sounding too weird. But Frankle quickly disappeared into the arms of the local clergy, who thought he was wonderful, and I had to figure that out. And where he was.’ He made a face and sipped on the tea at last, his shoulders relaxing an iota. ‘Then I tried to break in and get to him, only… I got caught. They took my stuff, including my combadge – don’t worry, I took the usual precautions. Its insides will have solidified after me not using it for twelve hours, so they’ll think it’s just a pin. But it also meant I couldn’t understand them. Then… well. You saved me.’

As Valance hesitated on how specific to be, Gov’taj grinned toothily. ‘Lieutenant Thawn saved you. It was most impressive work to use the Watson’s transporter systems remotely when you were difficult to pick up.’

‘You always were a dab hand with a transporter,’ Beckett mused in Thawn’s general direction. Neither looked at each other, and he turned back to Valance. ‘What now, Commander? Uh, Captain?’

‘Apparently Frankle was taken by this local priest to the capital, to be presented to the Pontifex.’ Valance rubbed her temples. ‘We have to get Frankle back. If nothing else, who knows what happens should they discover he’s an alien? His genetic alterations to look Drapician won’t last forever. And it’s one thing for him to cause a stir in this town, but to get access to what sounds like the heart of a faith and influence that?’

‘How far is the capital?’ asked Gov’taj.

‘Two days on foot,’ said Thawn, and eyes fell on her. She’d sat before the fire quietly, knees up under her chin, staring at the flames that played along her red hair and cast her skin even paler. She stirred, less distant, at the attention. ‘The ionisation of the Drapician atmosphere doesn’t make use of sensors very easy, but I can pick up major pockets of life signs. We keep going west along the river, and we’ll get there.’

‘The biggest settlements aren’t always capitals, especially not religious capitals -’

‘She’s right,’ Beckett interrupted Valance, and sounded like that hurt a little. ‘We follow the river west. We’ll know it when we see it.’ He shrugged at their looks. ‘I did some reading before I got here. I’ve been on this planet a few days.’ Now he grimaced. ‘Do you mind, Captain, if I get some rest if we’ve got hiking ahead of us? Prison cells weren’t great fun.’

Valance nodded. ‘Sleep. You can share the tent with Lieutenant Gov’taj.’

Beckett stood creakily. It looked like this was the first time he’d heard Gov’taj’s name, though, and he squinted at the burly officer. ‘Oh, you’re a Klingon.’

‘I assure you,’ Gov’taj said with mock-haughtiness, ‘I am normally much more impressive.’ He looked to Valance. ‘I can take first watch.’

She nodded. ‘You rest, too, Thawn. Take last watch. I’ll stow our gear and then check in with Dashell.’

Gov’taj waited until the two younger officers had turned in, sitting at the edge of the fire so his eyes could adjust to the gloom beyond their riverside camp, before he spoke. ‘You know him.’

Valance sighed as she finished securing gear in packs. There was always a chance they’d have to move quickly in the night. ‘He was a science officer on Endeavour. He left before I did. Thawn knows him better, really.’ She didn’t particularly want to think about that.

‘He seemed surprised you left.’ She could feel his eyes on him and didn’t respond, focusing on closing buckles and fidgeting with straps longer than needed. At length, Gov’taj pushed on. ‘He suggested you left someone behind.’

Now she looked up. ‘I thought you believed that perfectly normal behaviour from me.’

Gov’taj sighed. ‘Yes, I would like it if you did not turn your back on the parts of your past you believe are… difficult. But most of all, Sister, I would like it if you accepted you could rely on me.’

Valance swallowed. Then she stood and shook her head. ‘This is no time to talk about this. I should check in with Dashell.’ She turned towards the riverside, where she could likely talk without being overheard, and only spoke once she’d reached the edge of the campfire’s ring of light. ‘Oh. And it’s Captain.’

He did not reply as she ducked into darkness.

‘I hate to say it,’ said Harkon, sitting on one of the camp benches she’d dragged before the massive cliff-side metal door, ‘but if they’ve been stuck in there a week, aren’t they dead?’

‘The presence of life signs suggests otherwise,’ said Winters, but despite this assertion, he ran a nervous hand through his thick dark hair.

‘They should have supplies with them,’ said Dashell as he approached, unbuckling the tricorder from the holster at his belt. ‘It’s standard procedure.’

‘Pack supplies when going into a creepy underground facility of unknown provenance?’ Harkon’s eyebrows hit her hairline. ‘That… makes sense, actually. But how much?’

‘That’s the bad news,’ said Dashell. ‘Guidelines say to stow a month’s worth of emergency rations below working conditions like this. But they didn’t necessarily keep a month’s worth for most of the crew to be down there at one time. And they may not have followed guidelines perfectly. But we enter into uncertainties there. We know they’re alive, and we have to free them.’

‘Sure,’ said Harkon. Then, ‘How?’

Dashell looked at the doorway. The frame was a triangle in a solid black metal that did not look, to his eye, native to Drapice, sealed with double doors of the same material. It hummed with energy and he suspected the doorway itself housed the technology that had obscured it from sight upon their arrival.

‘It clearly has some protections,’ he mused, ‘as when we arrived, it wasn’t just hidden from sight but kept the facility hidden from our sensors. On the other hand, we could detect its energy emissions with our tricorders, and it wasn’t difficult to disrupt the cloak.’

‘You’re hoping,’ wondered Winters, ‘that it was designed to hide from a pre-warp civilisation and not equipment as sophisticated as ours?’

‘I’m trying to focus on what we know, not what I hope,’ said Dashell. ‘But yes, Doctor. It is a reasonable premise.’

‘You said it’s thousands of years old,’ said Harkon. ‘Any idea who’d have made it?’

He shook his head. ‘We know so little about even Romulan history in this region, let alone pre-Romulan history. The Kingfisher crew said there wasn’t much within – some chambers with technology they hadn’t figured out, and a central chamber with a container that seemed very sophisticated and they hadn’t opened.’

‘Who’s betting,’ Harkon murmured, ‘that someone opened the evil box?’

Winters’s eyes widened. ‘Surely nobody would tinker with -’

‘Starfleet Scientists have procedures,’ Dashell mused, ‘but we also have ego and curiosity.’ He advanced to the doorway and ran his hand along the metal. He thought it was a little too cool to the touch after sitting in the bright and direct sunlight of Drapice IV. His finger ran along the texture, the metal brushed but not perfectly smooth. Inscriptions?

He raised his tricorder to scan. ‘Even if something did wear away over the millennia,’ he mused aloud, ‘and even if we could recreate it, it’s unlikely to be in a language we understand.’

‘Every little clue can help,’ Winters pointed out.

‘Not meaning to put you on the spot, Commander,’ said Harkon, ‘but do you have a plan?’

He pursed his lips. ‘Not yet.’

‘Alright.’ She cracked open her water flask and had a swig. ‘I’m going to start throwing ideas around. We blast the doors open with the Watson’s weapons.’

‘This looks far too sturdy from our scans,’ said Winters. ‘We’d risk collapsing any internal caverns while leaving the doors untouched.’

‘Alright. We replicate some mining equipment and carve our own way into the passages.’

Dashell’s eyebrows raised. ‘That would take time I’m not sure we have. But by all means get to work on that idea, Lieutenant.’

Harkon looked suspicious. ‘Really? I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass by shooting ideas around, but you don’t need to get rid of the dumb pilot…’

‘I mean it.’ He turned to her. ‘I welcome this kind of out-of-the-box thinking. Your plan might work if this place has relied on secrecy for its primary protection. Several of us working on different avenues maximises our chance of success. You’re not wrong about deciphering ancient alien technology being out of your field, Lieutenant, but let’s make that a strength and put you to work on something that is.’

‘I mean, neither geology or excavations are my thing,’ Harkon said with a shrug, ‘but I can at least run scans and check them against existing protocols.’ She tugged out a PADD and a tricorder, setting them on the bench. ‘Alright, sir. I’ll get to it.’

Dashell smiled. ‘Thank you. You know, Lieutenant, I really do appreciate you joining us aboard Pathfinder. Finding a helm officer wasn’t easy, I understand, when Lieutenant Hellman’s transfer fell through.’

Harkon went still at that. When she smiled, it was a little too broad. ‘Sure. Anything for the captain, right?’ she said, but despite initially looking like she would work with them at the doorway, she gathered her things and headed for the Watson.

Dashell exchanged a look with Winters. ‘Was it something I said?’

The doctor shifted guiltily. ‘Lieutenant Harkon wasn’t the captain’s first choice for helm?’

‘I – Kosst.’ Dashell swore as realisation sank in. ‘She didn’t know she was a last-minute addition?’

Winters drummed his fingers on the tricorder. ‘For some of us, the staffing situation on Pathfinder was a blessing. I would never have a posting like this if everything was normal. Nor would Kally. But Lieutenant Harkon isn’t a fresh Academy graduate. Is it so unreasonable for her to be offended to realise she only got the job because other choices fell through?’

‘It’s not.’ With a sigh, Dashell took an awkward step to sit on the bench. ‘That was thoughtless of me.’

Winters’s gaze flickered down, and Dashell knew he was checking on his bad leg. ‘Are you alright, sir?’

‘I’m fine –’

‘I’m asking as a doctor who’s given you a full medical checkup. Not someone who’s about to fuss or underestimate you,’ came the gentle press. ‘How’s your knee?’

‘I am alright,’ Dashell asserted. ‘There’s been a lot of kneeling and rising on hard ground, but I’m not sitting because I need to. I’m sitting because I can, so I don’t need to later. I’ve worked with this injury most of my life, Doctor, I know my limits.’

‘Of course you do, sir,’ said Winters amiably. ‘But it’s not unusual to want to show yourself at your best with new colleagues.’

Dashell gave a wry, tight smile as he felt his muscles begin to unwind. He’d been on his feet a lot, and only now was anything starting to ease. ‘I promise to try and remember I don’t need to be defensive.’ Then he frowned and looked up at the doorway. ‘Need.’

