Arcturus was gliding along under thruster power over a dense asteroid field dappled with the ruddy light of the dwarf star HD 92018. This planet-less system on the edge of the Talvath Cluster was so utterly unremarkable that it did not have a formal name, just an archaic 20th-century star catalog designation. Over the past week, Arcturus had confirmed the complete dearth of anything worth studying there with a painstaking survey of seemingly every rock big enough for her sensors to scan. A ship as capable and as important as an Odyssey-class heavy explorer would almost never perform such a task; indeed, it was unlikely that even a mainline surveyor would do so, and the assignment would likely have gone to a third or fourth string survey ship flying the flag of the Starfleet Auxiliary, on the off chance that the system had dilithium or other resources that had been missed on a long-range sensor fly-by. 

Captain Michael Lancaster was a by-the-books, order-following Starfleet professional to his core. He understood that science often involved lots of waiting for the very good chance of nothing happening. Countless examples from Starfleet’s history showed that there was often more to a system than first met the eye, too. Even with all of that, he was mystified by Commodore Logan’s orders to stay put. Mystified and bored. He was so sick to tears of sitting there and doing nothing that he’d found an excuse to get out onto the exterior hull for some routine maintenance.

“I always like to spend time with you, Michael, but I would just like to point out that some men take their partners to Risa,” Luca Sheppard noted, the channel between his suit and Lancaster’s set to private. 

The two men were both down with one knee on the hull and one magnetic boot keeping them in place as they used debridement wands to carefully remove a large patch of carbon scoring surrounding a gash the size of one of their palms in the hull plating near the aft tip of the starboard warp nacelle. Lancaster grinned at him, knowing that it would be as close as Sheppard to come to admitting that he hated EV work; he’d brought him along mainly to ensure that his EV qualification remained intact, but just a little bit as payback for the multitude of times Sheppard had made him get out of his own comfort zone.

“We’re out here experiencing the majesty that is unexplored deep space, and you’d rather be on some beach?” Lancaster teased. He glanced back down at the tool he was using, making sure that the hull was being cleaned properly and then knitted with the microreplicator built into the debridement wand. It was slow and boring work, almost like scrubbing the hull with a toothbrush, but at least it was a change in pace from bouncing off of the bulkheads of the ready room. “Don’t worry, big guy. This will be done soon, and we can get back to our tedium.”

“Speak for yourself, M. Sickbay’s always busy,” Sheppard reminded him. 

The two officers kept at it for almost ten more minutes until the hull panel was as pristine as it had been when the ship was launched just over two years prior. Arcturus still had her new starship shine and smell, and Lancaster was intent on keeping her that way. He resisted the sentimental urge to pat the hull, even in front of his closest friend and soul mate, but he had developed a strong attachment to his ship.

“How does a meteor end up hitting the ship in the first place with our deflector shields?” Sheppard asked as they packed their equipment back into the rectangular toolbox magnetized to the hull next to them.

“The score mark was diagonal relative to our direction of travel. The deflector mainly keeps us from running into things while at high speeds, so it won’t always catch things that come from the sides or from behind us,” Lancaster replied. He tapped a control on the gauntlet of his EV suit to order the toolbox to detach and return to the airlock. With a few puffs of propellent, the box zoomed forward along the upper spine of the nacelle towards the elevator waiting to take them back down to the nacelle control room. “It happens all the time, and engineering sends one of the DOTs out to fix it.”

Standing up together, Lancaster and Sheppard both stumbled slightly ensuring that they kept one magnetic boot where it needed to be to avoid sending them flying out into space. They ended up in an embrace for a moment, which still gave Lancaster first-date butterflies after over ten years of being together. 

“Things on the bridge must really be boring if you’re taking away work from the robots,” Sheppard noted. 

“You have no idea,” Lancaster said as the two of them started clomping along the hull back towards the interior of the vessel. He tapped the badge insignia on his suit. “Lancaster to bridge. Repairs complete. Sheppard and I are on our way back to the airlock.”

“Understood, captain. I hope you enjoyed the field trip,” the first officer replied.

“Next, I’ll look for some paint to watch dry. Lancaster out,” he replied, closing the channel and switching back to his secure line with Sheppard.

“Why are we out here?” Sheppard asked.

“Ostensibly, we need a detailed scan of this system to confirm the accuracy of the Daren Array.”

“Why did you say ‘ostensibly’?” 

