The twenty-third century lieutenant beamed aboard the twenty-fifth century starship.  Her difference was camouflaged by her yellow-shouldered uniform that matched the five officers who had materialised alongside her.  Once she was certain her boots were solid, once again, Nova planted her heels on the platform.  Her eyes searched the transporter room for someone– for her— but there was no one awaiting her arrival in gleeful anticipation.  There was no bouquet of flowers being thrust in her hands.  Not even a bag of grapes.

Instead, there was a yeoman handing out quarters assignments to each of the other officers as they filed into the corridor.  And there was a bearded man with intense brown eyes, staring at her from behind the transporter console.  He stared right at her, a flicker of concern deepening the crease between his raised Haliian brow bones.

“Don’t panic,” he said, raising a hand in a vaguely.  The direction of his gaze dropped to the holographic console extension he was manipulating through taps and swipes.  “Your luggage has been waylaid on Farpoint Station and I am confident I can find it again.  Your luggage is not lost.  I repeat: it’s not lost.”

Nova dropped her chin to her chest and she bit the tip of her index fingernail.  Soon after, she resisted the self-soothing behaviour and lowered her hands to her sides.  When she looked up, her heavy curtain of bangs obscured her vision, so she adjusted them with a shake of her head.

“Don’t bother,” Nova said consolingly.  “I have no personal belongings.  They all went down with the USS Brigadoon.“

The Haliian looked up at her and his eyes widened.  He nodded at Nova twice and then he snapped his forefinger and thumb.

He said, “Ah, that would make you Lieutenant Junior Grade Indira DeVoglaer.”

Standing to attention, Nova clicked the heels of her boots together and assumed a rigid posture.  She offered a lop-sided grin to hang a lantern on the gesture being performative on her part.

“Operations Officer DeVoglaer reporting for duty aboard USS Constellation,” she said.  Speaking in an informal lower register, she added, “But you should call me Nova, sir.  We’re going to be fast friends.”

Through the grin that expanded on his face, he replied, “I don’t doubt that.  I’m Lieutenant Rieko Pagaloa and you can invent your very own nickname for me.  I’ve served aboard Constellation through her shakedown cruise and they mostly call me chief engineer.”  –He cleared his throat–  “Captain Taes sends her regrets for not welcoming you aboard in person, but she is otherwise engaged.”

“That’s understandable on the eve of a captain’s maiden voyage,” Nova said, perhaps too brashly.  Her bravado was a counter-response to the faintest signs of pity in Rieko’s timbre.  She wouldn’t stand for being pitied.  “I’ve already spoken with Captain Taes over subspace before Contellation’s arrival at Farpoint.  She interviewed me personally for this step in my…”

Rieko finished her sentence with, “Rehabilitation,” evidently making an assumption about the terms of her fitness for duty.

Nova’s voice went reedy when she said, “I was going to say orientation.  I may have been missing in action for over a century, but I escaped that temporal inversion fold and STC has completed my re-training.  My Starfleet commission may be provisional at present, but I am fit to continue my orientation while on assignment.”

Nodding at Nova, Rieko said, “I hear you, Nova.”  –His gaze darted to the report on his holo-console– “In fact, provisional or not, the chief science officer has requested you report to duty immediately.  You have orders.”

As Rieko padded around the freestanding console, Nova heard a subtle mechanical whirr in time with each step he took.  She stepped down from the transporter platform to follow his lead.

Optimistically, Nova asked, “Would that be Chief Science Officer… Yuulik?“

Rieko chuckled the type of guffaw Nova would have expected if she had said Chief Science Officer Kol.

The Constellation’s astrometrics laboratory appeared to be far smaller than the stellar cartography departments Nova had read about in her rapid education on the explorers of the 24th century.  Instead of a multi-level marvel of holographic immersion, the astrometrics lab aboard this cutting-edge Constitution III-class starship was only the height of a single deck.  Aside from holographic interfaces, there was one central LCARS console, making the small compartment look bigger than it was, if half-empty.  The brutalist architecture and raw duranium she was familiar with, from the starships of her youth, appeared to have come back in fashion.  She had awoken into this Starfleet of the 25th century that appeared to be letting go of the luxury hotel veneer she had experienced aboard Deep Space 17 and Farpoint Station.

From the moment the doors parted for Nova and Rieko, Nova was struck by a cacophony of sound.  She walked into crosstalk and LCARS telltales from nearly a dozen individuals situated around the lab.  She wouldn’t have had it any other way.  Many of them were clad in uniform jackets shouldered in science teal, but almost half of them were Vulcanoids in jumpsuits that weren’t of Starfleet design.

Behind the single freestanding console in the compartment, a Vulcan junior lieutenant spoke in an inflexible tenor that matched her inflexible posture.  Judging by her uniform, she was one of the Constellation’s science officers.

“–tell you with confidence, Flavia,” T’Kaal said, stabbing an index finger at a blurry sensor composite on the viewscreen, “that is a Dominion energy signature.”

Flavia, a Vulcanoid clad in a burnt umber jumpsuits, openly scoffed at T’Kaal and rolled her eyes.

“If the computer can’t be certain that’s a Dominion power signature, T’Kaal,” Flavia tauntingly asked, “how can you be certain?”

Rieko nudged Nova’s arm with his elbow, nodding in Flavia’s direction with no small emphasis.

“Now Flavia, there, is our chief science officer,” Rieko said to Nova in a sotto voice, just for her.  “She’s a citizen of the Romulan Free State, assigned to Constellation with a whole team of Romulan scientists, through an arrangement like an officer exchange program.  I’ve… heard… she’s a member of her government’s science ministry?  But she’ll deny it if you ask her.  Also, don’t ask her.”

Although Nova was emphatically nodding at everything Rieko said, she didn’t quite wait by his side for that last part.  She was already crossing the compartment, putting her hands on the LCARS console, and shifting the angle of the Deneb Sector map covering half of the viewscreen.

“That’s impossible,” Nova interjected into T’Kaal and Flavia’s debate about muddy Dominion sensor readings.  “The Breen have been testing the borders where their space butts up against our space.  I thought our mission was to fortify Task Group 514’s defences?”  –She shook her head at Flavia derisively, probably too harshly– “So why are you chasing sensor ghosts out past the Federation’s coreward border?“

Unaffected by the heat behind Nova’s words, T’Kaal remarked, “A Dominion fleet has invaded the Deneb Sector from beyond our coreward border.  Task Group 514 has retreated, forfeiting entire Federation star systems to Dominion occupation.”

“That’s patently impossible,” Nova reiterated, waving a hand for emphasis.  “Shouldn’t I know about it if Federation territory had been invaded?  Fleet reports have been required reading on my re-training plan for weeks.  There is no Dominion in the Alpha Quadrant.  Starfleet is fighting back a Breen border skirmish.”

Flavia tapped commands into the LCARS panel, causing the Deneb Sector star chart to reorientate its position on the viewscreen.  A pale purple crescent shaded the edges of the sector, from the borders with Breen territory to the borders with the unexplored expanse of space beyond the Federation.  Dominion icons began filling the purple crescent, representing Dominion fleet sightings.

Although Flavia’s affect wasn’t as emotionless as her Vulcan colleague, she remained composed when she responded to Nova.  Despite the tensions between the Federation and Romulans that Nova had read about, she observed no visible pleasure being taken by Flavia at the Federation’s misfortunes.

“Federation assets and outposts have been destroyed by the Jem’Hadar,” Flavia explained.  “The Dominion and the Breen, in partnership, have formed defence and supply lines right through your territory.  Izar has fallen; the number of Federation worlds under Dominion occupation keeps growing.”

Nova took a step back.

“I feel like I’ve fallen out of time,” Nova said sardonically.  “I saw it on the Federation News Network this morning.  They wouldn’t lie.  Your sensor readings of Dominion ships are nothing more than old junkers.  They’re wrecks, dating back to your Dominion War.  They’ve been fused together to inspire fear and paranoia, and clearly it’s working on all of you.  There are no Jem’Hadar in the Deneb Sector.”

“You are mistaken,” someone else said.  Never in Nova’s life had she derived such pleasure from being told she was wrong.  No one was allowed to tell her she was wrong, and yet, here she was.  Unbidden, Nova’s eyes were drawn over Flavia’s shoulders, drawn in the direction of the open doorway.

It was Yuulik.

Scurrying into astrometrics from the corridor, Science Officer Sootrah Yuulik looked exactly as Nova remembered her.  Through Nova’s human eyes, Yuulik’s Arcadian features appeared impossibly delicate, despite the constant sneer on her thin lips.  Yuulik’s scalp was only adorned with two fins of dark brown hair and Yuulik had grown them out even longer and bolder than Nova’s last encounter with Yuulik, months ago.

“You are mistaken, Nova,” Yuulik said again.  “The Constellation’s orders come direct from Fleet Admiral Ramar of Fourth Fleet Command.  The Jem’Hadar are back and they’re aided by the Breen.  The Dominion have flown out of the dark, like ghosts.  We don’t know how or why or where.  That’s why we’ve been ordered to find out where they came from.”

Rieko cleared his throat.  It was a vulgar noise.

Just like that sound, Rieko’s broad body acted as an obstruction, blocking Yuulik’s view of Nova DeVoglaer.  Since she strode into the astrometrics lab, he perpetually remained in Yuulik’s way.  Rieko twisted his torso to an uncanny degree, turning back to make eyes at Yuulik.  Silently, he pantomimed a single word at Yuulik:

“Manners!“

Even though Chief Engineer Rieko was seemingly making small talk with Nova and Flavia, his posture shifted.  The way he rounded his shoulders and curved his arms, Rieko looked like he was holding court at the Tetrazona Palace.

“Pardon me,” he said, “Lieutenant DeVoglaer, may I introduce you to Lieutenant Yuulik from our social sciences section.”

Yuulik started to reply with, “I… uh…”

For once, language escaped Yuulik.  Cognitive dissonance lapped upon the shore of her consciousness.  Two opposing truths battled for dominance and Yuulik didn’t know how to function until she settled on which truth was true.  For seven years, Yuulik went to bed every night dreaming up the scientific miracle that would save Nova from the temporal inversion fold that had claimed her for over a century.  Their paths had first crossed on Yuulik’s cadet cruise and her failure to rescue Nova had awoken something in Yuulik she had never felt before.  Yuulik had flirted with obsession over other research projects throughout those seven years, but she had never known love like the love she had felt for that first temporal anomaly.