‘Even if you want to, sir, it’s not…’

‘Why did the door close? It was open, not even visible, when the Kingfisher crew arrived. The caves were here, they took a look, they found a doorway deeper that they had to open.’ He wanted to stand, but forced himself to stay put as he thought aloud. ‘The Kingfisher’s records didn’t suggest any energy emissions at this point like we found when the cloak was up.’

Winters blinked at the change in tack, then turned to the door. ‘So the archway retracts into the stone along with the doors when they’re open. To be hidden.’

‘That suggests this is an emergency defence mechanism of some kind. Which means that something triggered it.’

‘Probably,’ said Winters, ‘someone tampering with this mysterious box.’

‘An anti-theft mechanism,’ Dashell agreed. ‘Lock the whole place down, trap your threat inside. Which means maybe someone can lift the emergency measures from the outside?’

‘There’s no controls. And no sign of any transmission or alert going off,’ said Winters. ‘Nothing to summon someone to investigate.’

‘So it’s likely an automated system. It might lift over time. But it might be waiting to be sure there’s no threat.’

‘You mean waiting for the people inside to die.’

‘Without any interface to access, it’s our best shot.’ Dashell creaked to his feet. ‘So let’s convince this ancient alien technology that everyone inside is dead.’

Winters blinked as the commander set off, and so had to hurry to catch up. ‘Uh. How, sir?’

‘Simple: we obfuscate their life signs.’

‘But we couldn’t detect their life signs when we arrived -’

‘We couldn’t from outside, because there was a dampening field. It’s very likely the facility’s internal systems were operating fine. And the good news, Doctor, is that there exist a myriad of ways to obstruct scans for life signs. Let Harkon keep with her plan – this might not work, after all. But it’s a start.’

It didn’t make for the most promising report when Valance checked in later that night. But it was a start, and a chance, and in the long experience of Dashell Antedy, all science needed was the mere whisper of a chance to make miracles happen.

Beckett had looked malnourished and exhausted and generally in a complete state when they’d pulled him from the river. Thawn had been trying to not look at him throughout their flight from the town, throughout making camp or listening to his story. It was hard when he was important, when he held actual information that could help them complete this mission. But even the next day, when they followed the riverside road as the sun tried to batter through the canopy of trees giving them what felt like the only shade in the entire plains, it was still difficult to ignore him.

Worse, there was only so much she could stay diverted by the rest of their travelling companions. Valance was as terse as ever, insistent they keep up a good pace and get to their destination as quickly as possible. Even though they walked among an alien culture, though they passed riverside mills of Drapician construction and settlements farming animals she’d never seen before, there was little time to stop and revel in the fresh experience. They had to save this culture, not enjoy it.

Gov’taj was only a little better, taking point so his more acute senses could remain alert for danger when their tricorders had to be kept hidden. While he chattered throughout breakfast, Thawn was cursed by how one-sided this was – Beckett was tired, Valance was herself, and Thawn had never been very good at keeping conversations moving when they had, she felt, little of substance. Thus the Klingon stayed in the lead, Valance kept up the rear to drive them on, and she and Beckett were left in the middle of the small travelling party.

‘So the arrival of Frankle as a prophet is of great significance to the Drapicians?’ Gov’taj asked after they were solidly underway, calling over his shoulder to Beckett.

Beckett looked like he’d been lost in his own world, and blinked back to reality. ‘Sure. From what I could tell, the scripture about their god, the Sun Lord, says some day he’ll send an emissary who’ll bring new doctrine to shape the perfect world. It’s pretty typical stuff for these kinds of religions.’

‘I understand that,’ said Gov’taj. ‘I am wondering how extreme his arrival is supposed to be.’

‘Does that matter?’ wondered Thawn. ‘He’s not actually a prophet from the Sun Lord.’

‘No,’ said Gov’taj, ‘but if people expect him to bring enormous reform, he will have enemies. At the least, people who will not wish to believe in him. Churches are not known for tolerating challenges to orthodox ways.’

‘I think that’s why the local priest, Riggoria, took Frankle in so quickly and firmly,’ Beckett said. ‘The locals think Riggoria’s a bit of an opportunist. If Frankle’s under his wing, if a priest is bringing him to the head of the church itself and all that, then the church can use this “prophet” for their own ends. Present the things he’s got to say in a way that suits them.’

But he was frowning, and Thawn couldn’t help but notice. ‘That’s not all,’ she probed.

He flinched at that. ‘Lieutenant Gov’taj is right. These prophecised figures are rarely expected to maintain the status quo. But from what I could gather, Frankle was just reiterating scripture.’

‘The farmers we travelled with had their own argument about whether he was going to push for a more ascetic interpretation of the faith,’ she mused in recollection. ‘It sounded a little like heterodoxy from the tone of their debate.

‘They might have hoped for that,’ said Beckett, ‘but it’s not at all the impression I got of Frankle’s words from the townsfolk. Then again, I was trying to keep a low profile and then I got arrested as a heretic.’

Gov’taj gave a sharp laugh at that. ‘And thrown in a river!’

‘And thrown in a river,’ Beckett agreed with a hint of fatigue. ‘I guess I should thank you for the save.’

‘Pah.’ Gov’taj waved a hand, his back to them as he picked up the pace ahead of an upcoming turn. ‘Thank Lieutenant Thawn. Her work to pick you up with the transporters was exceptional.’

Valance had drifted to a safer distance, stringing the group out, and Thawn wondered if it was intentional as she tried to stare a hole into the road ahead when Gov’taj’s hurrying left her and Beckett effectively alone. He didn’t say anything for a long while, leaving her acutely aware of the birds chirruping overhead, the waters of the river rushing along, the faintest breeze playing through the trees but not reaching down to the road.

At length, he cleared his throat. ‘Thank you. Though I bet you wouldn’t have tried so hard if you’d known it was me.’

‘Don’t be like that,’ she said before she could stop herself. ‘Of course I’d save your life.’

He scoffed gently. ‘Save my life. I get that bare minimum, at least.’ Then he shook his head and winced. ‘That’s ungrateful of me. I know sensors on Drapice are pretty rubbish, and you must have waited until I was in the water, and I don’t have a combadge. It must have been hard.’

‘Especially hard,’ said Thawn, chin tilting up an inch, ‘when I also needed to remotely access the Watson’s systems to do it. And you were underwater and moving, and I had to be around that corner so I couldn’t even see you, I only had Commander – Captain Valance’s – word that you were in the river.’

‘Alright, alright, it was hard – double thank you!’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ She felt her cheeks flush and wound her fingers together. ‘It was just – never mind. You’re welcome.’ She was glad he’d cut her off, glad he was making jokes, not only because it broke the tension despite what bubbled beneath the surface. But if he’d let her keep talking, keep babbling, she might have said more than she’d meant. Said that picking up his life sign in the water had been instinct as much as science, and once she’d realised it was him she’d pulled out of the water, she didn’t know how much of that instinct had been because she could feel him in her mind.

Like she’d felt him at Senolok, in the Gradin Belt, when she’d thought he was dead.

It was another night in the field before they reached the capital. Dashell reported multiple plans that might work to free the rest of the Kingfisher’s crew, while Thawn discovered by sharing a tent that Valance’s sleeping pattern was actually a little scary – falling asleep or waking up in an instant, but still and deep once she was asleep. The second morning she emerged from the tent at dawn to find the captain already in front of the dead campfire and doing yoga, grumbling when asked that she couldn’t exactly go for a run here.

It was both strangely humanising of someone she’d known for years but never been close to, and a gentle reminder that Karana Valance was a machine that never stopped.

The road was much busier by then, full of wagons and travellers and more and more of the pilgrims in hard travelling garb marching towards the capital. Taller towers than ever sighted before on Drapice were spotted in the distance first, and after a few hours they reached the clusters of farms and modest structures outside the city walls. Beckett observed that by the pattern of settlements, the walls were likely from a more dangerous time that had since passed, and indeed, the surrounding area was a little too well-settled for this to be a place expecting a military assault.

The walls themselves had fallen into some disrepair, patchy in places as they arrived, and Thawn was relieved to see the huge gates were kept open with very few guards, and little concern for the security of travellers, pilgrims, and merchants. The town where they’d rescued Beckett had been a neat and tidy cluster, but the city was vast and sprawling. Structures along the main, wide, paved roads were built of the same pale brown stone they’d seen everywhere, the sun bouncing off bright red-tiled rooftops, but narrower alleyways shot off to wooden structures so rickety and small the rooftops leaned in together. It would at least give them places to hide if they needed.

Not that it would be difficult to be lost in a crowd, because it was harder instead to stick together as the four officers reached the lofty capital of this continent of Drapice IV. They had to slip between wagons hauling wares, slowed down by the knot of travellers and pilgrims, and Thawn wondered how they would possibly know where to start once they reached such a heaving city. She had anticipated, with some dread, Valance asking if she could sense anything telepathically, as if her natural abilities were like a tricorder.

It would have been frustrating that she could feel something, which she could only describe as ‘odd’ and wouldn’t have noticed had she not been concentrating or paranoid. But she didn’t need to say anything as the flow of foot traffic dragged them down the heaving main streets towards a full and bustling square.

While most people in the square were the same hard-travelling pilgrims they’d seen on the roads and at the gates, the windows facing the square were full of faces, too: onlookers in much finer garb, with more brocade and silks and brighter colours, that Thawn suspected were the wealthy of Drapice, also drawn by whatever was happening. Hundreds of people were crammed in, and the Starfleet officers were lucky to have Gov’taj with them, his broad frame the best tool for shouldering through crowds to get them closer to the centre.

A memorial statue of some ilk in battered bronze sat at the heart of the square, but that was not what drew the eye. An elevated stone platform looked like it usually staged proclamations, entertainment, and likely public punishments. Now it was encircled by guards in uniform, and at the top were a trio of figures. Two wore similar robes to the priest they’d seen at Beckett’s would-be execution, while the third wore the same simple clothing as the Starfleet officers, and around his head sat a thick metal circlet.

‘That’s him,’ Beckett hissed unnecessarily. ‘Frankle.’ But he pressed on, gesturing accordingly. ‘The taller priest is Riggoria, I don’t recognise the other. See those guards? They’re in much nicer gear than in the town, but that’s definitely the holy symbol of the church on their gambesons. I don’t think they’re a city watch. I think they’re religious muscle.’