That question made Lancaster roll his eyes, but not at Sheppard. Admiral Hayden was a dynamic, inspiring woman who kept them charging toward the unknown for her entire tenure on Arcturus. Commodore Logan was proving himself to be a cautious bureaucrat who both wanted an enormous amount of input on how the flagship was run and excluded almost everyone else from his decision-making. In the four weeks since he’d raised his flag in Arcturus, Lancaster had been shocked over and over again by how poorly they worked together, considering their similar backgrounds.

“Because we’ve done more than enough to confirm that. I have absolutely no idea why we’re still in this system,” Lancaster admitted. He sighed. “I was thinking, though, that if we do end up being here for a few more days, we could take the yacht out for a spin. Spend some time alone,” he suggested.

Technically, the Da Jiao was not a yacht; it was a diplomatic launch. In the past, they’d used it as the center of planet-side encampments to handle scientific missions, and it had never been used for its primary purpose of transporting and impressing guests or for its secondary purpose as the captain’s pleasure craft. Without anywhere to go, though, there wasn’t much point to Lancaster twiddling his thumbs on the bridge, and it seemed like as good a time as any to finally christen it.

“Oh, absolutely. I think we could solve your boredom problem,” Sheppard agreed.

Buoyed by that thought, the walk to the airlock seemed to go more quickly. Once their two pairs of boots were firmly on the elevator pad next to the toolkit, Lancaster activated it with his gauntlet control. The lift descended into the airlock chamber, and the outer doors slid closed after them. As soon as the computer re-pressurized the room and the lights turned green, Sheppard practically ripped off his helmet, looking relieved to be on what passed for solid ground, at least compared to being on the outer hull. 

The inner doors opened slowly, and the two officers passed into the staging area, a small locker room with six berths in the wall for EV suits. Their gauntlets and helmets went back into the locker, as they were a standard size for most humanoids, but when they returned their boots and the suits themselves, these items shimmered briefly as the computer simultaneously recycled them and deposited a fresh one-size-fits-all version for emergency situations. When the reason for leaving the safety of the inside of the ship wasn’t a crisis, it would create a specially-tailored suit for each crew member using the measurements on file and keyed to each of their combadges. Lancaster reached for the uniform jacket that he’d left hanging in the locker, but he felt Sheppard’s hand on his shoulder. He turned around to see that his husband had discarded his blue-trimmed uniform shirt.

“How are you feeling?” Sheppard asked, putting his other hand on Lancaster’s mid-back to apply pressure nearly as firmly as performing an impromptu chiropractic adjustment.

“My back’s fine, but I don’t mind this at all,” Lancaster replied.

“I’m not talking about your back. Did we really just go out onto the hull because you are bored at work?” Sheppard asked, a note of concern creeping slightly into his voice.

Lancaster turned around and shook his head. “Bored is not precisely the right word. I feel… lots of things, but the words underutilized and undermined both climb to the top of that list. This is my ship, which happens to have a flag officer aboard. I’m the one who should be setting our course, just like the captains of every other capital ship in the fleet,” he admitted, the accusation coming out in a torrent he hadn’t expected.

“You can talk to me about those things, you know.”

That comment struck a chord with Lancaster; he hadn’t been fully transparent about his feelings with his husband, but it had only been a month since the commodore had come aboard and he wasn’t fully sure what his feelings were. He also would admit to feeling sensitive about his recent thirty-seventh birthday and had wondered if his sense of restlessness was just some quarter-life crisis.

“I know. I just haven’t been able to articulate them fully until today. This man is nothing like the service dossier suggests Brett Logan is supposed to be,” Lancaster elaborated.

“Maybe you should talk to him about it.”

“And say what? All of this is petulant.”

“Wouldn’t you want to know if one of your officers were feeling this way?” Sheppard asked.

 Lancaster glowered; he would want to know, but he wouldn’t want to hear about it. He certainly wouldn’t want one of his bridge officers actively whining about his command style. 

“Question withdrawn,” Sheppard chuckled. “Seeing as how you’re feeling underutilized, you don’t have anywhere to be right now, do you?”

Lancaster shook his head. Sheppard smirked and reached over to the small console in the bulkhead next to the door leading further inside the ship. He tapped a button, and Lancaster heard the magnetic locks engage.

“You should probably disable the security feed coming from this compartment,” Sheppard noted. “I’d like for you to go back to the bridge with a smile on your face.”