Stepping closer to Nova, Yuulik found herself faced with a stranger.  Nova’s dark bouffant was the same, but her Klingon War-era skant had been replaced by a modern Starfleet uniform of mostly black.  Even the way Nova carried herself in the new boots was unrecognizable.  Odd, what difference a pair of boots could make.

It did not compute that the same woman who Yuulik had pined over rescuing for seven years could stand before her as an utter stranger.  Yuulik didn’t know the first thing about the journey that had brought Nova aboard the Constellation and there wasn’t even a temporal inversion fold keeping them apart.  It was a cloud of paradox.  And yet Rieko was choosing to insert himself into this paradox by introducing them to one another, as if for the first time.

Nova smiled softly.  “We’ve met.”

A few paces to Nova’s side, Science Chief Flavia waggled a hand in Yuulik’s direction.  Somehow, the movement conveyed both pleading and condescension at the same time.

“Yuulik, dear,” Flavia said and then she pointed at Nova pointedly.  “She offends my space.  Take her away.  Give her the petty work.”

“Excuse me?” Nova sputtered at Flavia’s assertion.

Simultaneously, Yuulik offered a begrudging, “Understood.”  Why she assented to Flavia so easily, Yuulik herself was uncertain.  Did she hope to uncover some new scientific mystery at Nova’s heart, Yuulik wondered.  Or was there a part of her that wanted to protect Nova from Flavia’s wrath?  There was no time to ponder it.  Their mission was too dire.

Despite Nova’s flare-up at Flavia’s dismissal, she followed Yuulik out of the lab without any further objection.  Unintentionally, Yuulik adapted her pace to be in unison with Nova, their footfalls synchronised perfectly.  Yuulik took the lead, guiding them into the corridor.

“We’re sifting through a massive quantity of intel, hundreds of gigaquads of data,” Yuulik explained.  “We don’t know from where the Dominion Fleet has come or for how long they’ve been stalking the Deneb Sector.  All we have from Fourth Fleet Command are fragments of sensor data from any Starfleet vessel that’s engaged the Dominion.  And survived.”

Quickly interpreting what Yuulik was telling her, Nova inferred, “Our mission is to track their movements for the past few days, weeks, or even months?  Maybe find the very oldest sighting of the Dominion Fleet, even if it’s from the fuzziest edge of long-range sensor scans by a fleeing starship or subspace relay?”

Yuulik nodded briskly at Nova with a satisfied grin.  “It’s how we’ll know where to look for their point of origin.”

“Heh,” Nova breathed out, smirking.  “From whence they came.”

Coming towards them from the opposite end of the corridor were the Constellation’s captain and first officer.  Kellin’s eyes lit up and his mouth gaped open, as if he needed to pant to cool off his excitement.  Being promoted to first officer had done little to change Lieutenant Commander Kellin Rayco’s demeanour.  His personality remained as big and gregarious as his frame, despite trading in his security uniform for command crimson.

“Hey, Nova,” Kellin encouragingly said.  “Looking sharp in that uniform.  Welcome aboard!”

Captain Taes, meanwhile, looked right through Yuulik and Nova.  She brushed past them without a nod and she led Kellin into the astrometrics lab.

Flavia heard the arrival of Taes before she saw her Deltan colleague, commanding officer and sometimes rival.  By all appearances, in the half a year they’d been tied together by their joint mission of scientific diplomacy, Taes was a being of profound awareness of her own body.  Not only was she athletic of build, her every step, every movement, appeared to be intentional.  Perhaps calculated. There was never a scuff or a rustle or hiccup out of place.  Not ever would a Romulan choose to present themselves like that because it appear to be an obvious pretence.

“Doctor Flavia,” Taes called out in a sing-song.  As far as Flavia could remember, Taes very infrequently referred to her by the title she used with the Federation.  Flavia had to assume the flattery served as foreplay to a reprimand or request.

“You’re out of time.  I need a course,” Taes said, as she approached the wide console where Flavia was working.  “Starfleet has entrusted us with this capable new starship.  We can’t remain at Farpoint.”  –Taes lowered her voice, the affectation faded– “It’s not safe.”

Flavia was quick to point out, “Your computer has analysed all the sensor logs but even her best guess isn’t much clearer than ours.  I’ve assigned crewmembers from every department to continue parsing the data, looking for the types of patterns artificial intelligence isn’t programmed to notice.”

Something in what Flavia said appeared to pique Taes’ interest.  She furrowed her brow in a thoughtful expression and, more than that, Flavia thought she saw a flash of fear cross Taes’ eyes.  When Taes continued, she maintained a soft volume, barely above a whisper.

Taes asked, “The sensor package we were sent has been collected from Dominion encounters with the Fourth Fleet in addition to other starships outside the Fourth Fleet, yes?”

Flavia maintained a neutral presence, when she answered, “Most of the oldest sensor logs are from Task Group 514 or civilian freighters who were travelling beyond Federation borders.”

“How would you respond,” Taes asked, “if I asked about the veracity of those sensor logs in particular?”

A saccharine smile came to Flavia and she said, “You needn’t ask.  My entourage has methods for verification.”

The fear behind Taes’ eyes appeared to abate.  She nodded subtly.

There was something tight in Taes’ throat when she said, “I always knew our partnership would prove advantageous.”  And she stared at Flavia.  “Still.  That takes time.  I need a heading or a relative bearing.”

Sighing petulantly at Taes’ impatience, Flavia swiped her hand through the holographic LCARS controls.  In response, everything cleared off the astrometric viewscreen aside from the star charts of the Deneb Sector.  

Flavia said, “The earliest sightings we assume to be from the Dominion fleet were here, here, here and here.”

As she spoke, Flavia added Dominion icons to identify the locations she was describing.  They were well beyond the Deneb Sector’s Federation border, well beyond Dominion-occupied territory, and even beyond Saxue.  She drew a tight yellow oval around those locations.  As Flavia went on, she drew a larger purple oval that encompassed even more space.

“Assuming they were travelling at warp seven when they were noticed, the Dominion fleet’s point of origin could have been anywhere within this area.  If the Constellation is working alone, it would take us weeks to survey every star system within this swath.”

“The last time you kicked me out of this lab…” Taes emphatically said, making a blatantly hyperbolic statement, “you told me you would handle this.  You told me I could trust you with the fate of the Federation.  The entirety of the Fourth Fleet has been dispatched to fortify the Federation’s borders.  Our deep-space telescopes in the Gamma Quadrant saw no sign of this fleet.  We weren’t prepared for an invasion of this size with no warning.  Especially with so much of our fleet re-deployed for Frontier Day.”

Ever the fist in the velvet glove, Kellin Rayco added, “Our best hope of driving back the Dominion is uncovering how and why they attacked us here, rather than emerging from the wormhole in the Bajor system.  What is their strategy in coming at us sideways?  For all we know, the ships we’ve seen may not even be the entirety of their fleet.  Do they have the capability to produce even more warships from some secret reserve?”

While they spoke, Flavia nodded incessantly, because that usually soothed Federation types.  It made them feel heard and important, even if she wasn’t really listening.  When Kellin let that dreadful question hang in the air between them, Flavia tapped at her console twice, causing a new Starfleet arrowhead to appear on the map.

“We need more information, clearly,” Flavia said, “and I have another source of intelligence in mind, but you’re not going to like it.  The Kholara Observatory is a tiny Federation space station.  It was originally commissioned with a crew of five but it’s been fully automated for years now.  Normally, the observatory studies stellar phenomenon and spatial anomalies, but what’s important is that its sensors are trained right across the star systems where the earliest sightings of the Dominion Fleet were spotted.”

Kellin scoffed.  “Flavia, the Kholara Observatory is right on the Federation border, what’s now the heart of Dominion-occupied space…”

“That location,” Flavia said, “is exactly what makes it our best source of intelligence.  All of your other Starfleet installations are too far inside Federation territory.”

Taes’s gaze remained fixed on the representation of the observatory on the screen.  She offered no commentary on the dangers of its location.

“Why are its records missing from the sensor package we were sent by Fourth Fleet Command?” Taes asked.

Flavia answered, “Your network of subspace relays can secure no contact with the observatory.  It may have been damaged by a Jem’Hadar attack or the Dominion is interfering with our subspace signals throughout their occupied territory.”

“Or,” Kellin added darkly, “the Kholara Observatory has been destroyed.  Is it worth taking our crew behind Dominion lines for a database that may not even have the sensor logs we need?  There could be nothing there but ash and stardust.”

“Taes to Bridge,” she said, opening a communication channel to the bridge.  “Set a course for the Kholara Observatory.  Maximum warp.”  And she grinned at Kellin, plainly thrilled for the chase.  “Let’s find out.”

There was something hypnotic about the pattern of warp-streaked stars streaming past the viewscreen.  Given they had set a course for the front lines of the Dominion invasion fleet, Flavia half-expected there to be fewer stars.  She imagined their trek to become foreboding, filled with misshapen distortions of starlight.  The universe disappointed her.  Dominion stars shone just as brightly.  

Flavia may not have ranked the centre chair on the bridge, but she was acclimating herself to the Science II console.  She was afforded three full banks of LCARS panels that curved into the outer bulkhead, off to the captain’s left.  From where she was sitting, the stars remained just as accessible to her as anyone else on the bridge.

From the turbolift doors just beyond Flavia’s station, her colleague Ketris emerged.  Despite Flavia’s position as mission commander of this Starfleet project, there was something in Ketris’ tone that always reminded Flavia of Ketris’ greater influence, knowledge and far far longer life experience.  Flavia knew Ketris to be a convincing actress when she chose to be, which made it all the more galling when Ketris permitted such judgemental intonation to bleed through.

“We’ve received word.  Your request has been granted,” Ketris said.  She and Flavia had both initiated universal translator interference from their combadges to speak in a common Romulan tongue.  “We may access the full complement of Dominion warship schematics dating back to the Star Empire’s great conflict.“

Ketris placed a Romulan-designed computer slate on the flat edge of Flavia’s console.  The slate was, of course, incompatible and inaccessible to Starfleet’s computer.  Turning away from Flavia, Ketris looked in the direction of Captain Taes and smiled faintly.

“Are you going to share the schematics with them?” Ketris asked.

Flavia’s eyes followed Ketris’ gaze to the command platform.  She lay the flat of her hand on the computer slate and she dragged it into her lap, holding it tight.