‘The other one,’ mused Valance, ‘probably isn’t the Pontifex.’

But Frankle was speaking, hands outstretched to the crowd. Thawn recognised his face from the records of the Kingfisher’s crew she’d glanced over, the worn features of a human in his fifties shifted with the genetic alterations to disguise him as a Drapician. He spoke in a loud, clear voice that carried, the scholar’s decades of experience likely helping him project even across this square, but the tempo of his words sounded a little artificial to Thawn, a little stilted.

Beckett leaned in as they listened. ‘Okay, so again – not an expert in Drapician religion. But he really does sound like he’s just being pretty orthodox? Reinforcing things that are in the holy book? I did get my hands on a copy before I got arrested, and I can only read so quickly and universal translators are really bad for these kinds of cultural scripts because there’s a lot of nuance in individual words and -’

‘Beckett.’ Valance’s voice was clipped.

‘Sorry,’ he hissed. ‘I just mean, it makes sense if the circlet is also giving him some telepathic capacity which makes people think he’s a prophet, because otherwise he’s not saying much revolutionary?’

Thawn furrowed her brow as she concentrated. The hum of people around didn’t help – alien minds with alien patterns of thinking, clustered together in an almost overwhelming sea of feeling and contemplation. But Frankle stood out as more than just a human mind, and she gritted her teeth to focus.

When Gov’taj’s sturdy hand fell on her shoulder, she jerked and only then realised that some time had passed. The taste of metal was on her tongue, and she blinked back a gummy sense in her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she croaked. ‘Frankle feels strange. Like his mind is in there somewhere, but there’s this… this presence overriding it? Like a weight of memory and knowledge and intent that isn’t him, but it’s so strong that it’s impossible for Frankle to really be Frankle while it’s in his head.’

‘You can say he’s been possessed by a millennia-old, telepathic alien consciousness stored in the circlet masquerading as the Drapician god,’ Beckett said quickly. ‘It’s okay.’

‘I don’t know if he’s possessed, whatever that’s supposed to mean -’

‘Madness!’ The voice rang out across the crowd, louder even than Frankle’s preaching, and a hushed hubbub of shocked curiosity ran through everyone. Frankle stopped dead, and heads turned to the northern side of the square, where on the base another looming statue of some robed Drapician cast in bronze a figure had clambered.

He wore better clothing than the pilgrims, but still hard-wearing and plain, and around his neck hung a metal badge of the same symbol Beckett had pointed out as the church’s. Where Riggoria was a thin man with sharp features but no particular muscle or bulk to him, this Drapician was a husky fellow in early middle age, his bearded face worn by sun and weather.

‘You summoned us here to listen to the word of the Sun Lord! But all I hear are the words of weak men who aspire for control over faith!’ the interrupting priest called from amid the crowd. ‘You call on us to render our fruits to those above us – what of scripture that recognises we should rejoice in the bounty of our own labour, and share with those in need?’

Frankle turned to the shouting, raising his hands. ‘Need is – those who lead you, who guide you, have need of your service -’

But the burly man on the statue shouted over him, Frankle’s voice going weedy in opposition. ‘You promised us a prophet, Riggoria, but all I see is a puppet here to silence those who challenge your power!’

Now the priest Riggoria stepped forward, and Thawn felt Beckett flinch at the sharp, sudden move. ‘The Prophet sees into the hearts of men, Banaro! As only one sent by the Sun Lord can! You cannot reject our god’s voice simply because it disagrees with your weak teachings!’

The priest Banaro scoffed, raising a hand to cup his mouth as he shouted. ‘You use a charlatan to benefit not the people, but only yourself, Riggoria! Shame on you, and shame on this false prophet!’ But even as Banaro called out, hands around him tugged him down from the statue. They seemed to be ushering him, not dragging him or attacking, and Gov’taj swore quietly as the weight of the crowd shifted.

‘The priest is sending his guards for him,’ the big man rumbled.

Valance nodded. ‘It looks like he’s not foolish enough to challenge a would-be prophet as a pawn of the church and stick around to deal with their backlash.’

But however quickly Banaro disappeared into the crowd, the guards quickly realising this was a futile effort, the tone of the gathering had changed. Some had started to yell at Banaro, while others stood their ground to obstruct the oncoming guards, and now all around them was a hubbub of uncertainty. What had once been a spellbound audience had shifted under the weight of doubt.

Thawn wavered on her feet, and this time it was Valance with a hand on her shoulder. ‘Sorry, Captain,’ she croaked, and blinked back to reality. ‘But when Banaro and Frankle were arguing, something in Frankle changed. The presence around him seemed to struggle to assert its control.’

‘Banaro was challenging his interpretation of scripture,’ Beckett mused. ‘Maybe it’s not good at nuance?’

Valance drew a sharp breath and began ushering the officers through the crowd. Not back the way they’d come, but towards the north. ‘Maybe,’ she said briskly, ‘we should have a conversation with this Banaro.’

‘Are we sure that a Thoron generator,’ grunted Winters as he hauled the device onto the sack truck, ‘will affect the facility’s sensors?’

Dashell watched with a hint of guilt as the young doctor wrangled the foot-high metal device they had replicated and constructed aboard the Watson. Manoeuvring heavy objects was not one of his strengths. ‘I’m not sure of anything, Doctor,’ he admitted. ‘I can confirm that the right level of Thoron emissions interferes with Cardassian and Dominion sensors as much as Starfleet. But who knows how this technology works. Let me take that.’

Winters looked relieved to let Dashell steer the sack truck down the landing ramp back into the dust of Drapice IV, as if the hardest work hadn’t been done with the heavy lifting. They had spent some time calculating the emission rate necessary to obfuscate the life signs, and ended up extrapolating a device rather larger and more powerful than the hand-held medical equipment adapted by the Maquis of decades past to hide from Starfleet sensors. ‘Let’s hope the premise itself is sound,’ he sighed and followed Dashell back into the bright morning sun.

The metal of the sack truck squeaked as the repulsor equipment adapted to the rocky terrain of the basin. Dashell directed it to the sealed ancient doors and began to fire the generator up. ‘Let’s see what happens.’

He gave it a minute of the generator humming before he hit his combadge. ‘Dashell to Harkon.’

‘Here. What’re you doing out there, Commander?’

‘Testing our hypothesis. Can you read our life signs on the Watson’s sensors?’

There was a pause. In the background he heard the distant squeaking of Harkon moving her chair between stations in the cockpit. Then, ‘Nope. Not getting a thing. Not even of your combadge, so the communications system is a bit cranky at getting a message from nothing.’

Winters sighed as he regarded the still-sealed door. ‘So much for that idea.’

‘Hold on,’ Dashell told him. ‘Harkon, can you detect the Kingfisher’s crew still?’

‘Let me… hang on. There’s something – let me boost the power.’ A beat. Then, ‘Yeah. Sorry. Still seeing them.’

‘Blast. Thank you, Lieutenant.’ Dashell ended the call then ran a hand through his hair and regarded the chunky device they’d cobbled together. ‘That Maquis trick was usually for hiding small groups. They’d modify the devices they were carrying and evade tricorders. We’ve probably as much as quadrupled the area of effect, but…’

‘Not enough to reach the crew below.’ Winters regarded the doors with a sigh. Then he gave a gentle scoff. ‘Well, it’s obvious what we have to do about that, isn’t it?’

‘Doctor?’

Winters tapped his combadge, his own slow, delighted smile arising. ‘Winters to Harkon. How much progress have you made with the drilling plans?’

‘Uh… Outer rock of the cliff face seems fine, I’m still trying to run analysis on the construction of the passageways and chambers inside so we can safely breach them without bringing the whole thing down – but screwy sensors aren’t making that easy -’

‘You mean to say,’ said Winters, eyes gleaming as he looked to Dashell, ‘you could get us a lot closer?’

A beat. ‘Ohhh. You got it, Doc.’

It took the better part of another day to plan the exact dig route and then replicate and assemble the equipment to do so. The plant was designed to be operated by one person, with others on comms and sensors to help monitor progress and safety, so in the end they strapped Harkon into the framework with the drill attached and selected a spot twenty metres away from the door to pierce the rock face.

‘Five metres in. Then another ten metres down at a forty-five-degree angle,’ Dashell reminded her as they ran the final checks. ‘Then a pivot forty-five degrees left and down, and you think we can get, what, within twenty metres of the life signs?’

‘That’s about as good as it gets before I’d want more equipment to reinforce the route we took anyway,’ said Harkon, strapping on the goggles and gloves and other safety gear she needed to drive this device into the cliff. ‘And at that point we should probably get Riggs down.’

‘I think you can handle this yourself, Lieutenant,’ said Dashell firmly. He was rewarded with a small, pleased smile – a subtler yet more sincere emotional display from the normally ebullient pilot – and stepped back to let her work.

The digging took three hours. The sound echoed across the basin like rolling thunder, and Dashell could only be glad there was no sign of local life coming anywhere near them in case they thought the mountain was awakening in all its rage. They had to wait for Harkon to emerge before they could lower the Thoron generator into the passageway cleaved into the rock, lashing it to cabling before easing it down as smoothly as possible. As a jerry-rigged piece of equipment, it could have been more resilient.

Winters made a face as he regarded the newly-dug passageway. ‘I do hope locals don’t come up here. Or this will confuse them.’

‘There are ways to fill it in,’ said Dashell. ‘And this is not the worst Prime Directive breach Drapice is in danger of, by the captain’s reports.’

Harkon tapped her tricorder as the cable drum stopped rolling. ‘That’s maximum. It’s right at the bottom. Do you want to do the honours, Commander?’

Winters sighed anew. ‘Let us hope this works.’

She elbowed him. ‘Come on, Doc. A little hope goes a long way.’

‘As a medical professional I find hard work goes further.’

‘Let’s see,’ said Dashell gently, raising his own tricorder, ‘if we can’t reap the rewards of both.’ He tapped the command to remote-activate the Thoron generator.

There was a pause as Winters studied the sensor readings. Then he nodded. ‘I’m not picking up life signs from below any more.’