As he provided the verbal override code to activate privacy mode in the airlock staging area, Lancaster found himself pushed playfully up against the bulkhead with Sheppard’s lips on his. Intimacy in unsanctioned areas of the ship was something new for them. He felt briefly as though he should at least provide a nominal objection, given the sure ridicule they would face if caught, but that thought, and the rigidity in his spine both vanished when Sheppard started kissing him on the base of his neck. While neither of them was starved of physical affection, especially not with one another, the risk and novel location injected a particularly strong energy into the moment. The two of them were both left with mussed hair and elevated heart rates when all was said and done.

“Alesser to Lancaster,” came a call through the overhead speakers in the room while Lancaster and Sheppard went about the task of actually getting dressed.

“Go ahead,” the captain said, quite obviously failing to modulate his voice appropriately to conceal his heavy breathing.

There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the channel before the first officer cleared his throat. From across the room, Sheppard gave him a sheepish grin but mercifully remained silent.

“Sorry to interrupt, but you’re needed on the bridge. We might be picking up a Starfleet distress call,” Alesser reported.

The phrase “distress call” piqued Lancaster’s interest, especially since such a call should be self-evident. Given that ships in their squadron were the only ships in the region, it had to be either the Apollo or the Antares. Regardless of the source, there was now something for them to do.

“Clarify. Either we’re picking up a distress call, or we’re not,” Lancaster replied.

“It’ll be easier to just show you. Trust me: you’re going to want to see this.”

The energy patterns encoding Lancaster and Sheppard’s molecular, atomic, and quantum structures moved in an instant through the transporter wave guide conduits connecting the small pad attached to the nacelle control room to the transporter room on the aft end of deck one. The transport cycle felt faster than normal since their patterns went directly from pad to pad without being stored in the pattern buffer first. The sensation left Lancaster slightly queasy from the feeling of briefly being in two places at once as he and Sheppard headed down the corridor to the main bridge. While they were walking, Sheppard reached over to flatten down Lancaster’s hair, which hadn’t fully recovered from their tryst.

“What would I do without you?” Lancaster asked.

“Your hair probably wouldn’t need to be fixed so often in the first place,” Sheppard observed.

The bosun’s whistle sounded as the door to the bridge opened, and Lancaster’s foot hit the polished deck. It cut through the low hum of conversations and computer beeps that always permeated the ship’s command center. The captain found his first officer standing next to their new communications officer; he could see the registry NCC-130 displayed on his station. He didn’t recognize it, but he immediately knew that it was exceptionally low, given that Arcturus was NCC-84000.

“Report,” Lancaster said, placing his hands behind his back. 

Alesser’s amber-colored eyes darted between Lancaster and Sheppard, signaling that what they’d been doing just a few minutes ago was no great secret to him. The Ardanan man’s lip curled, seemingly ready to deploy a quip about that fact, but he held his fire at the last moment. He gestured to the display.

“I’ll let Commander Rivera do the honors, as it was his due diligence that found the signal in the first place,” Alesser said.

Rivera was new—a talented linguist and former Starfleet Academy professor brought in to replace the wayward Lieutenant Galan, who found himself demoted and reassigned to the Antares for his actions during their most recent mission involving the Romulans. Younger than either Lancaster or Alesser, the commander had an impressive service history, culminating in his recent promotion. He also seemed unusually shy for a communications officer, his embarrassment at being the center of attention evident from the blush on his olive skin as he turned to glance at the captain.

“While continuing our routine sweeps of the system, I located a transmission from the Aldari system, approximately four light-years away. I have confirmed that it originates from the USS Icarus,” Rivera said. “Our responses have gone unanswered.”

“The Icarus? Last I heard, she was laid up for refit,” Lancaster said; the story of the Prometheus class vessel’s near-destruction in the Archanis Campaign was well known in the fleet. 

“No, sir,” Rivera replied. “Well, that is to say, yes, sir, that Icarus, NCC-74996, remains at Avalon Fleet Yards. This Icarus is NCC-130, a Daedalus-class starship belonging to the Earth Starfleet. She was reported missing in 2158.”

Lancaster arched an eyebrow. “We’re a long way from the front line of that war,” he noted. “Well, at least we’ve solved the mystery of her final resting place. How has she been transmitting for the last 243 years without losing power?”

“That’s just it, and why we think this is a distress call. An active one. The transmission started after we arrived in this system,” Alesser interjected.