Obliquely, Flavia said, “While the Star Empire maintained the non-aggression pact with the Dominion, I oft imagined my place in the galaxy after, if the war went as it should have done.  I could imagine myself in command of a Dominion battleship, conquering the stars.  I could see it more clearly than what my eyes told me.  …Did you never?“

“Hmm,” Ketris sub-vocalized, still not looking at Flavia.  “You know me.  I find war to be the most tedious of weapons.  At the end of this war, what?  Do you see yourself in command of a Starfleet explorer?“

In their shared gaze, Commander Kellin Rayco was stood on the ramp that circled the command platform, telling a story to Lieutenant DeVoglaer about the back alleys of Argelius.  He was leaning over the railing that separated him from the operations station, slowly doing push-ups against the railing.  Seated in the captain’s chair, Taes’s form was still by comparison.  In fact, her body looked absolutely still.  She didn’t appear to be breathing, even.

“Flying directly into the Dominion’s defensive perimeter without a cloaking device?” Flavia responded.  “I would never be so foolish.“

Before Ketris could say anything more, Taes revived from her reverie and she rallied her senior staff.  Ketris silently made herself scarce.  Even Flavia never saw her leave.

By the time Flavia secured her computer slate, the Constellation’s senior staff had gathered around the conference table in the observation lounge behind the bridge.  Taes had installed the same conference table from her previous command, the USS Sarek, in this new lounge.  Similarly, there were familiar faces from the Sarek around the table: Chief Medical Officer Nelli and Lieutenant Commander Kellin Rayco.  There were new faces too: Chief Engineer Pagaloa and Chief Security Officer Ache.  Each of them had brought PADDs prepared with their end-of-shift reports. Aboard the research cruiser Sarek, Taes hadn’t been this demanding of the senior staff’s time.  Now, in the days since Constellation had left Farpoint Station behind, Taes had scheduled more structure into all of their duty schedules.

Taes, herself, was the last of the senior officers to arrive.  Probably by design.  She was halfway into lowering herself into the chair at the head of the table when the doors to the bridge slid open one more time.  The doors opened, allowing Lieutenant Yuulik could scurry in.

Taes didn’t even relax enough to rest her backside in the chair.  Rather, she stood up and she made a breathless, harried remark.  “Never mind.  This meeting is cancelled.  You’re all dismissed,” Taes said.

Flavia didn’t have to be told twice.  She was the first one out of the lounge.

By the time Flavia reached her quarters, her shoulders dropped and she let her hair down.  She set about slowly, if determinedly, pushing all of the furniture in her quarters against the bulkheads.  There wasn’t much more than a table and armchairs.  Aboard the Sarek, she had been hugged by the excess of a diplomatic suite, but this Constitution III-class starship offered no such luxuries.

“Computer, begin recording a missive for transmission,” Flavia said aloud. 

My dearest Tarees:

 

That troubling dream has returned.  I thought I had escaped.  You shone your brilliant, clarifying light on those images that plagued my mind and I thought they’d evaporated.  You took away the power they held over me and I moved forward.

 

But now I’ve been dragged back.  For three nights now unabating.  My resting mind keeps returning to that moon.  Every night, I dream I’m stranded there.  Everyone has turned their backs on me; every tool at my disposal has fully drained their power cells.  All is not lost, though.  I have– there’s bountiful food and water available to me.  An entire abandoned colony or some such nonsense of dream logic.  But that too is the trap.  I can survive there on the moon.  I can endure.

 

Endure but not thrive.  Tarees, I don’t want to be alone.

Only once the deck was clear did Flavia say, “Computer, initiate program zhal makh.“

Holographic projectors transformed the appearance of the deck plates beneath Flavia’s feet.  What was once brushed metal plating appeared to be wood floor panels upon which a winding path had been painted in a sacred shape.  Flavia padded across the floor, positioning her feet at the yut makh.  She removed her boots and set down her bare feet on the floor.

Flavia closed her eyes.

“I have to know.” 

Minutes earlier, Taes took hold of Kellin by the upper arm and she yanked him back.  Without saying anything, she physically restrained him from exiting the lounge with the rest of the senior staff, and Yuulik.  Kellin’s head snapped in Taes’ direction and he looked at her with naked shock.  All the same, he obediently followed her back to the conference table.  The door sensors detected his submission and they closed to provide privacy for Kellin and Taes.

“What was she doing here?” Taes pointedly asked.

“She’s a science officer investigating the origin of the Dominion fleet?” Kellin proposed.

Kellin’s face shifted into an incredulous expression.  He looked confused by Taes’ questions but he also looked saddened to have disappointed her by being confused by her question.  Taes had known him long enough to recognise the puppy dog tactic, intended to defuse the situation, defuse her.

Taes could only grunt at that.  She dropped her gaze to the floor and she took a deep breath.  When she looked up at Kellin again, she had halved the amount of emotion in her voice.

“What did I tell you when I selected you as my first officer of Constellation?” she asked.

Kellin winced.  He replied, “That the Romulan Free State probably applied political pressure on Starfleet to transfer Flavia onto a ship with greater capability for exploration?”

A bubble of uncomfortable laughter rose up from Taes.  It was unexpected, but thankfully brief.  She shook her head at Kellin and she perched herself on the edge of the conference table.

“That’s so cynical,” Taes remarked.  “Did I really say that?”

“You did.”

Taes blinked and pursed her lips.

“Do you think it’s true?” she asked.

“I believe,” Kellin affirmed, “Task Force Seventeen has faith in the relationships you’re building with Flavia and this blended crew.  A Sutherland-class starship would have no business flying beyond the Typhon Expanse or headlong into a Dominion invasion fleet.  This is exactly where you’re supposed to be, captain.”

Unexpectedly, Kellin’s kind words offered no release from the tension in Taes’ body.  She was still bristling, when she riposted with, “Exactly.  Where I’m supposed to be.  Not her.  I didn’t want Lieutenant Yuulik on my ship.  You vouched for her.  She’s your problem now.  Yuulik can have her little social sciences fiefdom, and maybe she’ll learn something about leadership from you, because she’s learned nothing from me.  I gave her so much of myself and she never heard a word.  Yuulik experimented on herself with epigenetic therapy in the delta quadrant; she nearly lost the Sarek’s crew in her desperate ploy to rescue the starship Brigadoon.  She’s lost control!”

There was nothing challenging in Kellin’s voice when he asked, “But you invited Lieutenant DeVoglaer to join our crew?  Arguably, her interference in the temporal vortex caused more risk to the Sarek than anything Yuulik had done.”

Taes inclined her chin at him.  “Nova expressed remorse.  I’ve studied her STC reports closely.  She knows she’s done wrong.  Yuulik, on the other hand, has only escalated in her selfish, damaging behaviour.  It all started when you accused her of stealing Starfleet data for her own private research.  When, exactly, did your opinion of her change so drastically?”

Kellin’s eyes darted away.  “I’m sure I pleaded for your leniency then too.”  He frowned and he added, “Taes, this isn’t like you.”

“We have more at stake here than we did aboard Nesuts, the both of us,” Taes insisted, demanding his understanding.  “I have a crew of five hundred to consider.  I refuse to trust Yuulik again.”

“You trusted me then,” Kellin said softly.  “Trust me now.  You’re everyone’s Captain Taes.  The crew perform their duty with such excellence because you’re so generous to them with your trust.”

Taes dropped her head into her hands, massaging her temples.

“Maybe when I captained the Dvorak, I was Captain Taes,” she said through her fingers. “I haven’t been that captain in some time.  Don’t mock me by denying it.  You know that to be true.”  

“You’ve been struggling,” Kellin gently said.  “That means you need a Captain Taes in your corner.  That’s me.  That’s why you made me Number One.  Taes, tell me what you need.”

“Kel, I’m tired,” Taes said, looking up at him again.  “Feels like it takes all of my energy just to… steady myself.  I haven’t wanted the crew to see me like that.  It’s been safer in my ready room.”

Kellin’s lips thinned.  “Are you referring… to the challenges… you faced when…”

“Blood dilithium,” Taes admitted.  “I don’t– I don’t empathically hear the voices of the Brenari, not for a long time, but the needs and desires of my own body seem louder than ever.  Everything I feel sounds like blood rushing through my ears at all times.  I’m not the captain I was when I lead the Dvorak.  It’s getting harder to pretend to be her.”

“Do you have to pretend?” Kellin asked.

Taes snickered.  “You sound like my counselor.”

“Then use it!” Kellin said, his voice building in intensity.  She could see the same in his eyes and the broad set of his shoulders.  “You’ve been a scientist before, but now you’re facing the Dominion.  They are the only true threat to the Federation’s existence.  Captain, you need to become a warrior now.”

“That’s not me,” Taes said.

“Then tell me what you want,” Kellin retorted.

“I don’t know, okay?” Taes spat back.  “I don’t know what I want.  But I’ll tell you what I don’t want.  I don’t want Yuulik on my ship.”

Kellin shook his head and he took a couple of steps back.

He said, “Anyone in your position would feel stressed and frustrated right now.  You’ve only ever served as a captain in peacetime and we’re heading into something else.  This is personal for you.  I know your home colony was abandoned during the Dominion War.  Your colony collapsed and you were left alone –neither Starfleet nor Delta IV could muster the resources to rescue you– so close to the Cardassian border.  It’s natural for you to be worried about the same tragedy befalling the Deneb Sector.”

Quietly, Taes said, “You’re wrong.  It’s about Yuulik.”

“Then what do you want?” Kellin demanded and he banged his fist on the decorative shelf behind him.

“What people hate you for the most is when you don’t need them,” Taes said, pushing herself up off the edge of the conference table.  She walked past Kellin, heading back to the bridge.

“Yuulik needs to feel in her bones that I don’t need her.”

“Captain’s Log, supplemental:

 

“As Constellation nears the Dominion patrol lines that push furthest into Federation territory, I’ve plotted our course through the Ciater Nebula.  Composed of dilithium hydroxyls, magnesium and chromium, the nebula will obscure Constellation to all but the shortest-of-range sensors or eyes-on targeting.  By crossing through the nebula, we can nearly reach the old Federation border without drawing too much Dominion or Breen attention.

 

“In coordination with command, Fleet Captain Azras Dex of Saratoga Squadron will be serving as our forward scout into the nebula.  We’ve received word of Dominion patrols taking advantage of the nebula’s sensor-inhibiting effects to attack passing Starfleet vessels.  Saratoga Squadron is far better equipped to combat Dominion patrols and communicate the route of safest passage back to Constellation.