‘So either that worked,’ mused Harkon, ‘or against all expectations it actually killed the away team -’

‘That’s hardly something to joke about, Lieutenant,’ said an aghast Winters.

‘Humour also helps with hard work and hope,’ came another gentle correction from Dashell, but his eyes were on the door, and he let out a slow breath. ‘And the last is all we have at this exact moment.’

‘Or else,’ said Harkon with rising apprehension, ‘we just boiled away a day’s work.’

Not quite, Dashell wanted to say. They had still gotten close to carving a physical access point into the chambers, even if it would take more work and time. But it was time the crew of the Kingfisher maybe didn’t have, and they’d have to bring down Riggs to handle this final, delicate piece of excavation, which would take longer, and –

Krrrrrrr.

With the sound of metal scraping on stone like it had a thousand times before for a thousand years, the doorway before them rumbled as the doors themselves slid open.

‘Hell yes!’ Harkon whooped and fist-pumped in jubilation.

Dashell coughed at the smell of stale air. ‘They cannot be in good condition down there,’ he said. ‘Wait here, Lieutenant. Doctor, with me.’

‘I wait here?’ Harkon protested as Winters grabbed his medical bag. ‘No fair.’

‘You wait here,’ Dashell reiterated carefully, ‘in case we lock ourselves in there again. And then you get Riggs and break down the walls.’ She accepted that.

Winters stayed close to him as they entered the passageway down. At once Dashell’s breath caught, not for the smell of the air but the smooth masonry work he could see on the paving slabs below them, on the walls around them. Most of this had been built out of the rock face itself, using local materials, but the reinforcements in the passageway, the fixtures of the doorway controls on the inside – blinking, and with symbols of a language he didn’t understand – were of a design and nature he did not recognise.

‘Vorkasi,’ he mused, thinking of Valance’s report from this Lieutenant Beckett. But he pressed on and lifted his torch as they descended into the narrow darkness. ‘Hello!’ he called after a moment’s apprehension. ‘Crew of the Kingfisher! We’re here to rescue you!’

At first his voice echoed into nothing. Then, thudding heartbeats later came the creak. ‘…we’re here!’

They found them – all six of them – in a chamber off the passageway down that bore those same eerie hallmarks of sophisticated construction on a pre-warp world. They had plainly been on emergency rations for days and were running low on their stocks, weak and pale and desperate, but they were all there, and all uninjured. At once Winters swept into action, checking they were fit to be moved and instructing for them all to be helped up to the surface, which took a little time with Winters’ spindly figure and Dashell’s weak leg, and their reluctance to bring down Harkon.

The commanding officer was Lieutenant Yorin, a Rigellian who looked still somewhat hale and hearty and assisted in getting his people back into daylight. But once he’d been checked over by Winters and guzzled gratefully on a ration bar and some water, he was most intent on returning with Dashell to the passageways.

‘We’re lucky you found us down here,’ Yorin said plainly as they descended back below. He had a slow manner of speaking that made him sound ponderous and non-urgent, but there was an intensity to his dark eyes as they regarded Dashell, and the Bajoran assumed he was not returning at once to his prison for no reason. ‘But days down here gave us some time to study.’

‘Our captain found Lieutenant Beckett and is looking for Doctor Frankle, and I’ve heard what happened up to you being locked in here. But how did this happen?’

Yorin shook his head. ‘Come with me,’ he said and led Dashell down the passageway to its end.

Dashell was a veteran of many digs. His earliest scholarship had been on the history of his own people, so he was familiar with the wonders of ancient civilisations, aware so-called development or sophistication did not move inevitably forward. Some people who had built wonders Starfleet could only dream of had done so millennia ago. While he could understand Beckett’s report that these Vorkasi had maybe been no more sophisticated than modern technology, he was not so convinced when he set foot in the main, central chamber. It took great technology not to carve it out, but to integrate the defence systems of this place into the rock itself, build in an almost seamless way with the stone and resources of the immediate area. That the Vorkasi had done so in a place they did not need to hide meant something, and Dashell wasn’t sure what.

But then his attention was drawn to the container in the centre of the chamber, made of carved stone and metal set into it, piping snaking across the paving slabs to connect to it. Open, inside shone a display system which he again could not begin to figure out, and the circular inset where something – this circlet – had once sat.

‘Ensign Alikar was down here with Doctor Frankle. From her report, he just… opened it. For no good reason,’ Yorin rumbled with disapproval. ‘That seemed unlike him, despite his eagerness for discovery. Alikar woke us up, but Lieutenant Beckett was on the Kingfisher and we thought it might start a fight if he stood against Frankle. We came down hoping to resolve this without escalating.’ The Rigellian scientist shook his head. ‘Instead, Frankle sealed us in here. So we set to work trying to understand the systems, because we weren’t sure it could get any worse. Not when a day passed without Beckett breaking us out.’

Dashell approached the container and gingerly ran a hand along it. It was too cool, much like the metal doorway, and the light fixtures Starfleet had brought down here cast the dark metal with an odd hint of purple in certain angles. ‘What did you find?’

‘We cannot understand the Vorkasi language still,’ sighed Yorin. ‘We need our Rosetta Stone moment for that. But we can understand some components at least, and that was easier once the box was open and we had access to its systems.’

Dashell nodded. ‘This seems to have a whole interface on the inside.’

‘More than just the circlet, this is the heart of this facility here.’ Yorin gestured to a display. ‘That appears to be the readout of a scanner system. It looks like it has been cycling for thousands of years, though we’re not yet sure enough of the length of a cycle to be sure how long. There is certainly a database storing the data. And here.’ He extended a long finger over another readout. The other screens had scrolling displays Dashell did not understand but seemed active, alive. This one was static. ‘This is some sort of emitter, but it does not seem to have been active.’

Dashell hummed. ‘Our Lieutenant Thawn is a Betazoid and reported sensing some telepathic presence here, and in the vicinity of Doctor Frankle. The possibility of telepathic possession has been raised.’

Yorin paused at that. ‘Lieutenant Beckett is a little fanciful,’ he said at length, accurately guessing how that idea had been ventured. ‘But there is too much evidence of telepathic influence over Doctor Frankle to doubt it. That would also explain some of our gaps in understanding this technology. We have almost no technology which interfaces with telepathy. However, possession…’ Yorin shook his head. ‘I cannot confirm anything. But there is no indication we could see of this database storing a consciousness. Nothing akin to the data feeds we might see in a transporter buffer, for instance.’

Dashell nodded. ‘Assuming they would record such data in a comparable way, but – it’s a more than valid point, Lieutenant. Thank you. You should head to the surface and rest. We’ll help your crew recover and let Captain Valance retrieve Doctor Frankle.’

‘Of course.’ Yorin inclined his head. ‘Thank you, sir. If you need our assistance to study this further to try to aid your captain, please say. But I am not sure we have the facilities to begin to understand such technology. It would take a fully equipped and briefed team of specialists, and we are anthropologists more than archaeological engineers.’

‘I will look further, and report to the captain,’ Dashell confirmed with a sigh and stayed put as the echoing footsteps of Yorin’s retreat to the surface faded. Not for the first time, Dashell stood alone in a chamber where he could feel the weight of thousands of years of mysteries bearing down on him. It was less common, however, for him to feel the apprehension of threat. Of malice.

‘You were scanning,’ he mused at the control system. ‘Watching. Recording. Waiting. And then ready to do something with whatever you found. Surely you weren’t waiting for Frankle. Surely this wasn’t the plan.’ Dashell bit his lip. ‘What were you made for?’

Finding this Banaro was a lot easier than Valance expected. The crowd dispersed after Frankle was pulled back towards a looming distant tower Beckett guessed was a cathedral, and the tone had undoubtedly changed from a mixture of curiosity and fascination to a rumbling apprehension. The masses had come almost as the Starfleet officers had, following the rumours and reports of a prophet spouting the word of their god. A public challenge had taken some of the wind from their sails.

‘Let us hope that those who stand against Frankle are not dealt with as severely here as they were in the town,’ said Gov’taj as he led the way through the crowd, his burly frame good at blazing a trail.

‘People I talked to in the town hinted – or said – that Riggoria had pretty unchallenged authority,’ said Beckett, shaking his head. ‘But that Banaro looks like a priest, too. There are probably a lot of different priests here with different opinions who can’t just lock each other up for arguing. Even in public.’

Most of the crowd dispersed, splitting down the many roads into the expansive city, and movement became easier as Gov’taj led them in the direction he insisted Banaro’s people had ushered the renegade priest. Without the crush of bodies and the taste of urgency in the air, Valance could soak in the sights of this city and felt her hearts loosen as she reminded herself this was a pre-warp civilisation, a place untouched by the wider galaxy.

‘It sure is something, huh, Captain?’ said Beckett as he caught her peering. ‘I mean, look at those towers – they’re hella tall.’

Thawn wrinkled her nose at his gesture. ‘They’re not that -’

‘For this level of development, Thawn, c’mon!’ he protested. ‘I’ve been here a few days and could make educated guesses on their architectural sophistication. But I underestimated them.’

‘What does that mean?’ said Valance, more to stop them arguing. ‘That is, what are the implications of their having more developed construction techniques?’

Beckett shrugged. ‘Could be a lot of things. Maybe they just have plentiful material so they build a lot? It could be something social, like institutions of knowledge to help develop and study techniques. Or rich people put a lot more stock in these kinds of displays of their wealth so there’s a social motivation? But look.’ He pointed between a few spires towering over the city. All were built of the same brown stone, but the lower houses and businesses bore splashes of colour in drapes from windows, in banners stretching between rooftops, in green plants hanging from pots, while the spires were bare and stark and impressive. ‘Plenty of them don’t look like they’re the church’s.’

‘So maybe their rule isn’t absolute here.’

‘Maybe. It’s probably more complicated than that.’ He gave a sunny smile. ‘But isn’t it interesting to find out?’

It would be more interesting if we weren’t scrambling to stop ancient technology from riding roughshod over the whole culture. But Valance had to nod anyway.