The captain thought about that. There were plenty of explanations as to why someone might be alive on that ship—ranging from the banal one of a boarding party tripping an ancient transmitter to the more interesting, like a crew coming out of cryostasis or a vessel emerging from a temporal anomaly. What seemed most likely, though, was a beacon that had failed to activate after whatever disaster had taken the Icarus finally tripping after its internal components degraded enough to make a connection between the battery and the transmitter.

“Is there any content in the transmission?” Lancaster asked.

“The registry number is followed by an authentication key and the Earth Starfleet code for general distress,” Rivera said. “It is the default setting for a distress beacon of that era.”

“Didn’t you say that you weren’t sure whether or not it was a distress call, Captain Alesser?” Sheppard piped up from where he was standing, leaning against the tactical rail.

“Rivera buried the lede slightly,” Alesser replied, grinning at Sheppard and then turning to the communications station to tap a short command into the transmission log controls. The display zoomed out and displayed a series of start-stop indicators that were otherwise meaningless to Lancaster, even with his background in operations. “Give him the run-down.”

“The transmission isn’t constant. At first, I thought it was just a faulty transmitter, but there is a pattern in the way it cuts in and out,” the communications officer explained, pointing at the display. “There are 1-second and 3-second bursts, and this pattern has repeated twice now.”

“Morse code,” Lancaster realized, now seeing the equivalents of dots and dashes with proportional amounts of silence between them. “Imagine that I haven’t looked at the conversion chart since the Academy, Commander. What does it say?”

“‘SOS P5 M3.’ SOS is self-evident, but we haven’t found any corresponding code in the historical archives for P5 M3.”

Codes upon codes. The captain was starting to feel like the transmission was rapidly becoming a matryoshka and maybe some sort of prank for which a long-dead communications officer on the Icarus never lived to see the punchline.

“And you’re sure this isn’t some failsafe in action?” Lancaster asked. 

“The computer has combed over the ship’s schematics and can’t find a technical reason for this other than manual intervention,” the first officer said. “We think it could be a crude coordinate system, but we don’t have a reference point.”

Sheppard stepped up to the other end of the console and pulled up the long-range scans on file for the Aldari system from the Daren Array, capturing the attention of the other three officers. Realizing where his husband’s thought was going when he saw the representations of bodies within the system spinning on the display, Lancaster waited for him to voice it.

“There are seven planets in this system. The fifth planet has three moons. P for planet and M for moon,” Sheppard suggested. 

“Are any of those moons habitable?” Lancaster asked.

“Unknown. Spectrography does suggest that there are complex hydrocarbons in this system, though,” Sheppard replied.

“Someone in distress wants us to go to the fifth planet’s third moon in the Aldari system,” Alesser concluded. “Good work, doctor.”

The situation did appear to be clear: they had indeed received a distress call. While there was the possibility that it was just the final voice of a relic, there was a greater than zero chance that someone actually needed assistance. That someone also knew enough about an ancient Human code to modify the transmission of a distress beacon to send a message. General Order 3 was clear: unless doing so would create an unacceptable risk to the responding starship, distress calls from Federation citizens must be answered by the closest vessel.

Lancaster moved around the tactical rail to take his seat. He turned to Lieutenant Commander Izumo, the ship’s new tactical officer. “Mr. Izumo, is there anything on your sensors to suggest that there is any danger in us responding to this distress call?

Izumo shook his head. “No, sir. There are no energy signatures detectable from this range,” the tactical officer reported.

“Helm, plot a course to the fifth planet of the Aldari system. Maximum warp,” Lancaster ordered, turning back to the front of the bridge. Sheppard took the seat to his left, and Alesser took his seat to the right. Rapping his fingers on the armrest of the chair, Lancaster considered requesting permission for half of a second. He tapped the ship-wide intercom control instead. “All hands, this is the captain. Prepare for warp,” the captain said before releasing the button.

“Course plotted, Captain. We’ll be there in just over four hours,” Marshall reported from the helm.

“Good. Ops, I want every bit of sensor equipment we have finding out everything possible about the Aldari system over the next four hours. Captain Aleser, I want a senior staff briefing in two,” Lancaster ordered, getting confirmation from the two of them quickly. “Go, Marshall.”

An enthusiastic “aye, sir!” was followed shortly by a fantastic burst of light showing on the main viewer as the ship jumped to warp. About ten seconds later, Captain Lancaster’s badge chirped.

“Logan to Lancaster. Report to my office with the first officer. Now,” ordered the terse voice of their resident flag officer. 