 

“Once Constellation and Saratoga Squadron part ways on our separate missions, I’ll be relying on the nimble navigation of this new Constitution III-class starship to take us through nebula’s thick debris formations, which may prove as treacherous as a Jem’Hadar battleship.”

By the time Lieutenant Leander Nune was cataloguing a seventh erotic statuette of a three-winged bird, he found reason to repeat his current mantra of choice:

“This is where I find myself.”  

All of his colleagues were assigned to scour through sensor logs in search of the origins of the invading Dominion Fleet.  Meanwhile, Nune, and Nune alone, had been assigned to catalogue a crate of pre-Great Awakening artifacts recovered from Argelius II.  He was instructed to make that his top priority.  The artifacts had been in the possession of a pessimistic science officer aboard Farpoint Station who didn’t particularly expect to survive the invasion.  He had entrusted a portion of the collection to his old mentor, Taes, in the hopes that Constellation being on the move would prove safe-keeping if Farpoint fell.

Somewhere around the time he had been cataloguing his third erotic bird statuette, Nune supposed Flavia had stopped trusting him when he had traded in his yellow-shouldered uniform for something in science teal.  That could be the only reason he had been side-lined.  As flattering as the uniform proved to be, Nune’s shift in career had been a shock to some.  Nune had led the engineering department aboard the USS Sarek, and so Flavia had expressed trepidation when he asked to serve the science department as a generalist science officer, leveraging his knowledge of cybernetics and warp physics.

Nune’s search for new meaning in his life, along with the mantra, had come from intensive counselling since the start of the year.  The Sarek’s mission to the Delta Quadrant had left him with vast depths of self-doubt when Nune’s exposure to blood dilithium had so thoroughly changed his personality.  He had succumbed to the subspace-telepathic influence much quicker than any of his telepathic peers and he had yet to reach an answer as to why that was.  He supposed it was uncomfortably fitting that he was reaching into the crate for an Argelian dagger when the door to the passageway opened and Lieutenant Yuulik stepped in.

Nune dropped the knife.

Yuulik had been the one he’d terrified and hurt the most in his blood dilithium haze and yet, time and again, she’d proven to be protective of him.  Nune supposed, from Yuulik’s perspective of every interaction having a winner and a loser, Yuulik saw a non-threatening softness inside Nune.  His mindful, live-for-the-moment approach was largely beneath her contempt.  Not even worth competing against.  That’s what gave him the comfort to greet Yuulik tartly.

“What did you do this time, Yuulik?” Nune taunted, tongue-in-cheek.  “How did you get banished to the misfit lab?”

Scoffing, Yuulik replied in a haughty timbre, “I don’t make mistakes.  I don’t play games where the Dominion is concerned.  I was following orders and then Flavia exiled me from the Dominion project.  Without explanation!  It’s baffling why she would push aside her most brilliant team member.  …And you.” –Yuulik squinted at Nune– “Why did she exile you?“

Nune shook his head glumly.  “Flavia didn’t say.  She just called me a spy.”

That stopped Yuulik, as she was closing the distance between them.  Her brow furrowed and she planted her hands on her hips.

“Actually, Flavia has a point,” Yuulik said.  “Are you coming for me and my job?  In all the hustle of transferring aboard Constellation, I never considered asking you…”

Far more placid in his bearing this time, Nune shook his head again.  He smiled at her warmly and he waved a hand, inviting Yuulik to the chair on the other side of the work table.

He said, “No, I want the opposite.  I want a life.  Leading an engine room is too much time locked in my head, planning strategies and contingencies.  I expect chief science officer would be much the same.  I want the end of my duty shift to be as much the start of my day as the end.”

“This hypothesis of life you speak of,” Yuulik said, as she begrudgingly sat in the proffered chair, “would that include at least three dinners in the Planetarium with that Romulan cosmologist, Laken?”

Nune leaned forward and he could feel an unconscious smile changing his whole face.  He smiled so hard it almost hurt.  He bit his lower lip before he answered Yuulik’s question.

“Have you ever met someone who seemed to be a reflection of yourself?” Nune asked.  “All of the constituent parts seem so similar, in moments you feel like extensions of the same person.  And yet a reflection is flipped; those similar parts are assembled in a completely divergent fashion.  Have you ever felt like that?  Like someone could be identical to you and utterly the opposite, all at the same time?”

Yuulik snorted softly.

“I can’t say that I have,” she answered, somewhat dismissively.

“Oh?” Nune asked.  He raised an eyebrow, taunting her again.  Although he’d been aboard the Sarek during the Brigadoon fiasco, Kellin Rayco had told him all the ways Yuulik had tried to sacrifice her own career and her life in aid of rescuing Nova.

That’s why Nune went on to ask, “What do you think of Nova coming back– joining our crew?”

“She’s an incredibly competent officer.  Taes is lucky to have her on the team,” Yuulik said in a formal timbre.  Nune’s Betazoid senses told him that she mostly believe exactly what she was saying.  She wasn’t holding too much back for herself.  Yuulik smirked and she leaned forward conspiratorially to tell him something else.

“I don’t like to speak ill of the departed,” Yuulik added, “but Annikafiore was a terribly literal thinker.  Nova doesn’t have that shortcoming.”

Scoffing out a laugh, Nune said, “Annikafiore isn’t dead.“

Yuulik was quick to come back with, “Is she currently assigned to a Neo-Constitution explorer?”

Nune shook his head in the negative.

“Then she might as well be dead,” Yuulik said.

“Then it’s a good thing Nova joined our ops team,” Nune said, both acknowledging Yuulik’s point and swinging back to his own conversational intention.  “How did it work out when Flavia had you work together?”

Yuulik slowly blinked at Nune.  “Speaking of Flavia, Flavia is… basically a Tal Shiar Commander, right?”

Wincing, Nune counter-proposed, “Being a citizen of the Romulan Free State doesn’t necessarily make one an officer of the Tal Shiar, does it?”

“Whatever they call themselves now,” Yuulik remarked, “the Romulans were not properly opposed to the Dominion, were they?  Not morally.  Not like us.”

“And yet,” Nune rejoined, “the joined us against the Dominion anyway.”

Yuulik narrowed her eyes at Nune.

“Is Flavia even really a scientist?”

Finally, Nune had to laugh at the level of paranoia flaring up from Yuulik.  All this because Yuulik had caught Flavia’s ire and been rebuked from the mission critical project.  

“Wouldn’t you have noticed by now?” Nune asked of her.  “You’ve worked with Flavia for months now.  Task Force Seventeen has invited Romulan Free State scientists across half of their starships!”

“Exactly!” Yuulik cried out in victory.  “Weren’t there Free State scientists aboard the USS Discovery in the Delta Quadrant when it exploded?”

That Nune didn’t laugh at.

“Um…” Nune said, and he cringed, struggling to follow Yuulik’s non sequitur, but he followed it all the same.

“…I think so?”

Yuulik nodded.  “Right.  Right?”

Gathered together around the conference table, like a hearth, the senior staff kept watch over the holographic projection.  The teal glow from the representation of the Deneb Sector flickered across their faces as a crackling flame might do.  With the lights down low in the observation lounge, competing sources of light took dominance from moment to passing moment.

A purple glow, from the Constellation’s passage through the Ciater Nebula, bled in through the tall observation viewports.  When it shone across Taes’ bald pate, it gave her eyebrows more severe an arch and it obscured the light behind Kellin’s expressive eyes.  The view of the nebula shifted when the ship adjusted course, causing the viewports to favour a patch of amber light from the nebula.  Under that warm glow, the truly alien visage of Doctor Nelli’s vegetal features were highlighted, as was the seemingly mathematical pattern to Chief Engineer Pagaloa’s blinking.  Flavia was haloed by a yellow alert panel slowly flashing behind her head.  And it didn’t escape notice that Flavia had invited no Starfleet science officers to assist in her segment of the briefing.  Romulan Free State scientists Navok and Laken flanked her, where they were seated at one end of the table.

Standing from her chair, Lieutenant Commander Tynleigh Ache extended a hand into the holographic star chart, initiating the holographic USS Constellation to fly out of the Ciater Nebula on an aesthetically erratic course towards the Federation’s trailing coreward border with the great unknown.

“Leveraging the latest reports of Dominion engagements across the Deneb Sector,” Ache reported, “I plotted this course from the nebula to the Kholara Observatory.  With seventy-eight percent probability, we can avoid any Dominion contacts or patrol lines.”

Captain Taes narrowed her eyes on the flight path and she nodded at it twice.  Her jaw looked strained, like she was holding back a stricken expression.  Then her gaze fell on Ache.

“You’ll need to re-calculate the course,” Taes said.  It wasn’t a question.  It was a matter of fact.

Being challenged like that, Ache couldn’t help herself.  She puffed her chest out to make herself physically larger, to take up more space in the room.  Despite her instinctive reaction, Ache chose to sound deferential in her reply.

“Is there an error I missed, captain?” she asked.  Ache flared her hands out in a particular gesture that brought all of Ache’s homework to the surface.  Holographic report after holographic report began to scroll out of the surface of the table, swirling around the star chart like a hurricane rolling in.

“That, uh, that won’t be necessary, commander,” Taes said.

Shaking her head at Ache, Taes cleared her throat and she leaned back into her chair.  She took the opposite approach, closing in on herself.  With a snap, Ache winked out reports, leaving only the original star chair floating above the table.

Firmly, Taes said, “What I tell you all now, I tell you in confidence.  If any of you repeat this in a log or to a loved one, I will swear under oath that you’re a liar.  In the briefing I received from the director of the Fourth’s Fleet intelligence, he said, ‘Trust only the Fourth Fleet’.”  –Taes nodded at the Constellation’s flight path– “Commander, I want you to remove any fleet movement data collected by Task Group 514 from your analysis.”

“Aye, captain,” Ache said softly and she returned to her chair.

“Your Fourth Fleet,” Flavia interjected, “has provided us with a quantum-level analysis of the Jem’Hadar battleships that attacked USS Caliburn and USS Hathaway.”  –She frowned an impressed frown–  “We’ve only begun parsing the data for ourselves, but quantum dating corroborates the pestilent rumour that the Dominion starships have come here from the year 2374.  Somehow, only days have passed for them, rather than decades.  They’re time-travellers, essentially.  Judging by the markings on their vessels –and comparing them against Starfleet’s historical records from the USS Defiant — our invading Dominion starships would appear to be the same mythical lost fleet that vanished from the Bajoran wormhole in 2374.”