‘Here,’ grunted Gov’taj a few minutes later after leading them down winding cobbled streets. Sunlight struggled to pierce these narrower roads as the rooftops above tilted together, and where it did break through it was cast in the brighter colours of drapes hanging overhead. The clientele of a local eatery had spilt from the inside into the street, sat on stools around makeshift tables that were once barrels, or standing in clusters as they gathered and chatted. Their garb was lighter than the hard-wearing travelling clothes they’d seen on the road, but still simple, of drab colours and plain fabrics, and they drank wines poured by serving staff into beakers and goblets rather than glasses.

‘A cantina,’ said Beckett, eyes lighting even more. ‘Let me find -’

‘You don’t even have a combadge,’ Thawn admonished him. ‘Don’t think of going off on your own.’

‘She’s right,’ said Valance. ‘We stick together. And ask politely.’

The shade of the cantina was something of a relief after the muggy streets, but though they couldn’t be far behind the firebrand priest he was not in sight. Valance decided to step in as eyes landed warily on the hulking Gov’taj, and turned to a serving girl who gave them a cautious look.

‘The priest Banaro. He’s here?’

She looked a little trapped. ‘I don’t… if you can’t see him, I don’t know if I can help you -’

But then a curtain across a back door was thrown open, and the burly figure of the Drapician priest himself emerged. ‘Thank you for your caution, Lisara. But they aren’t Riggoria’s people. They wouldn’t get this dust on them.’ Still, he dragged his eyes over the four and scratched his thick beard. ‘But you’re new to the city.’

Valance hesitated. It would be very easy for their massive ignorance of Drapician culture to be exposed if she weren’t careful. ‘We are,’ she said. ‘We came like lots of people, following reports of a prophet. Then we saw what happened back there.’

Banaro said nothing for a moment, watching them. ‘If you’ve come for answers, I can’t tell you what to think. I’m not Riggoria or his puppet.’

‘But that’s exactly it,’ chirped Beckett at Valance’s elbow. ‘Everyone talked about this prophet’s miraculous work, how he knows our troubles and how to soothe them, but everything he was saying there was – like you said. The same kind of words we get from priests who want to line their coffers rather than help us.’

Again Banaro watched them. Then he sighed and turned to the serving girl. ‘Lisara, a carafe of purple in the back for me and my new friends? We have theology to talk.’

The back room he’d come from, a dim and smoky chamber inviting intimacy and close gatherings, was abuzz with more people but had an air of privacy. Valance recognised some of them from the crowd who had pulled Banaro from the square and assumed he had a following of dedicants. More of them wore the symbols of the faith Beckett had pointed out, and by garb, she thought some might also be lower-ranked priests or some manner of lay preacher.

At Banaro’s gesture, one group of young men and women abandoned a table for the priest and his new guests to claim. The broad-shouldered Drapician took a stool at the head of the table and waited for them all to settle down before he eyed them up. ‘So you wanted, what, this time of revelation and instead saw a charlatan?’

‘I don’t know what we saw,’ said Valance cautiously.

‘I can’t tell you what to think,’ Banaro replied. ‘I can only tell you what I think. I think Riggoria has found one excellent con man and is trying to use him to get closer to the Pontifex, if not to set back religious discourse a century.’

‘It seemed unclear to many people back home what the prophet was saying,’ ventured Thawn. ‘Only that he was important.’

Banaro sighed with the sympathetic air of a man who thought he had to handle the feelings of some disillusioned bumpkins. ‘I am sorry you have come this way for perhaps nothing. I am glad you heard my words, though. I hope others do. But those who accept the “prophet’s” words seem to not have noticed that they all uphold the interpretations of scripture that benefit the Pontifex, the high priests, the nobility. It’s as if the decrees and reforms of the Council of Vicarane never happened, if you listen to this prophet, and Riggoria would much rather they hadn’t…’

It was impossible for them to not have blank faces, and Banaro groaned again. ‘I apologise. I am a theologian, and you want – as you should – guidance on how to live a good life. I am sorry that church politics and corruption are pulling you, and others, into their machinations.’

Beckett leaned forward. ‘Riggoria said he’d bring the prophet to the Pontifex. This was just to help his position?’

‘And the Pontifex is no fool,’ said Banaro with some relief. ‘He’s holding Riggoria at bay, so Riggoria is putting his performing animal in the public eye with the hope the crowds will clamour loud enough he has to listen. So I have to confront him and stop him getting a foothold.’ The serving girl arrived with a fresh carafe and goblets, and wine of a deep, violet hue was poured for all. ‘I know. You didn’t think me a cardinal.’

Valance and Beckett exchanged glances, and she drew an awkward breath. ‘I’ve never met a cardinal to know one,’ she said honestly.

He laughed at that. ‘I try to remind the Pontifex and the council that we are here for the people. Perhaps he just thinks my reformist ways are a novelty. And there’s no denying that what Riggoria and his prophet are spouting is the view of the majority – the majority of the church, the majority of the powerful, likely the majority of people, seeing as they’re not much exposed to other ways of thinking.’

Beckett’s brow furrowed. ‘The easiest way to control us,’ he mused, sounding like he was thinking aloud.

But Banaro shrugged. ‘The simplest of answers. The ones we give without thinking about our world. The collective wisdom of a faceless majority, without nuance, without contemplation.’ He shook his head. ‘I hope that’s food for thought, regardless. I won’t bore you with how I and Riggoria and the “prophet” disagree on what many would view as the details of scriptural interpretation.’ One thick hand wrapped around a goblet, and he had a swig of wine. ‘So, tell me of yourselves, pilgrims looking for a better way.’

‘We want to see the prophet,’ Valance said instead, leaning forward with an intent expression. ‘You’re a cardinal and he’s being kept around the cathedral.’

Banaro’s eyes narrowed. ‘He’s a danger, but I won’t see any harm come to him.’

‘No, we…’ Valance hesitated, unsure how best to lie.

‘It’s embarrassing. Shameful, even,’ Beckett jumped in, with a nervous glance at her. ‘You see, we do actually know the prophet.’

Valance tensed. ‘That’s enough…’

‘We know where he’s from, and we want him to come home. He’s not a con man. He’s just being used by people like Riggoria.’ Beckett didn’t look at her now, eyes locked on Banaro. ‘If we can see him, speak to him in private, we can convince him to go with us.’

Banaro folded his arms across his chest, ponderous. ‘Where did you say you were from again?’

Valance and Beckett froze, and she almost jumped out of her skin when Thawn said, quietly, ‘Treksial.’

That made the cardinal stop again, then slowly nod. ‘The hermitage.’

‘They sent us,’ said Thawn, sounding apologetic.

He nodded like that made sense, and Valance exhaled slowly. The Betazoid must have read his mind, fished out an answer he had contemplated to make sense of their suggestions. Now the cardinal looked considerably mollified. ‘I would expect better of the hermits. If one of their brothers was tired, he should be helped, not…’

‘If you get us in to see him,’ Valance pressed, leaning forward, ‘you don’t have to see him again. Or us.’

Banaro leaned back, now looking about the crowded room, to the windows beyond which the city still tumbled. ‘I had hoped things were changing,’ he mused. ‘That scripture could guide individuals to make their own best choices, rather than tell them to obey those in power, suspect outsiders, look after themselves and those who rule over them. And it’s not just scripture, is it?’ He sighed. ‘This prophet arrives, and I see just how much small-mindedness lies at the heart of our people…’

‘I like to think,’ offered Beckett, ‘it’s actually on the surface. That it’s the consequences of people not thinking very hard, and when they do put their minds to it, they’re much better than they seem.’ He glanced back at his fellow officers. ‘I think that’s what the prophet is on about. Speaking of – to – the shallowest parts of a whole culture.’

‘Maybe,’ sighed a distracted Banaro, then shook his head. ‘Come back here at dusk, and I shall get you in to see him. And if you hurt anyone, my followers will find you. Understood?’

Valance nodded with relief. ‘Absolutely.’

They did not speak until they were around the corner from the cantina, and Gov’taj gave a short bark of laughter. ‘That was most successful. Excellent work.’

‘Yes,’ said Valance, looking to Thawn. ‘Judicious work, Lieutenant.’

She flushed. ‘I hate doing that, Captain, but reading his mind so he might believe us seemed like a lesser offence than risking the Prime Directive…’

‘I trust your judgement,’ Valance said sincerely and turned to Beckett. ‘You sounded like you had a theory.’

‘Yeah.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Especially after Commander Dashell’s report. So there’s a chance this circlet’s been plugged into a box, plugged into a system, that’s been conducting scans for thousands of years. Telepathic scans.’

‘You think it’s reading thoughts of the entire society?’ said Thawn.

He nodded. ‘I still think the whole thing exists to figure out how to best control and manipulate Drapice. Maybe even telepathically if there’s an emitter. So for whatever reason the Vorkasi leave it on for millennia to pick up a whole culture’s thoughts,’ he said with the ebullience he reserved for particularly excitable theories. ‘But that’s why Frankle’s spouting the most… basic interpretations of scripture. The least controversial ones.’

Valance raised her eyebrows. ‘Gather that many opinions – majority opinions – over a few thousand years and there’s a risk of a sort of… blend of the most mainstream and unchallenging perspectives if you have to summarise them into one line of argument?’

‘There’s a risk of the resulting opinion only upholding and reinforcing systems of power, like Riggoria wants,’ Beckett countered. ‘Not challenging them, like Banaro wants.’

‘To what end?’ asked Gov’taj. ‘Frankle hasn’t come here to rule or take over. He seems like a puppet, of the circlet as well as Riggoria, and uncertain of his convictions if challenged.’

‘It wasn’t made for humans,’ Thawn pointed out. ‘Who knows what the circlet would do with a mind it was designed for? Especially a trained one.’

‘But when challenged,’ mused Valance, ‘the control of the circlet wavers. Presumably because it’s not good at providing information on that level of nuance. Which means we have a plan for how to deal with Frankle.’

‘Lie and cheat our way into the heart of the faith of a pre-warp civilisation,’ said Beckett, lighting up even more, ‘and defeat the insidious outside influence of ancient technology through rigorous theological debate. Seriously, didn’t everyone join Starfleet for this kind of adventure?’

‘Banaro sent you?’