“Yes, sir,” Lancaster replied, standing up and finding himself with far more bridge officers’ eyes than he would have liked. He was livid at being summoned by anyone on his own ship. While such an order was undoubtedly licit under the regulations, it broke tradition, precedent, and decorum into a thousand different pieces. “Commander Sheppard, you have the conn,” he added, sharing a long look with him before leaving the bridge with Alesser to face the music.

Standing in front of Commodore Logan’s desk, Captain Lancaster was radiating silent, cold rage like waves of blooming hoarfrost. Whatever minor irritations he had from Commodore Logan’s management style before, the way he and his first officer had been summoned off of the bridge had been enough to move him from ambivalent to resentful. Never before in his career had he had a problem with the person above him in the chain of command—just peers and subordinates—because of how religiously he followed Starfleet’s regulations. Logan kept his office nothing like the way Admiral Hayden had, and there was no sign of warmth or personalization in the bare bulkheads behind him. In fact, there was almost nothing that suggested to Lancaster that the flag officer even had two sons—let alone a soul.

“Captain, your orders were to survey HD 92018. Why are we now at warp?” the commodore asked, looking up from whatever he’d been reading off of his monitor during the uncomfortable twenty or thirty seconds he’d left Captains Lancaster and Alesser standing there.

 “We are responding to a distress call, sir,” Lancaster replied, his tone fully neutral.

“I saw that in the logs. Why did you bypass the flag officer and make this decision on your own, Mister Lancaster?” Logan asked, and Lancaster knew that he failed to conceal his own facial reaction to the obviously intentional breach of protocol by the way the commodore chose to address him.

“I don’t understand the question, sir.” Lancaster felt Alesser’s eyes on him, and he continued before either of the other men could say anything. “‘General Order 3: Starfleet vessels are obligated to respond to distress calls sent by Federation citizens unless another vessel could respond more quickly or if, in the captain’s opinion, responding would create an unacceptable risk to the safety of their ship or crew,’” he quoted.

“Do not quote the rulebook to me,” Logan said, waving his hand dismissively. “According to the logs, you were contacted by the bridge a full seven minutes before you walked on deck. Are you saying you couldn’t spare thirty seconds to request permission from your commanding officer before proceeding?”

Lancaster blanched; the fact that Logan had checked the internal communications logs as part of this dressing down was beyond the pale. “With all due respect, no starship captain would ask for permission before responding to a distress call, not from a starbase across the sector or from a fleet admiral sitting a meter away on the bridge. I acted upon my obligations as the captain of this vessel.”

Logan chuckled. “That is still not an answer to my question. Why did you not ask me for authorization first? I’m aware of your close relationship with Rear Admiral Hayden, and I can’t imagine you wouldn’t have consulted with her before charging off in the opposite direction of her orders.”

“Vice Admiral Hayden did not involve herself in the day-to-day administration of this ship, sir. She trusted me to carry out my obligations, and in this case, I would have been in breach of a general order by delaying my response,” the captain replied, barely keeping his voice at a civil volume.

First Officer Alesser cleared his throat and took one step forward so he could be in the sight lines of both the captain and the commodore. Logan gestured for him to speak, which made Lancaster clench his jaw in annoyance.

“Sir, we were moments away from alerting your office, as per protocol,” Alesser offered.

“And this wasn’t even some minor expression of rebellious or mutinous intent on Mister Lancaster’s part?” Logan asked.

“No. Sir,” Alesser replied, the pause between those two words noticeable but not clearly able to be called disrespect.

Lancaster found the entire situation to be surreal, but the words “rebellious” and “mutinous” had him feeling queasy. Even in jest, those were words he never expected to hear associated with his own conduct. He glanced at his first officer, who stepped back in line next to him.

Logan sucked his teeth and then tapped a button on his desk, which brought the holographic screen he had been using back up. He gestured as if he were spinning it around, and it inverted so that Lancaster and Alesser could read it from where they were standing. It was an audio-visual file from the ship’s internal log recorder system.

“I have a very good inkling that cutting me out of this decision was, in fact, a conscious move on your part, Lancaster,” the commodore noted. “I would have expected that a technician of your aptitude would have remembered that airlocks are always actively monitored,” he added, which made Lancaster’s heart sink.

The video began playing a moment later. It was a camera angle from directly above the door separating the nacelle airlock from the staging area. Lancaster remained silent when he saw the images of his shirtless husband massaging his shoulders while he spoke about his displeasure with their assignment. 