Excitedly, Laken added, “According to the Defiant’s sensor logs, the lost fleet was comprised of thousands of battleships crossing the wormhole to invade the Alpha Quadrant.  Based on Ache’s analysis of the Starfleet’s engagements thus far, the Dominion forces across the Deneb sector are extensive, but they’re bolstered by the Breen.  If this is the lost fleet, this isn’t the whole of the lost fleet.”

Taes inclined her chin and she breathed in through her nose.

“Then there’s still more out there, somewhere,” Taes said.

“Thousands more,” Laken enthused.

“Will the Dominion bring them upon us too?” Taes asked.  The way she looked to each of the senior staff in turn, the question was plainly rhetorical.  “In Deneb or somewhere else?”

Rhetorical or not, Ache affirmed, “They will if we don’t stop them.”

“Please continue, commander,” Taes said.

The perspective on the holographic projection over the table shifted, zooming in on the hard angles and majestic silhouette of Constellation.  Coming into view at the same time was the Kholara Observatory.  It was a squat box of a space station with a massive sensor dish affixed to the relative top of it and two subspace antenna masts protruding from opposite sides like wings.  Those masts extended three times the length of the small space station itself.

Ache looked down at her PADD momentarily to confirm a figure.  She activated a soft metronome to give her a rhythmic pulse around which she could pace her presentation.

“Constellation comes in cold,” Ache declared.  Due to her Osnullus biology, her voice resonated through her nostrils and her finger-mouths.  “As soon as we drop out of warp, we shut down all non-essential systems.  Those Jem’Hadar battleships from the 70s only have a sensor range of less than 1.32 light years.  We acknowledge there’s a chance the Kholara system may be occupied by the Dominion or it may be visited by patrols.  Alternatively, if we’re very lucky, they may not take notice of us initially.”

“If the observatory hasn’t already been destroyed,” Kellin murmured glumly.  He crossed his arms over his chest.

Not even trying to hide her irritation at the pessimism, Ache said, “Yes, commander, if it’s been destroyed, we jump back to warp.  However.  If it hasn’t been destroyed, we launch the away team in an Orion-class runabout.  It’s the fastest, most heavily-armoured auxiliary craft we have aboard.  The runabout can fend for itself to the observatory while Constellation takes to the other end of the system.  At the first whisper of a Jem’Hadar battleship on long-range sensors, we light up the Constellation to make her the target, doing whatever it takes to make the Dominion forget the observatory ever existed.”

“I don’t like it,” Taes said awfully quickly.  “The runabout adds an extra layer of complexity.  Away team from shuttlebay to runabout, from runabout to observatory.  Beaming them directly from our transporter room leaves us less margin for error, no?”

Ache took a breath.  “You are correct, captain.  More things could go wrong.”

The first time Ache met Taes, over a year ago, she tried to arrest the first-time commanding officer at phaser point.  It always fell to Ache to protect Taes from herself.  Now, serving as Taes’ chief security officer for the first time, it was more true than ever.

“And,” Ache said, “we have more time for extra steps at the start of the away mission.  Before a Jem’Hadar patrol arrives.  A runabout also means an escape route.  If the system is flooded with more than a couple of battleships, Constellation can’t beam the away team back through shields.  If she were to even make it back to the observatory in time.  We’ll be alone in Dominion-occupied territory without Starfleet support.  You taught me, Taes: we always plot an escape route.”

Nodding slowly this time, Taes remarked, “I take your point. Wise as always.  Who’s on the away team?”

Kellin answered, “I’ll be leading the away team with Flavia and Commander Ache.”

“No,” Taes said with certainty.  “I need my chief of security at tactical, protecting this crew.  The away team is a science mission, identifying and retrieving sensor records.”  –Taes nodded at Flavia– “By chance, might any of your civilian scientists also happen to be trained in marksmanship?”

Flavia tilted her head to the left.  “Navok, here, is a sensor expert and he has been known to haunt a disruptor range.  As a hobby.  From time to time.  I would trust him with my life, let alone Kellin’s.”

Kellin nodded at first and then he squinted at Flavia, looking like he caught a whiff of something unpleasant.

“I’ll need a Starfleet science officer too,” Flavia went on, “skilled with at least an A-7 computer classification.  They’ll need to be fluent in LCARS code, equipped with security overrides, and they need to be fast.  None of your pretentious explorers who crave a conference in the middle of an evacuation.  When I say fast–“

Raising a palm in surrender or placation, Taes said, “My science officers are your science officers, Flavia.  You know that.  It’s why we’re all sitting around this table together.”

“It is why, isn’t it?” Flavia replied.

After taking a deep breath, Taes said, “We need another perspective.  You’ve all been too deep in the weeds on this plan for days.”  –She looked to Nelli and Pagaloa– “Doctor, Lieutenant?  What else haven’t we considered?”

Nelli raised two of their mid-section vines above the height of the tabletop and waggled them as they replied.

“On Phylos, there are those who defend themselves from attack by releasing a… scent that attracts the natural enemies of their attackers,” Nelli said through their monotone vocoder.  “How might we make the Dominion themselves vulnerable to their natural predators?”

“They don’t fear much,” Flavia retorted and she sneered.  “Religious zealots, the lot of them.  The Vorta and the Jem’Hadar follow the word of their Founders, the shape-shifting Changelings, without question.  Even when those orders are illogical or self-destructive, the Jem’Hadar maintain their faith, relentlessly.”

“Ah, that’s easy,” Laken interjected.  “Isolytic burst.  A subspace tear is the natural enemy of all life.”

Taes smiled at Laken gently.

“I like your energy,” Taes said, “but those are illegal.”

Without showing signs of slowing down, Laken offered, “Could we engender distrust between the Dominion and the Breen?”

“We could,” Flavia said in conditional agreement.  She waved her hand to indicate her Romulan peers as a separate group from their Starfleet companions.  “But it would take time and resources embedded among their armies.”

“Fire?” Pagaloa proposed.  Considering what was in his personnel file, that suggestion was based on personal experience.  “Living things naturally fear fire.”

Laken scoffed.  “Romulans don’t.”

Taes leaned forward again, locking eyes with Flavia directly, and she smirked.

“We prepared the solar ejection gambit before,” Taes said.  “We never tested it against the Pakleds, but Constellation possesses far more reinforced metaphasic shields than the USS Sarek ever did.”

“That… could work?” Flavia remarked.  “We can summon the might of Gal’Gathong against the Dominion and their hordes!”

The way the bridge crew were clinging to their duty stations, Captain Taes ruefully wondered if the inertial dampeners had failed them.

Having left the Ciater Nebula far behind them, Constellation was hurtling through the thick of Dominion territory at the emergency speed of warp 9.5.  Taes was perched at the very edge of her captain’s chair, readying herself to pounce at any second.  The rate at which warp-streaked stars were streaming past the ship struck Taes at an instinctive place within her.  It made her feel like she was about to plummet through the viewscreen and drown in the luminous spiral at any moment.

Nune was hunched over the forward science station and Cellar Door was flying figure-eights over the flight controls like a fickle insect.  Flanking the CONN, Security Chief Ache stood stiffly behind the holographic tactical console.  Her facial tentacles twitched erratically whenever Cellar Door swooped too near her.  On either side of Taes, Nova was glued to the operations station set into the starboard bulkhead and Laken held tight to the Science II station on the port side.

The executive officer’s chair by Taes’ side was palpably empty.  As much as Kellin could bring Taes strength –and a smile– he was needed on the away mission.  It wasn’t until this very moment that Taes had so keenly felt the absence of her previous first officer, Elbon Jakkelb.  Through their weeks together in the Delta Quadrant the previous year, Taes had relied on Elbon’s tactical instincts, perhaps too much.

It took Nune to shift the mood weighing heavily across the bridge.

“Captain, you can approve the away team’s shore leave,” Nune said.  He tossed the comment back over his shoulder with ease.  “Sensors are picking up the Kholara Observatory, exactly where it should be.  I’m detecting energy readings consistent with Federation electroplasma systems.  Still, the observatory’s computer won’t respond to any of our hails.”

Although Taes nodded at Nune to acknowledge his finding, the observatory’s presence wasn’t why Taes had been holding her breath.  Taes tilted her head in Ache’s direction.

In a timbre of tentative hope, Ache advised, “No other contacts detected in the Kholara system.  I’m not picking up any Dominion vessels, captain.”

Taes raised an eyebrow at Ache.  She could still remember the kinds of things she was supposed to say as a captain, even if it felt like a performance.

“It’s time for the crew to see why I poached you as my security chief,” Taes said in a spectacle of professional pride.  Taes nodded at Ache and then turned to ops.  “Nova, alert shuttlebay one to prepare for launch maneuvers.”

Double-nodding back, Nova replied, “Aye, captain.”

Cellar Door’s anti-grav fluttering came to an abrupt halt as the exocomp came to rest on the flight control panel.  He manipulated the stylus protruding from his replicator nose to make use of the holographic interface.

“Count it down with me,” Cellar Door said, evidently making his own play to improve bridge crew morale.  “We are coming out of warp in… three… two… one.”

Although no one counted down in concert with him, all eyes followed the smears of starlight as they settled into the empty dark of the Kholara system.  As Constellation slowed to half-impulse, the Kholara Observatory came into view through the transparent viewscreen.  The space station looked much the same as it had done in their holographic briefings, except one of its subspace antennae masts had been burned and twisted to slag.

Sneering at the state of the observatory, Taes offered her orders firmly.  “Mister Door, take us to heading oh-two-four mark three-five at one-quarter impulse,” Taes said.  “Nova, begin shut down of all non-essential systems.  And I want a tactical analysis from you, Commander Ache.”

Ache’s six eyes were scanning every inch of her tactical panel, when she reported, “The damage to the observatory is consistent with phased polaron weapons fire.  There’s no sign of ion trails.  If this was the handiwork of the Dominion, rather than a rogue asteroid, it occurred days ago at a minimum.”

“Non-essentials shut down, captain,” Nova advised, when the overhead lighting went dark.  Illumination on the bridge was reduced to the passive glow from LCARS panels and yellow-alert indicators.

“Give the shuttlebay clearance to launch, Nova,” Taes said.

The viewscreen switched to a reverse angle, just in time to watch the Orion-class runabout glide between the Constellation’s nacelles.  With a flash of its impulse engines, the runabout arced through space in the direction of the observatory.