Valance had been surprised that their approach to the cathedral at dusk came with the clamouring of bells and the rush of city folk in what seemed a call to worship. Beckett had pointed out that sunset was a common time of prayer for many religions, and that the Drapicians called their god the ‘Sun Lord’ made this unsurprising.

‘My confusion wasn’t theological,’ she’d replied tartly. ‘Rather that I expect the cathedral district to be full of people at a time we’re trying to sneak around.’

Gov’taj had shrugged as they made their way through the capital’s streets, gold-soaked by the last rays of a fat setting sun. ‘It may give us the cover we need. Especially if Frankle is not involved in any services and the staff are otherwise occupied.’

When they’d arrived back at the cantina, Banaro had given them precise instructions for their destination and a handwritten note. This was brandished at the guard who lounged against the door to one of the households adjacent to the cathedral. The main square before the mighty doors and kaleidoscopic stained-glass windows of the house of worship was full of supplicants, but these nearby buildings homing staff and priesthood and offices were quieter. It did indeed seem all eyes were on the heart of the faith itself.

‘He did,’ said Valance as the guard read the note. ‘We mean no trouble -’

‘It’s not for me,’ the man said gruffly as he stepped aside, ‘to question a cardinal.’

Against expectations, the house – part of a row of wattle and daub buildings stretching along a street jutting off from the cathedral square – was not particularly opulent. Beckett theorised that Riggoria, new to the city, might be entitled to quarters but, without the Pontifex’s approval secured, they would not necessarily be nice rooms. There was a musty smell to the hanging tapestries and floorboards creaked underfoot, and the door only gave them access to the ground floor, not any flats on the higher levels.

There were only three rooms. The largest was the most comfortable, but the fittings looked new in a rather desperate effort to give the chamber some prestige. Valance assumed it was Riggoria’s. The second room was empty.

‘He’s near,’ breathed Thawn with a tension to her voice, and they looked to the third door. They had to have been heard by anyone within, though the door remained shut. Without a word, Gov’taj took the lead.

This room was almost as bare as the second, but that had looked clean and tidy in disuse. With someone living here, the bareness felt almost inhuman, and Valance’s gut coiled to see the figure lying flat on the hard bed with its single sheet. Even resting, Doctor Frankle wore plain clothes and the heavy circlet, and as they walked in his cold eyes landed on them. He sat up slowly, gaze sweeping across the group to land on Beckett.

‘Lieutenant.’

Beckett gulped. ‘Hate that,’ he observed in a toneless panic, and Valance had to quietly admit she shared his discomfort at the eerie control of their target. ‘At least you remember who I am.’

Valance stepped forward, aware Gov’taj was keeping level with her. ‘I’m Captain Valance of the USS Pathfinder. And I’m here to bring back Doctor Frankle. Who am I speaking to?’

He stood up with a slow blink. ‘I am Frankle,’ the man said, both like this was plain fact and not worthy of commentary. Through the shuttered windows, in the sudden stillness, the ringing of bells and hubbub of crowds called to worship still hummed from the city.

Valance’s jaw tightened. ‘If you were Doctor Frankle, under no circumstances would you be setting yourself as a long-foretold prophet of these people’s religion.’

‘You assume,’ said Frankle in the same toneless voice, ‘that I am not.’ Through the one ray of the fat sun creeping through the shutters, motes of dust hung in the light between them like a shield. Or it reminded them they were in the dark, the rest of the world barely able to crack through.

Thawn shifted, and Valance could feel the apprehension radiating off her, more than the rest of them. ‘You’re not just Frankle,’ she said, and Valance realised she’d never fully understand what it meant to feel people in the way a Betazoid did. ‘You’re something else on top of Frankle, and far too much to just be him.’

Frankle raised a hand. ‘I am he, but more. Thousands of years of memory and thought of a whole people. Watching and waiting until the time came to harness this knowledge and turn them to our will.’

Valance took a slow, half-step forward. ‘Our?’

That made him hesitate. ‘Our.’ But it was not so much a confirmation as a desperate echo in itself, as if saying it might summon knowledge he needed but did not have.

‘There’s not a second consciousness there, Captain,’ Thawn warned. ‘Frankle’s there, just with an impossible quantity of memories – Drapician memories – and an, an impulse.’

‘To do what?’ rumbled Gov’taj.

‘Control.’ Thawn shook her head. ‘But there’s nothing more specific than that.’

‘The influence of telepathic technology,’ mused Beckett with a hint of wonderment, ‘and not a telepathic mind.’

Valance gave a gentle exhale. ‘Take the circlet off, Doctor.’

Frankle at last frowned. ‘Why would I do that? It enables me to do my work.’

‘Your work,’ said Beckett, also stepping up now, ‘has turned into becoming the pawn of a member of the clergy who wants you to spout conservative theology so he can use you to give himself a leg up the hierarchy.’

‘I am spreading the word -’

‘You’re spreading the most superficial interpretation of scripture and calling it a revelation,’ Beckett snapped. ‘How do you think this ends here, apart from reinforcing the status quo of the church of Drapice?’

‘This is the wisdom that will bend them to my will.’

‘You’re not talking to the hearts of the people! You’re drawing on a – a sludge of the most commonly-held beliefs. It ignores the innovation, the outliers, everything that gives a culture depth and everything that gives it the capacity to change!’ Beckett shook his head. ‘The commandments of the Sun Lord, what do they mean?’

Frankle swelled at that, like drawing on the circlet’s accumulated knowledge gave him strength. ‘The commandment of acceptance reminds that the hierarchy of the world was given by the Sun Lord and all should find satisfaction in their work, however low and humble -’

‘Or it means that all must seek to be satisfied by the quietest moments of the world,’ Beckett countered sharply. ‘That acceptance of humility and love is the highest form of divinity, not that those to rule were put in place and you should be happy with it!’ Frankle faltered, but the young officer wasn’t done, taking a step forward. ‘But that takes complex thought, critical thinking – you wouldn’t have learnt that from minds conditioned to accept their world and society at face value!’

A quivering hand came to Frankle’s brow. ‘It is enough to – to make them listen…’

‘But not to change them,’ snapped Beckett. ‘Doctor, whatever’s pressing on your mind is magnificent knowledge but it’s not understanding of Drapician society, and it doesn’t make you a prophet, real or fake.’

‘It’s working,’ murmured Thawn to Valance. ‘Challenging Frankle makes him try to dig deeper into the stored memories, which makes the connection between the circlet and his mind weaken.’

Then Frankle straightened, and his gaze on Beckett went hard. ‘You forget, Lieutenant, I brought more than knowledge. I brought insight. You’re nothing but a child who runs and runs, because otherwise you might have to stand. And if you stand, then you might fall. Then where will you be except crawling to your father to tell him he was always right?’ Beckett flinched, startled, and Frankle took a step forward to look across the away team. ‘All of you, running from your past.’

Valance had felt she was humming with tension since entering the building, or perhaps since setting foot on Drapice IV. But now her racing thoughts, observing and assessing and planning every second she was awake, felt crowded by what she could only describe as a pressure. Her breath caught, and she took a step back.

Frankle’s sneering gaze fell on Gov’taj, though. ‘Like you,’ he spat. ‘The warrior who casts himself a thinker because then he does not have to act, and action could expose the fault lines in more than yourself but your entire people.’

The Klingon hissed. ‘That’s enough,’ he snapped, before stalking forward – only to grunt and falter, stopping short.

‘I think not,’ came Frankle’s level retort. ‘Come at me, and all you will know is your own darkness. Did they scream when you left them to die? How would you know? You weren’t there.’

Valance found herself rushing forward, but then Frankle’s eyes turned on her, and the concern for Gov’taj rushed away. It was not that her perception faded, exactly, but she could feel that pressure in her mind, and now it reached down, deeper down, into her heart to bring roiling blackness up. Grief. Loss. Fear.

Standing on the bridge of the Derby and, against all advice, taking measures to save officers that ultimately cost the lives of innocents. Watching the alert lights in the belly of Endeavour as she sealed blast doors, locking Cortez in corridors about to be flooded with plasma, condemning her to death. Fleeing the Odysseus, leaving Aquila to go down with her ship, and die.

It was enough to make her vision swim, her concentration collapse, and Frankle tutted as he shook his head. ‘You, turning your back on all you left behind and turning your heart to ice because you think that’s the same as control. How many will you condemn and tell yourself it was the rational choice? You’ll both drive yourselves to loneliness and death.’

When his eyes landed on Thawn, the young Betazoid bristled. ‘You don’t get in my head -’

‘My power is older than when your people were squatting in caves,’ Frankle spat. ‘And I hardly need to pierce deeply to understand you. A frightened child who won’t fight for herself so she’ll scratch and claw everyone else instead.’ As she fell silent, he gave a short bark of laughter – the first real sign of any emotion but intensity or wavering uncertainty. ‘You thought you would come here and challenge my knowledge of Drapician religion and I would surrender?’

Valance had to fight to draw a scraping breath, Frankle’s shifting attention giving her some modicum of control back over her thoughts, over her heart. She wavered, but then her gaze landed on Gov’taj, who had braced himself as he rallied. He gave her the faintest, near-imperceptible nod.

Frankle rounded on her, doubtless sensing her intention, so she acted. Not with motion, but words. ‘Doctor, listen to me,’ she managed at last. ‘This circlet is influencing you and you know it. It’s setting you down a path against your own principles.’ As his eyes landed on her, she steeled herself. ‘You have devoted your life to studying other cultures; why would you want to change and rule one?’

As she’d hoped, he faltered – the challenge now not of the knowledge the circlet gave, but the impulse it drove in him. She felt Thawn relax next to her an iota, a reinforcement that it was working, having an impact.

‘It is necessary,’ Frankle said, but he sounded more uncertain. ‘This was planned. Prepared for over thousands of years. It will bring them into something larger.’

‘At the cost of who they are,’ Valance reminded him. ‘Doctor, you are an anthropologist, an historian. You know better than this.’ Again he wavered, and her limbs coiled. But not so she might move, not with his attention so fixed on her even as she did her best to disrupt the circlet’s hold on him. No, instead she braced as her gaze flickered away from Frankle, and to Gov’taj.