“This is my ship, which happens to have a flag officer aboard. I’m the one who should be setting our course, just like the captains of every other capital ship in the fleet,” Lancaster heard himself say. Sheppard replied, assuring him that he could talk about those things with him, and Lancaster remembered at that moment his sense of guilt about concealing his feelings until that moment. “This man is nothing like the service dossier suggests Brett Logan is supposed to be,” the recording said.

Alesser made a noise like he was about to object and moved forward, but Lancaster reached over to put his hand on his first officer’s chest to make him take a step back. There was no sense in them both leaving the meeting with their careers in tatters.

“Seeing as how you’re feeling underutilized, you don’t have anywhere to be right now, do you?” Sheppard’s recorded voice said. A message passed across the screen indicating that the magnetic locks to the compartment had been engaged. “You should probably disable the security feed coming from this compartment. I’d like for you to go back to the bridge with a smile on your face,” the doctor said, as the two of them stumbled together back against the bulkhead, losing further articles of clothing until Lancaster’s verbal authorization code disabled the recording systems.

The fundamental right to privacy was enshrined in the Federation Constitution, though there were certain exceptions in Starfleet operational settings. The logical part of Lancaster’s brain knew that Logan probably had the right credentials and reasoning for accessing that log, but his emotional side was completely flabbergasted. While the recording was hardly explicit, it still felt like a tremendous violation for anyone to have watched it, especially in such a strange situation as the one Lancaster now found himself in. The commodore cleared his throat. 

“I really do not care what your hormones compel you to do, but this doesn’t exactly scream ‘good judgment,’ does it, Captain?” Logan asked. He dismissed the hologram and folded his hands on the desk. “This is a flagship. You are the flag captain, and I am the flag officer.  Your sole purpose is to carry out my orders, and your opinion about this is irrelevant,” the commodore said. “Consider yourself on probation for the duration of this mission. I’ll be watching all of your actions closely to determine if I need a flag captain at all.”

Lancaster glowered.

“Is that understood, captain?”

“Yes, sir,” Lancaster replied.

“Good. I will be at your senior staff briefing in just over 90 minutes, so make the case you should have in the first place to justify this excursion,” Logan ordered. “Dismissed,” he said before immediately turning to his computer terminal.

Captain Lancaster turned on his heel and walked straight out of the commodore’s office, with Alesser following in his wake. The first officer tried to interject several times, but Lancaster ignored him until they were sufficiently down the hallway to avoid any possibility of being overheard. They turned a corner, and Lancaster abruptly pushed Alesser through the doors into one of the public heads. An ensign from the sciences division was chatting and laughing with a junior lieutenant from operations as the two young men washed their hands—young love among the stars.

“Out. Now,” Lancaster ordered. “And we were never here,” he added, gesturing to himself and Alesser.

“Aye, captain!” the two junior officers squeaked before retreating. 

Lancaster locked the door; he knew that the audio pick-ups in the head that allowed crewmembers to talk to the ship’s computer were entirely disconnected from the recorder system for privacy reasons. There was no conceivable security or intelligence reason that would have compelled Starfleet to allow for Orwellian bathrooms, even if the airlocks were part of the budding surveillance state.

The captain grabbed his head in his hands for a moment, pacing like a caged lion. He glanced at one of the mirrors above the sinks, and in a fit of catharsis, he punched one of them as hard as he could. The mirror’s semi-flexible surface wobbled from the force of the impact like the glassy surface of a pond disturbed by a stone, but neither his fist nor the mirror was damaged—an innovation in materials design developed for precisely that situation.

“Okay, two things: first, whatever that was back there was completely beyond the pale,” Alesser said. He took Lancaster’s hand into his own and examined the other man’s knuckles, then looked up at him with a grin. “Second, even though it’s actually kind of a turn-on, this better be the end of your performance of hyper-masculinity, because throwing you off balance is exactly what that stuffed shirt wanted,” he teased.

Lancaster found Alesser’s touch reassuring but still removed his hand. Of all the moments to express their more-than-friendship, forty-five seconds after being slut-shamed by the commodore was the worst possible one. The Ardanan man’s amber eyes contained a mix of understanding and mournful reproach. 

“Agreed,” Lancaster agreed to both statements. “Ari, do you think I did the right thing?”

Alesser scoffed. “Obviously.”

“Don’t… confuse your loyalty to me for an objective assessment of my performance.”