Ache started to say, “Ah, captain–“, in the same moment Nova reported, “USS Rubenstein is away.”

“On long-range sensors,” Ache went on, her voice turning strident, “I’m picking up…  ah, I’ve confirmed it’s a Jem’Hadar battle cruiser.  It appears to be on a course to Leonis.”

Trying not to blink, Taes gingerly leaned back in her chair.  Instinctively, her eyes searched the stars through the viewscreen for any sign of the Jem’Hadar, even if she intellectually knew it wasn’t anywhere near visual range.

Hardly speaking above a whisper, Taes asked, “Have they spotted us, commander?”

“They’re… they’re…” Ache said and the way her voice cracked gave it away.  “They’re changing course: battle cruiser has assumed an intercept vector.”

Even in her leather field jacket, Yuulik was hugging herself tightly and rubbing her upper arms for warmth.  Barely half of the emergency lights aboard the Kholara Observatory appeared to be operational, but she wasn’t about to let her terrible night vision stop her from achieving her objective.  Yuulik bounded recklessly across the docking bay, every footfall clanging gloriously against the grated deck plates.  When she reached for the tricorder on her hip, the lightbeam from her wrist-beacon flickered aimlessly around the darkened compartment.

“It’s colder in here than Kellin’s marital bed,” Yuulik shouted back.  She verified with her tricorder what her body already told her: “Life support is operating at less than fifty-percent function, but it’s still wheezing along.  Although the main reactor is offline, the auxiliary fusion genera–“

From behind her, Kellin Rayco snarled, “Hold on!”  He and Navok came racing past Yuulik with their phaser pistols drawn.  Yuulik froze on the spot and she hugged herself again until Kellin offered further instruction.

“You heard Captain Taes,” Kellin said.  Clealry, Yuulik could see was making a macho show of chiding her.  Clearly.  He and Navok positioned themselves on opposite sides of the doors leading out of the bay.  “A Jem’Hadar battle cruiser is already en route.  If the Dominion found us this quickly, we may not be as alone aboard the observatory as we hoped.  Let us scan the passageway, please!”

While Kellin and Navok played at soldier in the passageway, Flavia caught up with Yuulik and she flipped open her tricorder.  This once, Flavia had equipped herself with a Starfleet tricorder to ensure it spoke the same language, figuratively, as the observatory’s computer systems.  Some thirty seconds later, Kellin returned to Yuulik at a quickstep.  He pointed to the Jeffries tube hatch he’d opened in the passageway.

“The two of you can access the computer core one deck up,” Kellin said.

Flavia huffed at Kellin as she jogged for the Jeffries tube hatch.  “Commander, I told you where to find the computer core,” Flavia said.

Kellin ignored her.  He put a hand on Yuulik’s shoulder to hurry her along into the Jefferies tube behind Flavia.

“Navok and I will be in operations,” Kellin advised, “getting the defensive systems back online.”

By the time Yuulik crawled into the Jeffries tube and up the rungs, she discovered herself out of breath.  In the time it took her to study the small control room, Yuulik briefly wondered if she should have, just once, taken up Kellin’s offer of fitness training.  She found Flavia was already tabbing through menu options on a widescreen LCARS panel.  Flavia alternated rapidly between commands tapped into her tricorder and responding to menu pop-ups on the observatory’s system panel.

“You gather the sensor logs from the main computer core,” Flavia ordered Yuulik.  “With all of the system failures, I’m going to scrub the sub-processors to dig out any sensor logs that never made it into the library computer’s filing system.”

Yuulik acknowledged Flavia’s plan with a nod.  After crossing the compartment, she pulled open an access panel and begin the sync between her tricorder and the computer core.  While the tricorder initiated the command, Yuulik turned to yanking isolinear chips out of the computer core.  She recognized each chip as as containing the security protocols that would slow her from her purpose.

Puffing out her chest, Ache rose her voice to be heard clearly over the red alert klaxons whooping across the bridge. She dragged two fingers across her holographic interface, revealing another layer to her tactical scanner readings.

“Correction!” Ache reported.  “There are six Dominion battleships on an intercept course with Constellation.  Captain, at maximum warp, they’ll reach the Kholara system in less than four minutes.”

Upon receiving Ache’s report, Taes sat more deeply in her chair.  The tension between her shoulder blades melted.  The throbbing in her temples passed.  The knot in her stomach was forgotten.  Whatever anxieties had plagued her in anticipation of everything going wrong had disagreed with her far more than the reality of everything going wrong.  There wasn’t much room left in her body for self-doubt when the universe was closing in on her.  Taes’ vision was reduced to little more than a pinhole.  Her priorities were clear: defend the crew; retrieve the sensor data; rescue the away team.

“Arm all phaser arrays and turrets, commander.  Load quantum torpedoes in the tubes,” Taes ordered.

On opposite sides of the viewscreen, two translucent simulations appeared within red LCARS frames.  In each simulation, a Constitution III-class starship was attacked by Dominion battleships in differing formations.

“If the battleships attack on this vector,” Ache said, pointing to one, “I recommend defence pattern upsilon, but if the battleships attack on that vector, I recommend defence pattern tau.”

Taes shrugged at Ache.  “Let’s find out!”

A distinctive LCARS chirrup bleated out from the operations console.

Nova chimed in with, “Captain, the Kholara Observatory’s subspace transceiver array has come online.”

Taes clapped her hands together.

“Are we receiving the sensor logs from the away team?” Taes asked.

Squinting at her controls, Nova stammered, “They’re transmitting… No, they’re broadcasting on all frequencies…” –She put a hand over her Fienberg earpiece– “Numbers?  I’m sorry, captain, I don’t know what they mean.”

Taes snapped, “My station!”

In the time it took Taes to swing the LCARS arm out from under her armrest, Ache shouted, “Captain, they’re broadcasting to the Dominion fleet!”

The numbers that appeared on Taes’ display caused the tension headache in her temples to bloom once again.

“Those,” Taes said, “are the Constellation’s prefix codes!”

In the fifteen years Taes had been leading everything from starship science departments to 900-strong science ships, she had never been accused of micro-managing.  If anything, during her command training at STC, she had been challenged to lead with more accountability and less emotional support.  It was a lesson, Taes realised, she had been forced to learn again and again in command of Nesuts, Dvorak, and Sarek.  There was a Deltan aphorism that still sung out in Taes’ memory.  She always heard it in the sound of her dearly departed mother’s voice: “True connection can only be forged when the heart has spoken.”

On this day aboard the starship Constellation, Taes wasn’t overly concerned with what Nova’s heart had to say.

“Crash our subspace transceivers!” Taes screamed over Nova’s shoulder.  The Deltan commanding officer gripped the back of Nova’s chair with one hand and braced her other hand against Nova’s operations console.  Taes’ eyes kept watch over Nova’s every tap, every gesture on the LCARS interface.

An away team from Constellation had travelled to the Kholara Observatory, aboard the runabout Rubenstein, to retrieve sensor logs that might locate the origins of the Dominion’s lost fleet, somewhere beyond Federation space.  For all their cluster of conflicts and past hurts, Taes implicitly trusted Executive Officer Kellin Rayco to lead the away team of science officers Flavia, Yuulik and Navok on this critical mission.  Taes had stopped listening to even what her own heart had to say when the observatory began transmitting the Constellation’s prefix codes to the Dominion battle group that was on a deadly intercept course.  In possession of the starship’s prefix codes, the Jem’Hadar would have the power to remotely control every command system aboard Taes’ cutting-edge Constitution III-class starship.

If, and only if, the Dominion computer systems made even the briefest of contact with the Constellation’s main computer.

Shouting to be heard over the red-alert klaxon, Taes went on, “A system shut-down of every transceiver assembly on the hull is not enough.  Lock out every EPS flow regulator that’s feeding plasma to every transceiver.  Each individual iris and magnetic switch gate needs to be shut.  Fuse them if you have to!”

“Understood, ma’am,” Nova called back, already implementing Taes’ orders.  Under Taes’ supervision, Nova demonstrated every month of her intensive re-training on advanced starship operations had been time well spent.

Keeping watch over Taes intently from the forward tactical console, Lieutenant Commander Ache clearly waited for the right moment to report, “The lead Jem’Haddar battle cruiser will drop out of warp in less than two minutes.”

Watching a very different countdown of her own, Sootrah Yuulik flicked at the side of her tricorder, wishing the spinning circle on the tracking display would spin faster.  Each centimetre of colour that changed on the circle indicated a greater percentage of sensor logs from the Kholara Observatory’s computer core had transmitted to her tricorder.  She held her tricorder closer to an open panel of optical transtator clusters, hoping to reduce transmission time even fractionally more.

The computer core’s access compartment felt claustrophobic to Yuulik; it was about the size of a type-14 shuttlecraft’s interior.  The overhead lighting had burned out as the result of a previously unknown attack on the observatory.  Even the emergency lighting was only at fifty percent.  Yuulik was practically working back-to-back with Doctor Flavia, who was only visible from the glow of the LCARS panels.  Flavia was manipulating the widescreen access and retrieval display, searching the sub-processors for sensor logs that had been discarded for being corrupt or lost in transmission.  Given the low lighting, Yuulik immediately noticed an increase in illumination in her limited peripheral vision.

Upon darkened segments of the glossy-black LCARS panel, status displays popped up, representing the observatory’s main tactical and communication systems.  A string of numbers scrolled across the communication display and the tactical systems locked onto the Constitution III-class starship crossing the Kholara system at full impulse.  The tactical display caught Yuulik’s eye because it was the first time she had looked at the silhouette of her new home, really looked at it.  There was something graceful about the tapered sweep of the secondary hull and an imperfect beauty from the notches that cut into the otherwise perfect circle of the saucer section.  The Constellation was an enchantress and she was about to have to bare her teeth and claws.

In a flash of warp deceleration, a Jem’Hadar battle cruiser appeared from relatively beneath the Constellation.  Leading from its forward pincer, the warship charged for the underside of Constellation’s engineering hull.  It had already launched a volley of torpedoes as it came out of warp.  Although Constellation quickly dodged into a defensive spiral, the wide volley from the cruiser still managed to strike Constellation’s shields with two of the torpedoes.  

As much as the animalistic fear swelling in Yuulik’s chest told her to remain aware of her attacker, her higher nature returned her focus to her tricorder.  She slapped the damnable thing again on its backside.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered.