She hadn’t known what to expect. But if she couldn’t talk Frankle down, couldn’t sever the link between him and the circlet, then she could stop him from turning his circlet-given telepathic abilities on them by diverting him just for a moment. A moment in which she had to trust her Chief of Security. Her brother.

Who drew his phaser and shot Frankle.

‘Bloody hell!’ barked Beckett as the old archaeologist fell like a sack of potatoes. ‘Was that always the plan? We don’t know what might happen to him if he’s taken out wearing the circlet…’

‘Great Fire,’ breathed Thawn, cutting over him seemingly without thinking. ‘It has broken the connection. I’m not sure he’s slept since he put it on.’ At their looks, she grimaced. ‘Beckett’s not wrong, who knows what physiological effect this has had on him?’

Valance advanced on the still form of the archaeologist and pulled out her tricorder. ‘His life signs are steady. You’re right, he could do with some time in sickbay for malnourishment and exhaustion, though.’ She glanced at the circlet, barely daring to check her tricorder’s readings of that. ‘Is it safe to handle?’

Silence met her words. At length, Thawn ventured an apprehensive, ‘If you don’t put it on?’

‘So you don’t know,’ said Gov’taj, advancing. ‘Allow me to carry it, Captain. I incapacitated the doctor without us knowing we had safely disarmed the device. Let me bear its risk.’

‘Or,’ said Beckett, ‘we don’t give the physically strongest of us telepathic superpowers.’

But Valance nodded to Gov’taj, who gingerly reached down to lift the circlet from Frankle’s head. He turned it over in his hands, brow furrowing, and eventually grunted. ‘It wants me to wear it,’ he said at last.

Beckett looked stricken. ‘It’s talking to you?’

‘Nothing so simple as that.’ Gov’taj shook his head. ‘But it has nothing I want.’

Valance looked to Beckett, the researcher who would jump at devouring the knowledge of a whole civilisation’s history in a heartbeat, and Thawn, the telepath who could be tempted with the power to be safe and secure. She thought of Frankle’s words, and the temptation of being offered control such as the circlet had sought of a whole society. And she turned to Gov’taj. ‘I think it’s best in your hands, Lieutenant.’

Thawn moved to the window and peered through the gap in the shutters. ‘How do we get him out of here?’ she fretted.

‘I think,’ said Valance, ‘it is impossible for us to leave Drapice without cultural impact. No matter what, the people will be left muttering and wondering about a prophet. But we have equipped Banaro with a story he wanted to believe, and he wants Frankle’s teachings to be forgotten. I think we can stand to leave Drapice with one more mystery.’

‘Use your Waverider’s transporters to get us back to the dig-site, and just let Frankle mysteriously disappear?’ Beckett looked gloomy. ‘I would have liked to see more of the city.’

Gov’taj laughed and clapped a hand on the young officer’s shoulder. ‘And this,’ he said, ‘is why you can write many papers when this is done about all the fascinating things you learnt of Drapician society or this ancient technology that would have warped its people to the will of a long-dead civilisation.’

‘And why I don’t, I see, get to handle the evil circlet.’ Beckett winced and nodded. ‘Alright, Captain. I could do with a bath anyway.’

Valance inclined her head, gaze landing on Thawn. ‘Lieutenant?’

She turned back from the window, that haunted darkness sunk back into her eyes. On some level, Valance had hoped it would be gone now she had slipped far from Endeavour and all the ghosts lingering aboard. Frankle had reminded her – reminded them all – that they had brought plenty with them as they ran from the past.

‘I can beam us back safely, Captain,’ said Thawn quietly. ‘After all. These people deserve to be left alone.’

‘I’m grateful, Captain.’ Doctor Frankle looked a shadow of the man who’d stood in a Drapician townhouse and torn their thoughts from their minds now he sat slumped on the biobed. ‘Grateful and ashamed.’

‘It’s clear you weren’t acting of your own free will,’ said Valance levelly. ‘I’m just glad we could intercept you before you did more damage to life on Drapice.’ Her eyes flickered from the seated archaeologist to the approaching Winters. ‘Are we sure the circlet’s influence is gone?’

Crossing sickbay from his office, the CMO looked startled at such a direct question. ‘I can’t guarantee anything, Captain, without having studied Doctor Frankle under the circlet’s influence. But I’m detecting no abnormalities in his brain wave patterns – it perfectly matches the BCP on the doctor’s records.’

‘It wasn’t like something else was controlling me,’ Frankle groaned, though he looked relieved at the diagnosis. ‘It was like I had a whole mass of knowledge and like a… a hungering urge of what to do with it.’

‘To influence and control Drapician society,’ mused Dashell, stood next to Valance with his arms crossed. ‘Young Lieutenant Beckett’s theory would hold fruit.’

‘He warned me,’ said Frankle, looking up with weary eyes. ‘When we first found the chamber, found the box, he warned me to be careful. I thought he was just being territorial about the research.’

‘He may have been. It’s not as if he knew much more than you,’ Valance pointed out. ‘But what matters is that it’s over. We’ll let you rest, Doctor, and let Doctor Winters continue to supervise you.’

‘Please do,’ Frankle said to Winters, lying back on the biobed. ‘I want to be sure that influence is gone before I’m left alone.’

Valance and Dashell left Winters to do his work, heading out of sickbay and to the corridor. ‘Do we bring him with us?’ Dashell asked.

‘The Kingfisher’s crew won’t be staying at Drapice for long, according to Lieutenant Yorin,’ said Valance, shaking her head. ‘They’ll conclude their assessment of the site and set up the anthropological observation post to monitor any fallout of this incident, but they’ll head back to Federation territory after. They’re not equipped to handle the Vorkasi site properly.’

‘I don’t know if anyone is,’ Dashell sighed. ‘This is a site of massive significance, but it’s very close to a pre-warp settlement. There’ll have to be a whole ethical panel assembled to establish if it’s possible or reasonable to continue study without disrupting the Drapician way of life further.’

She glanced at him. ‘You sound like you want to do it.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s just one piece of the puzzle. If Beckett’s right, then there’s signs of these Vorkasi across the sector, maybe further. We’ve barely scratched the surface of old Romulan Empire territory, and now we find there was a powerful civilisation here thousands of years ago? Telepaths, with telepathic technology? Drapice is just the start.’

‘If Beckett is right,’ Valance echoed. Then she frowned. ‘Which does bring me to our next meeting. Join me in my ready room, Commander.’

When they arrived, Nate Beckett was already there, fidgeting before the empty desk as the bare bulkheads stared down at him. He was back in uniform, skin a little pink from days under the Drapician sun, and looked like a naughty student called to the headmaster’s office.

Valance had never been sure how to deal with Beckett. She found him irreverent but knew he was effective. Captain Rourke had always been very protective of him, and Davir Airex rated his talents, but she couldn’t shake the sense he had advanced in his career at least in part through his father’s connections. Nevertheless, he had an uncanny talent for being in the right place at the right time.

‘Lieutenant, please take a seat. You too, Commander.’ She marched to sit behind the desk, Dashell casually pulling up a chair while Beckett bobbed his head and looked around uncertainly before sitting.

‘Of course, Captain,’ Beckett stammered. ‘But if you’ve spoken to Doctor Frankle and Lieutenant Yorin, I’m not sure what more light I can shed on the situation…’

‘And Commander Dashell’s had your report,’ said Valance with a neutral expression, clasping her hands before her. She looked at her XO. ‘You’re confident about your conclusions?’

‘As confident as I can be,’ said the Bajoran with a casual shrug. ‘Considering we’re dealing with very rapid assessments of a hitherto-unknown piece of technology. But I’d welcome your opinion, Lieutenant?’

Beckett tilted his head, like he was waiting for a trap to close around him. ‘Of course, sir.’

‘We know some things with a high degree of certainty,’ Dashell began smoothly. ‘We know the facility included technology to conduct scans and store data, and technology to transmit. We know the technology interfaces with psionic energy – telepathy. We know that Doctor Frankle, when exposed to this technology, acted wildly outside of protocols and his known character by approaching Drapician society and presenting himself as a figure of cultural authority with a stated desire to change it.

‘Then there are the known unknowns. We don’t know how the circlet might have influenced whoever it was designed for. That alone could cast any possible theories into doubt. This might have been a malfunction of the entire undertaking. But with that caveat in mind, we have a clear theory: that whoever made this monitored Drapician society telepathically with the ultimate goal of using the knowledge gathered to influence it. To what end, I cannot say.’

Valance nodded, brow furrowed as she listened. ‘And there is no telling where else this has been done, or what else the Vorkasi have left along this frontier.’ She looked to Beckett. ‘I have a question for you, Lieutenant.’

He blinked, surprised at being focused on, still suspicious on why he was here. ‘Sure, Captain.’

‘When we confronted Frankle, you challenged him on specific points of Drapician religious scripture. How did you know any of that?’

‘Oh.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Honestly, Captain, I didn’t. I made a guess and hoped it’d bamboozle him.’ He rushed on as Valance arched an eyebrow. ‘I mean, it seems like the circlet was only drawing on those surface-level scans of thoughts of millions and trying to extrapolate understanding of a whole society based on those simplest of takes. But it was ignoring all of the nuance and difference – possibly even the sub-cultures – that give society richness, not to mention the capacity for change. If we needed to put Frankle under duress to weaken the circlet’s hold, it didn’t seem like the biggest leap, considering everything we’d seen of Drapice and Drapician society, that challenging the role of authority might be an outside take.’

Valance glanced at Dashell at that. After a moment, the Bajoran gave a soft smile and a nod, and she drew a deep breath. ‘I expect once you’re done with the Kingfisher, Beckett, you’ll be back to Starbase 26 and the archives.’

He gave a less-enthusiastic shrug. ‘I guess so.’

‘What if you weren’t?’ She was starting to understand why Rourke had found this entertaining, teasing out these conversations.

Beckett frowned. ‘Captain?’

‘Pathfinder will be operating in this part of the galaxy for a while yet. I expect this won’t turn out to be our last encounter with Vorkasi technology, now these sectors are opening to us for the first time in Starfleet history. And we’re a science ship without as many science officers as I’d want.’ Valance straightened. ‘A posting aboard is yours, if you want it.’