“Your performance has never been in question, Michael,” Alesser quipped. “We got a distress call. You answered it. That’s what the regs demand. Would a courtesy request have been impossible? No. But was it obligatory? Also no. Logan is acting fully insane.”

“Either that, or he has his eyes set on the center seat of my ship, and he’s angling for a drumhead court-martial,” Lancaster said.

“You should contact Admiral Hayden or Admiral Dahlgren. Plead your case in advance.”

“No. We have to assume that all external transmissions are now being monitored. We have to solve this ourselves,” Lancaster replied. “I also have to assume I am now under surveillance, so I need something from you: instruct Ensign Kaplan to learn everything there is to know about Brett Logan.”

“Why Kaplan?”

“Because his IQ is ten points ahead of either of us, but, more importantly, I trust him. The two of us have a briefing about the Icarus to put together, after all,” the captain replied. 

“I’ll get it done,” Alesser agreed.  

Arcturus dropped out of warp on the edge of the Aldari system. Commodore Logan was sitting in the advisor’s seat next to Captain Lancaster, and the captain had been quietly seething about his presence since their meeting. The appeal of being a starship captain diminished significantly when an embodiment of Starfleet Command was nearly literally breathing down his neck.

“Secure from warp, Captain,” Lieutenant Commander Marshall reported.

“Commence deep system scanning,” Lancaster ordered.

“There are ion trails and other evidence of recent impulse activity, but I am not detecting any vessels in the system,” Bowens said from the operations station. “Scratch that. We’ve picked up a Daedalus-class starship orbiting the second moon of Aldari V. It’s still transmitting a distress call.”

Lancaster glanced at his first officer and got a nod. “Lay in a parabolic course to intercept. I want as much time as possible to get as much data as we can before we’re on top of the Icarus,” he ordered. He turned to Logan. “With the commodore’s permission, of course.”

“Don’t get smart, Captain,” Logan replied as he looked at the readings on the small console attached to his seat.

“Course plotted,” Marshall replied.

“Execute.”

Keeping his eyes fixed on the viewscreen, Lancaster watched for any signs of trouble or a trap as the ship began its arc through the system to intercept the Icarus. More and more data began to come in, and it was clear that the ship was intact.

“They’re in a perfectly circular orbit of the moon, with no evidence of orbital decay,” Bowens noted.

“That suggests that it’s able to maintain its own attitude after all this time,” Alesser said.

“I’m not picking up life signs,” the operations officer added.

“Not from the ship, but I am seeing substantial evidence of colonization on the moon. And nearly 6,000 humanoids,” Armstrong said from the science station. “Without closer observation, it’s difficult to say, but this appears to be a peri-warp civilization. There’s no subspace activity of any kind or antimatter reactions, but there are signs of fusion-based technology.”

“Are there any indications they can see us, Commander?” Commodore Logan asked.

“No, sir. I’m not seeing anything in the way of orbital telescopes,” the science officer said.

As they got closer, a visual came in on the Icarus, and Lancaster was surprised to see that a large section of the ship’s spherical primary hull appeared to have been repaired with a different alloy than the rest of the ship—it didn’t look space-worthy, but someone had patched the ancient vessel up with local materials.

“What’s the radiation reading on the hull? We are deep enough inside the gas giant’s gravity well that I wouldn’t expect that ship to be habitable even if it weren’t full of holes,” Alesser asked.

“It’s significant, sir. Lethal exposure within a few hours,” Bowens said. “I’m seeing active power signatures on that ship. Not original to its design. There are areas of the ship that remain pressurized. I’m also seeing significant amounts of organic matter onboard.”

“So, life signs?” Alesser asked.

“No. It’s not reading that way,” Bowens said.

The operations officer tapped a button on his station to display his readings on the main viewer. In several areas of the ship, there were dozens or maybe hundreds of green rectangles indicating organic material arranged in tightly-packed clusters.

“Stasis tubes?” Lancaster wondered aloud.

“That technology was available in the 22nd century, but it’s not clear whether the Icarus had any tubes aboard,” Alesser reminded him. “We should investigate.”

“Agreed,” the captain said. “Extend our deflector screens around the Icarus, so we can safely beam a team over.”

“Aye,” the operations officer replied.

Lancaster was about to order Alesser to prepare an away team, but before he could speak, the proximity alert began to sound. He looked up to see the tell-tale shimmer of a vessel decloaking on the main viewscreen.

“Sir, Romulan vessel decloaking dead ahead,” Lieutenant Commander Izumo reported from tactical. “Old-style. Heavily modified.”