When that didn’t do any good, she yanked another dozen isolinear chips from the computer core, manually shutting down redundant computing processes that were slowing her data transfer.  Yuulik forced her gaze towards the spinning circle on her tricorder but only for another ten or twenty seconds.  She looked back over her shoulder at the tactical display, watching five Jem’Hadar fighters warp out of the ether to join the chase of Constellation.  Those vicious beetle-shaped warships shot at the Starfleet starship with enough phased polaron beams to keep the shield bubble of Constellation flared up and distorted on a constant basis.

Spinning on her heel, Yuulik turned to Flavia and asked, “Exactly how much longer do you need? I’m about ready to get on the runabout and bolt in the night.”

Although nothing Flavia said was dismissive on the face of it, her tone conveyed that Yuulik was only being afforded less than ten percent of Flavia’s attention.

“Cowardice won’t serve us,” Flavia said.  It sounded oddly bland, dismissive.  It didn’t have the intentional bite Flavia often reserved for Yuulik.  “Our mission… is done… when it’s…”

Squinting at the interface panel under Flavia’s ministrations, Yuulik looked for how much progress Flavia had made in transmitting additional sensor logs to her own tricorder.  Yuulik had to blink at the sensory overload of Flavia’s console.  One of the latest advancements of LCARS was the three-dimensional layering of displays and controls.  While the surface of Flavia’s console was devoted to plucking sensor snippets from the buffers, the observatory’s communication system was visible three layers down.  The transmission being broadcast by the observatory contained absolutely nothing that looked like sensor packets of astronomical data and it was directed nowhere near the Constellation.

Yuulik took hold of Flavia by the shoulder and she roughly spun the Romulan around to face her.

“Tal Shiar traitor!” Yuulik screamed at her.  “We never should have trusted you!”

“It’s not me!  I didn’t send that,” Flavia pleaded.  Yuulik had to grant her: the acting was believable.  Flavia sounded desperate and panicked, but she still betrayed her guilt by already knowing exactly what Yuulik had seen on her console.

Firmly, Flavia asked, “Where would I even get Constellation’s prefix codes?”

“So you know what they are, huh?” Yuulik accused.  “Dammit, I was fooled by your trickery and glamour.  The Dominion is attacking us out of time and it’s not the Tal Shiar the Jem’Hadar worship.”

Recalling the training her mother had drilled into her from childhood, Yuulik swept her free hand down to snatch the Argelian ceremonial dagger from her boot.

“You’re a Changeling!” Yuulik cried and she swept the blade across Flavia’s shoulder.  Her movement across the body was so swift that when Yuulik yanked the blade back, a splatter of green blood splashed across Yuulik’s face.  That same green blood was pooling at the new gash in Flavia’s field jacket.

Crying out in pain, Flavia cursed, “Imirrhlhhse!”  She gasped and she added, “Kellin was right, you’re crazier than ever!”

“No, you’re a liar!” Yuulik shot back at her, raising her dagger in a defensive posture.  “You sent the prefix codes and you shut me out from the Dominion investigation because you knew I would see right through you.  I’m a brilliant Starfleet Lieutenant!  Why wouldn’t you let me help you?”

“He told me not to,” Flavia said.

From the dark of the passageway, Kellin Rayco swept into the computer control room.  His face and his hair were drenched in Romulan-green blood.  He opened his arms wide –impossibly wide– until the sleeves of his field jacket rippled and bubbled like he was boiling from the inside.  His arms squished into a reddish-orange gelatinous substance, emitting steam from the transformation.  Those arms grew so big, he easily swatted them both from across the room.

“We’ve lost all deflector shields, captain,” Security Chief Ache reported.  The Osnullus officer briefly ducked behind her bridge console when an electro-plasma conduit in the overhead exploded, showering sparks on where she had been standing.  Despite that bother, Ache never took her hands off her holographic tactical controls.

“Two shield generators on the secondary hull have been completely destroyed,” Ache continued.  “Backup generators are non-responsive.”

Unphased by the rocking of the deck, Ensign Cellar Door’s anti-gravity boots allowed him a perfect hover above his flight controls.  Neither the sense of calm in his voice, nor the relative stillness of his exocomp body, were reflected in his wild piloting of Constellation through the multi-pronged attack of the Dominion battle group.  Through the viewscreen, one beetle-shaped Jem’Hadar fighter continually replaced another as Cellar Door dodged them and many of their phased polaron strikes.

“Structural integrity field is holding,” Cellar Door said in a reassuring tone.

Nova, on the other hand, was plainly speaking from her heart.  Her adjustments to the operations console were input frantically.  She wasn’t as adept as Ache at holding her attention when the bridge rocked from side to side with every strike from the Jem’Hadar attack.

“Hull breaches on deck three,” Nova said.  “And four.  And five!  Emergency forcefields have engaged.”

Seated at the forward science station, Lieutenant Nune couldn’t hide the distress in his own voice when he said, “Reports coming in of twelve casualties and, uh, two crew members unaccounted for.”

“Captain!” Ache interjected stridently.  “I recommend immediate retreat.”

Nova was quick to plead, “No-no-no, we can’t do that.”

Taking it all in, Taes rose from her command chair and took a step forward.  She vaguely heard Ache say something like, “incoming,” and a torpedo exploded in an expanding flare of light, not far beyond the transparent viewscreen.  Taes’ boot slipped and she fell to her knees, banging down the steps of the command platform.  She braced her palms on the deck, narrowly preventing her fall from resulting in her smacking her face into the deck.

“I don’t take recommendations blindly, commander,” Taes said, even before she got herself back up on her feet.  “Tactical report!”

While aiming and firing the ship’s phaser turrets, Ache said, “Two Jem’Hadar fighters are retreating from our position to– they’re– they’re headed for the Kholara Observatory.”

Sweeping an index finger at their view of the observatory through the viewscreen, Taes ordered, “Mister Door, take us within ten-thousand kilometres of the observatory.  Maintain evasive patterns; full impulse.”

There was an odd inflection in Ache’s voice when she spoke up, a hesitancy Taes wasn’t accustomed to hearing.  All six of her eyes landed on Taes for a full three seconds before Ache returned to multi-tasking with the tactical controls.

“Respectfully,” Ache said, “May I remind you, we cannot establish a transporter lock while our subspace transceivers are shut down.”

Incensed at being questioned over basic starship operations, Taes insisted, “We can buy them time!  Your orders are to destroy those fighters, commander.”

There was no hesitation.  “Quantum torpedo spread, aye,” Ache said.

Ache may have been subtly keeping watch over Taes’ responses, but Taes could see Nova shooting blatant glares in Ache’s direction.

“We’re going to bring the away team home,” Nova said.  “Right, captain?  I’m signalling shuttle bay one to prepare for emergency landing procedures.  Opening bay doors now.”

Taes stepped closer to the viewscreen, watching Constellation’s phasers deftly lashing out at the Jem’Hadar fighters.  Coming to stand behind Nune’s chair, he glanced back at her.  Despite Taes’ somewhat empathic abilities and Nune’s Betazoid telepathy, her own nervous system was too overstimulated to sense what Nune was feeling.

“We’re all alone out here,” Nune said gently.  “Bravo Fleet is spread thin across the Deneb Sector.  Fleet Intelligence confirmed our suspicions this morning: this isn’t the entirety of the lost fleet.  There are thousands more Jem’Hadar ships… somewhere.”

To Nune’s right, Cellar Door shouted out, “Look!  One of the fighters is veering off.  Cowards!  Ache took our their engines, but good.”

Her voice a hard matter-of-fact, Ache reported what was blinking on her tactical scanners.  “The observatory has raised its shields and its defence platform is cycling online.  Captain, the observatory is targeting us!”

“If we don’t locate the origin point of the lost fleet, the Dominion could unleash it upon us,” Nune said softly.  “And we’ll never find it if we’re–“

Taes whispered back, “Twelve casualties.  Two unaccounted.”

She didn’t know if Nune heard her over Ache announcing, “Captain, we can’t take much more of this assault.”

“Mister Door, set course for the Yelika system; maximum warp,” Taes said.  Turning back to the captain’s chair, Taes murmured to herself, “They have the runabout.”

Since taking command of starships, Taes had been prone to declare a whimsical, ‘Let’s find out,’ as the punctuation to her orders to set a course and go to warp.  It didn’t always make literal sense in every situation and there had been many a day she had twisted her orders into an awkward shape to deliver the ‘Let’s find out.’  Now and then, the crew seemed to chuckle even louder when she phrased the setup like a particularly befuddled Pakled.  But she wasn’t captaining a simple science ship anymore.

So, Taes said, “Engage.”

It must have been a statistical improbability.  

Taes offered a curt, “Enter.”  Accordingly, Nova was admitted into the captain’s ready room when the double doors receded into the bulkhead.  Nova managed to catch the toe of her boot in the door’s impossibly narrow track, which caused her to trip.  Recovering swiftly, Nova avoided a fall and resumed her pace into the compartment with little more than an awkward shimmy.

Statistical improbabilities were the watchwords of the day.

Nova marched forward into the heart of the small compartment and came to stand at the low glass-topped table.  Through her entrance, Taes never looked away from the report she was studying.  She kept her back to the door and to Nova.  Taes continued to scroll through the infographics on a holographic pane projected over her desk.

Nova was the first to say anything: “Permission to speak freely, captain.”

Taes subtly inclined her head.

“Go ahead, lieutenant,” Taes allowed.  Still, she didn’t turn around to face Nova.

Nova heaved in a heavy breath.  “I think I’ve made a huge mistake.”

“Yes,” Taes said and she tapped at the holographic interface, causing it to wink out.  Swivelling out of her chair, Taes finally looked at Nova as she rose to her feet.  “I noticed,” she said, taking a first step towards her.

After huffing out a quick, defeated breath, Nova calibrated what she was trying to say, by adding, “I don’t mean just that.  I mean… everything.  Escaping the vortex.  Returning to Starfleet or– I mean continuing in Starfleet.  This was a mistake.”  

“I’m unsuited for a Starfleet commission,” Nova continued and she dropped her combadge on the coffee table.  The silver and grey arrowhead clanked heavily on the glass surface.  Nova affirmed, “Which is why I must officially tender my resig–“

A chortle bubbled out of Taes.  It was a wet sound, almost like someone trying to laugh through a punctured lung.  Unceremoniously, Taes dropped herself into one of the blue barrel chairs positioned around the coffee table.