His eyes widened. ‘On Pathfinder? Captain, that’d be…’ Then he hesitated. ‘Can I give it some consideration?’

‘You have until we leave Drapice,’ Valance said. ‘But I urge you to do what’s best for yourself, Lieutenant. Let me worry about staffing considerations.’ Let me worry about Thawn.

‘That’s very kind of you, ma’am…’ Beckett’s voice trailed off, and she could almost hear him point out he did, in fact, have to worry.

‘Then go think about it,’ said Valance with the faintest curl of the lip. ‘Dismissed.’

Dashell watched him leave, eyebrow raised, and turned back when the doors slid shut. ‘I thought he’d jump on that,’ he mused.

‘He will,’ said Valance. ‘He’s got some hoops to jump through first.’ Before Dashell could press that, she’d looked him in the eye. ‘I want him to be Chief Science Officer.’

Her XO’s eyebrow went higher. ‘I’m guessing this isn’t you firing me.’

‘No. Commander…’

The corners of his eyes creased. ‘Is it unacceptable, Captain, if I ask for us to drop formality in private? I’m a scientist. This is a science ship. I’d rather we work like colleagues.’ He hesitated. ‘If that’s alright with you.’

For a fluttering moment, Valance felt the urge to refuse, the instinct for her control on the situation to tighten. She let out a slow breath and nodded. ‘I think that’s reasonable, Antedy.’

His teeth shone bright in his pleased smile. ‘Then please explain, Karana. You want me solely billeted as XO?’

‘I know that’s not what you wanted. Nate Beckett is young, and would still benefit from your guidance. But that’s true of a lot of the crew. It says something how senior Lieutenant Thawn is. So many of them need mentorship and support and I want you to give it to them.’

Dashell hesitated. ‘How much of this is that you want a Chief Science Officer who can be with you in the field?’

‘I will need a science officer who can keep up in the field,’ Valance agreed bluntly. ‘But Beckett can do that as your deputy if needed. This is about me putting you to use for the good of the whole ship, not just our scientific interests.’

‘You speak like scientific interests aren’t the only thing our ship is concerned about.’

It was her turn to falter. ‘I had a message waiting for me when we came aboard. The possibility of a new assignment for Pathfinder.’ His brow furrowed, and she pressed on. ‘It wouldn’t change the bulk of our work. Continuing to uncover and understand this new frontier. But we would also be gathering information which could help strategic support on the border.’

‘Tactical analysis.’ Dashell had a look of distaste. ‘Intelligence gathering.’

‘We wouldn’t be doing that analysis,’ Valance insisted. ‘We would be conducting the appropriate sensor sweeps and sending our findings for analysis. But it might impact where we go, sometimes.’

‘You said this is a possibility of a new assignment. What assignment?’

Valance tried to keep her expression schooled as she answered. ‘Endeavour Squadron. Under Fleet Captain Jericho.’

Dashell paused at that. He frowned, but it looked thoughtful, troubled rather than frustrated. ‘I don’t mean to be impertinent, Karana, but I got the impression you came here to get away from that unit.’

‘I came here because Captain Rourke got me this posting. Captain Jericho is part of the reason it’s been hard for us to staff Pathfinder. Bringing us into his unit should make all of those logistical problems go away. We justify our work as a science ship by supporting strategic concerns.’

‘And that would increase the workload on command, and on other departments, which is why you want my attention entirely on the ship as her XO.’ He looked like he might say something else, then he nodded. ‘I’m not much one for Starfleet politics, Karana. I trust your judgement. And if the young lieutenant wants it, I’d be happy for him to be Chief Science.’

There were questions he wasn’t asking, and she wasn’t prepared to volunteer the answers. Not yet. But she felt a hint of guilt as his acceptance let her draw this to a close, and they both left the ready room not long after. He had work to get to, a science department to put in order, but her next task was more personal.

She found Gov’taj in the mess hall nearest the security offices, a much more plain, metal, rough-and-ready room than the main lounge. Security officers were more likely to snap to respectful postures a she arrived, a deference she didn’t get from the majority science staff aboard Pathfinder, and it was starting to feel uncomfortable. She waved them down as she crossed the mess hall to the burly Klingon officer sat near the window with a steaming mug of rak’tajino.

He watched her on the approach, and inclined his head to the chair opposite. ‘Captain.’ It sounded like a question.

Valance sat down and hesitated. ‘Not right now.’

‘Sister.’ Gov’taj shifted. ‘I may need you to make it clear when you are not the captain.’

‘I’m always the captain.’

‘You are also always my sister.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and saw him blink with surprise. ‘That’s what I came down here for. I had… forgotten how good it was to work with you. How easy, sometimes.’

He gave a smile that was all teeth and very sincere. ‘Standing before that circlet and its invasions, able to work together to bring Frankle down because we barely needed to think to act as one…’

‘I admit, I relied on you more than I expected. And I’m glad I could. That could have gotten nasty down there.’ She drew a slow breath. ‘It did get nasty down there.’

His brow furrowed. ‘You should not let words cast a shadow over your thoughts.’

‘Words of a telepath,’ she pointed out. ‘Words that hit us both.’ He didn’t react to that, and she was never going to pry if she wasn’t volunteering things herself. ‘Words which, about me, were true. I have been turning my back on people, and calling it… cleverness and control. Perhaps there are some easy things I can do to change that.’

Gov’taj’s fingers drummed on the metal mug. ‘Such as?’

‘Pathfinder is going to come under Fleet Captain Jericho’s command. That will affect our mission profile, we’ll be providing information to support the squadron’s strategic role as well as following our scientific mandate.’ He looked blank, and her lips twisted. ‘Captain Rourke got me here. I can’t abandon him now. If I can stay affiliated then I can be a political ally, give him support, help him in this fight…’

Her brother’s eyes dropped. ‘It is good to remember our loyalties,’ he said quietly.

‘And there are things I can do to change,’ Valance pressed gently, ‘such as you and me having a conversation.’ Now his gaze flickered up. ‘Or, multiple conversations. To talk, and to keep talking.’

This smile had less teeth, but perhaps more sincerity. ‘I would welcome this.’ He shifted his weight, suddenly off-balance, apprehensive. ‘Would you tell me, then… no. Would you get a coffee, and then tell me.’

Valance glanced to the replicator and half-rose. ‘Tell you of what?’

Gov’taj’s smile went softer. ‘The people you’re trying to not leave behind.’

Drapice IV hung at the corner of the lounge windows, a brown-blue blur with tumbling endless space beyond. Distant stars promised more secrets of a fallen empire to be discovered, and for once, discovery didn’t mean rushing off. It meant planting his feet and seeing what would happen. But first, he had to know if he was on solid ground.

Beckett didn’t feel like it as he crossed the lounge and approached the small table flush against a bulkhead, occupied even though window seats were free. That made some sense, though he had been surprised to see his target here at all. ‘Can I join you?’

The look in Thawn’s eyes made it clear she’d seen him coming, or sensed him. She tightened  her grip on her tea cup but gave a prim nod. ‘Go on.’

His legs felt ungainly as he pulled up the chair opposite. ‘I could… hell, I should cut to the chase. It’s not like we need to dissect the last few days. The last few months.’

Her nose wrinkled. ‘I’d rather not. Beckett, if you want us to part on better terms…’

‘That’s not it, exactly. Captain Valance asked me if I’d stay.’

Thawn stopped dead. ‘What did you say?’

‘That I’d think about it.’

In the silence, he saw realisation sink in. ‘Beckett, you don’t need my permission to stay on Pathfinder. I didn’t send you away from Endeavour – you chose to leave!’

‘Don’t act like that had nothing to do with you -’ But he stopped himself and closed his eyes. ‘I didn’t come here to argue. This is an opportunity. A new opportunity, and a good one. You were right. I did cut off my nose to spite my face by leaving Endeavour for Starbase 26. And I think of going back to the archives there and I hate it.’

Thawn fidgeted with her teacup. ‘You could talk to Captain Rourke.’

‘I’m done getting places by favours and favouritism,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But Valance doesn’t pity me and Dashell doesn’t know me, and they both want me. I proved myself on my own terms these last few days. But I won’t…’ He hesitated. ‘I hate how things went down with us. But I won’t stay if it’ll make you miserable.’

‘What about making you miserable?’ She huffed and shook her head. ‘I think it’s apparent that where I am isn’t what makes a difference in whether I’m miserable or not. Frankle – Frankle and the circlet – made that rather clear.’

‘Yeah, that was a bit of a… telepathic throwdown,’ Beckett groaned.

‘I’m not saying I was wrong to leave Endeavour. I think we both needed something new, for multiple reasons. But problems don’t vanish just because I physically move.’ Her fingers ran lightly on the rim of the teacup. She always, he thought, fidgeted when she was nervous, and he tried to fight the spark in him at the idea he made her nervous. ‘This is a better place to be. And I can’t keep running.’

He nodded, swallowing down relief. ‘Good. Yes. Then I’ll stay.’

Thawn gave a stiff nod too. ‘If that’s the best career move for you.’

‘And we can be grown-up and responsible. And let the past be the past.’

‘Certainly.’

‘And be colleagues.’

‘Quite. Colleagues.’ The word hung between them, thick and heavy because it was fumbling and inaccurate. Her chin tilted up an inch. ‘This is a much better place for you to be, anyway, Beckett – really, locking yourself in the archives? That was ridiculous.’

The spark turned to the old, familiar flash of indignation she inspired in him. ‘Hey, this is really better than Ops Manager for an Obena? You’re the one who’s slumming it right now while I’ve basically wrangled a promotion.’

‘There are completely different challenges on a ship of this calibre…’

‘Yeah, smaller ones…’

And as they sat there, bickering like they’d not over the past months ripped each other inside-out, the doors to the lounge slid open for more people to come in – Riggs and Kally and Winters, whom he’d only met briefly but could stand to know better, and Harkon whom he’d always liked – and the stars seemed to shine a little brighter out the windows, and Nate Beckett started to think things might actually work out alright after all.