“Shields up. Yellow alert. Hail them,” Lancaster ordered.

“No response,” Rivera at communications said.

The vessel loomed on the viewscreen, clearly Romulan but from an era Lancaster had not studied well. There were discolored sections, and it didn’t appear to be fully functional. It was at least armed, though, as moments after decloaking, it unleashed a torrent of plasma energy from several different mounts. It was barely enough to light up Arcturus’s shields.

“Report,” Lancaster called.

“Shields remain at 100%,” Bowens said.

“They’re firing again,” Izumo warned.

Again the shields barely lit up.

“Are you just going to sit there while we’re being fired upon, Captain?” Logan asked.

“They’re not a threat to us,” Lancaster replied, drumming his fingers on the armrest as he thought about his next course of action. He reluctantly tapped the red alert control on his chair. “Tactical, set forward phasers to minimal power and fire a warning shot,” he ordered.

“Aye, firing,” Izumo said. “They’re returning fire, targeting our weapons.”

“Captain, I’m losing my patience with this,” Logan warned.

“Target their weapons array. Minimal power,” the captain ordered. “Fire.”

A low-power blast from the phaser array was more than enough to knock out the weapons on the ancient Romulan ship. On the viewer, it was clear that it had done much more, though. The warbird began to drift, as plasma fires erupted all over the hull.

“Their weapons systems seem to be interconnected with the engines,” Bowens reported. “They’re going to lose hull integrity within the next thirty seconds.”

“Any response to our hails yet?” Lancaster asked.

“No, sir, but they are transmitting to the surface,” Rivera reported.

“They don’t have escape pods,” Alesser noted. “Recommend beaming the crew aboard to get some answers.”

“Do it. Beam the crew to one of the cargo bays and have medical and security standing by,” the captain ordered.

“Transport complete,” Bowens said moments before the Romulan ship exploded.

Thanks to the quick timing of the Arcturus bridge crew, the people aboard the ancient Romulan warbird were rescued without significant injuries. Lancaster and Alesser proceeded directly from the bridge to the cargo hold once the medical and security checks had been completed and found Anjar outside the door waiting for them.

“This is wild,” Anjar started.

“Certainly something you hope a doctor will say,” Lancaster quipped.

“These aren’t Romulans. Not entirely. They’re part Human. At least second or third generation, from the genetics,” Anjar explained, showing the captain his tricorder readings. “My working theory is that these are the descendants of the crew of the Icarus and the warbird you just blew up. They’ve been stuck in this system for over 250 years.”

“Couldn’t you just ask them?” Alesser asked.

“They’re refusing to answer any questions and insist that we are ‘The Destroyers,’” Anjar said, rolling his eyes. “Something about a prophecy.”

“Great,” Lancaster muttered.

The captain led the way into the cargo hold, where several security officers were keeping a close watch on their new guests. Some of them had clearly Romulan features, while others of the nearly two dozen people there did not. Anjar pointed the way to their leader, who was wearing a battered centurion’s helmet that likely dated back to the Earth-Romulan War.

“It is as Ancestor Detrama predicted. You have invaded our sacred temple, destroyed our heritage, and taken us as slaves, Federation,” the Romulan said, spitting at Lancaster’s feet.

“I am Captain Michael Lancaster, the commanding officer of this vessel. Welcome aboard,” Lancaster replied dryly. “What temple?”

“The vessel you have ensnared behind your shields, alien,” the Romulan replied. “It was predicted that you would arrive today and do what you have just done. We should never have doubted.”

“We are here because we received a distress call from your… temple.”

“Impossible. No one living is allowed there.”

Lancaster cocked his head at that statement and glanced at Alesser, who shrugged.

“If you had answered our hail, we could have clarified our intent. No trespass was intended,” Lancaster said. “We’re not aliens. My people and your people share ancestry.”

“I am,” Anjar said.

“Me, too,” Alesser replied. “I had a Human great grandfather, though.” 

“Not helping,” Lancaster interjected. “Why would we attack you?”

“You are here to remove us from our world. I will say nothing further,” the Romulan said, turning around.

Lancaster left the cargo hold with Anjar and Alesser.

“Why is it always prophecies with these old-timey colonies we find?” Anjar asked.

“This is weird—weirder than the face value, I mean. Take a team to the Icarus. Figure out how a signal was sent,” Lancaster ordered to Alesser. “Someone wanted us here, and I want to know why.