“Oh!  No, Indira, that isn’t happening,” Taes said.  She shook her head at Nova incredulously and she laughed again, much softer this time.

Scoffing at Taes’ dismissive tone, Nova challenged her with, “And why not?”

Taes narrowed her eyes at Nova to insist, “Because it’s what you want, so I’m withholding it.”  She breathed out a frustrated “tt” between her teeth and she shook her bald head at Nova again.  With staccato bravado, Taes declared, “Of course you’re not resigning, lieutenant.  My ship is lacking in basic shields, communications and pieces of the hull.  You have trained hands and a critical eye.  I need you too much.  Please.”

Jerking an arm out, Taes stiffly gestured to another barrel chair, silently ordering Nova to sit.  Rather, Nova remained where she was standing and dropped her chin to her chest.  Staring down at her boots, she could see where she had scraped the pointed toe on her left boot.

“I’m sorry I called you a cow,” Nova said diffidently.  

Vocalising her objection as an, “Ah,” Taes went on to say, “No, that’s not entirely true.”  She lifted a PADD from the coffee table and raised it to the level of her eyes.  She shook the PADD as if it offended her and then she returned it to the table.  Taes then raised a different PADD to read from.  This one was green.  When Taes read what was transcribed on the display she spoke with even less inflection than Starfleet’s computer voice interface.

“What you said was,” Taes said, “Go back.  Go back.  Please.  Go back.  You have to.  Go back for them.  Rescue Yuulik, you heartless cow.”

Taes locked eyes with Nova and raised her eyebrows at her.  It looked like she was daring Nova to say something more.  Then Taes gently placed the PADD back on the table.

“I deserved every word,” Taes said in surrender.  The resignation in her voice built to determination, when she said, “I deserved worse.  But your five-hundred crewmates?  They deserved exactly what they got.  I couldn’t sacrifice all our lives in a vain attempt at heroism.  I keep meditating on the sequence of events at the Kholara Observatory… The swiftness of the attack; the transmission… I have to assume the Dominion were expecting us.”

Carefully seating herself into the barrel chair opposite Taes, Nova said, “If the Dominion had a method of monitoring our computer systems…”

“That part of might have been them or… it might have been the Romulan Free State?” Taes remarked, her gaze wandering off into the middle distance.  “And now I’ve said it.  But I don’t yet know.  In either case, I’ve changed our prefix codes.  Without that risk hanging over us, tell me the status of our communication systems.”

Nova winced.  “That’s a funny story.  Your warp cores produce exponentially more electro-plasma these days, I’ve noticed.  When I overheated the EPS flow regulators, I shattered the monocrystal waveguides in every subspace transceiver.”

Taes nodded, receiving the report without judgment.

“Within six hours,” Nova continued, “we can repair three of the redundant RF transceiver assemblies on the saucer section.  That much will restore basic ship-to-ship communication within a single star system.”

Now Taes winced.  “This far beyond Federation space, we can’t transmit our findings back to the Fourth Fleet nor can we receive new orders.”

Nodding sombrely, Nova said, “Lieutenant Pagaloa advises we’ll need the repair services of a starbase to fully restore our long-range subspace communications.  I wasn’t as thorough about trashing the comm-systems on every auxiliary craft, at least.  Pagaloa believes he can cannibalize enough components to rebuild one subspace transceiver on the hull, but his estimate in approaching double-digit days.”

“Because the engineering team is prioritising shields and hull repairs,” Taes acknowledged.  “I’ve also ordered him to complete an immediate level five diagnostic on our computer security systems, followed by an intensive level one diagnostic, which will take days in itself.  There’s no other way.  We can’t move forward until I know if the Dominion –or another third party–  infiltrated our computer systems before we reached Kholara.”

Taes rose to her feet.  “As a fully commissioned member of the operations team, I’d say Pagaloa could use your expertise, lieutenant.  Report to the computer core immediately, you heartless cow.”

Raising her voice, Taes urgently asked, “Can someone please tell me what happened aboard the observatory?”

From the forward science station, Leander Nune spun his chair around to face Captain Taes directly.  He tilted his chin up to meet her eyes, given where she was sitting on the bridge’s raised command platform.  Despite Taes’ vocal escalation, Nune responded even more softly and slowly than before.

“Based on the tricorder data, there’s no indication that Yuulik or Flavia were scanning their environments aboard the Kholara Observatory,” Nune said.  He shrugged helplessly.  “We can’t begin to guess at what they experienced.”

At the operations console, Nova was using both hands to zoom into the holographic data visualisation before her.

“Flavia’s data packet was partially corrupted by gaps and errors,” Nova reported, summarising her analysis.  “Constellation must have been out of range of the observatory when she pressed the emergency dump command on her tricorder.” 

A sense of awe rounded the vowels in Nova’s voice as she continued, “Yuulik’s data package looks fully intact!  We received everything her tricorder collected from the observatory.  Lieutenant Pagaloa only found the data packets when he started disassembling the comm system aboard one of our rescue shuttle for parts.  Shuttlebay two must have come into range before Yuulik hit the emergency command and before I locked down the shuttles’ transceivers.”

After nodding briefly at the new information, Taes braced the side of her face with the outstretched pads of her fingertips.  Perhaps redundantly, Taes ordered, “Nune, Laken, I want first impressions on the observatory’s logs presently.  Mister Door: time check?”

“It has been one point seven-eight hours since we arrived at the rendezvous point we arranged with the away team,” Cellar Door replied.  He mimicked an LCARS error sound before he said, “There remains… no sign of the USS Rubenstein on long-range sensors.”

The bridge crew remained deathly silent for over a minute.  The space was filled by the gentle chiming of LCARS tellales, the continuous cycling of life support, and a couple of muttered “hmmm”s and “ahhhh”s.

From the science II console, Laken cleared his throat to break the silence.  When he spoke up, the Romulan civilian sounded remarkably similar to an FNN journalist.  The cadence was nearly a perfect match.

“The computer has identified the oldest sensor log of a Dominion battleship that Yuulik was able to recover.  Although the observatory’s sensors detected the ships themselves, I’m seeing no indication of mechanisms or spatial anomalies that could explain how they travelled here from the past,” Laken reported.  

On the viewscreen, three small icons appeared, representing the silhouette of Jem’Hadar fighters.  The outline of a star system, with a pulsar at its heart, emerged around the Jem’Hadar ships.  The representation further zoomed out to place the star system in the context of the Deneb Sector at large.

Laken explained, “In the Ianua system, those three Jem’Hadar fighters passed through the outer reach of the Kholara Observatory’s long-range sensors.  They were travelling under their own impulse power.  The Ianua pulsar is out past Saxue, well beyond Federation and Breen territory.  And captain, look at that.  Look at the proton emissions from their hull plating and then look at it in reverse.”

The holograms on the viewscreen zoomed in close to one of the Jem’Hadar fighters.  To the left and the right of the sensor composite, four columns of sensor data details scrolled onto the screen.

“Neutron beta decay,” Taes remarked in recognition.  “When these sensor readings were captured, the Dominion ships had been exposed to neutrino emissions.  Very recently.”

Looking up at the viewscreen, Nune surmised, “The lost fleet had freshly escaped the Bajoran wormhole in the Ianua system… nowhere near where we would expect them in Denonrios belt or the Idran system.”

While Constellation made best speed to the Ianua System, every molecule in Taes’ being wanted to hunker down with the science department and scour through every mega quad of sensor data they had recovered from the Kholara Observatory.  In the absence of Flavia and Yuulik’s leadership, one of the voices in Taes’ internal chorus told her the science department wouldn’t be able to function without her guidance.  They would miss a key insight into the lost fleet that only her own perspective could bring.  

Such thinking was a folly, she recognized, given Constellation was staffed with a large science department, even for an explorer.  Between the Starfleet and Romulan scientists, they were more than capable of the task.  It was far more likely that Taes’ thoughts would fixate on the sensor logs collected by Yuulik and she would spiral into a fugue state of guilt and shame over abandoning Yuulik and Kellin to fates unknown, in the clutches of the Dominion.

Instead, Taes opted for sensory overload.  She wanted to be bombarded by the sights, sounds, scents and emotions of her crew: anything would be preferable to sitting alone with her own thoughts.  A tour of the ship took her through secondary sickbay and then the main sickbay ward.  One by one, Taes met with each patient, thanking them for staying at their posts through the battle.  She asked each of her officers to tell her about the family members they were fighting for back home.

One of the nurses, Rals Yevel, was telling Taes about his only family being his husband, assigned to Constellation’s engine room.  While he spoke, Taes’ eyes were easily distracted by his dangling earring.  The earing was of a design that, most commonly, represented a Bajoran’s faith in the Prophets.

“How would you respond,” Taes then asked him abruptly, “if I asked you a question of a metaphysical nature?”

“I would thank you,” Rals replied with no small enthusiasm.  He reached a hand behind his own head and slowly applied enough pressure to stretch his neck.  “Doctor Nelli hasn’t needed much from me other than waving a dermal regenerator over scrapes and bruises, what with the state of this crew.”

Abruptly, Rals’ blue eyes widened at Taes and he made a brief sputtering sound at the back of his throat.  His posture straightened in that way junior officers were prone to do whenever they saw the number of pips on Taes’ collar.

“No offence intended, captain,” Rals tacked on.

“None taken,” Taes said and she held his gaze until she was sure he understood that she meant it.  “What would you say if I asked why the Prophets are punishing the Federation?”

Rals squinted at Taes and her question.  He didn’t answer immediately.  At first, his lips thinned.

“Punishing?” he echoed her word as if she had spoken an alien language.

“What else would you call it?” Taes rhetorically asked.  “The Prophets rescued us from the Dominion’s lost fleet decades ago, only to unleash them upon us here and now.  Was there something unthinkable we did during the war?  Has Starfleet wronged the Bajoran people?  What makes us so unworthy?”

After breathing out through his nose, Rals gaze shifted as he searched for something on Taes’ face.  He kept searching and searching before he answered her question.  When he spoke, his voice went reedy.

“I don’t claim to be the most devout,” Rals said with a tight shake of his head, “but punishment doesn’t show up in my scripture of the Prophets.”

“How can that be?” Taes asked.  She could feel that critical wince crossing her face; she couldn’t even try to hide her expression of confusion.  “I’m certain I’ve read about–“

Rals offered a nod of intuation.  “At times the Prophets may request a penance, but a penance is voluntary.  One makes the choice to repent from a wrongdoing with penance.  Respectfully, I wonder why you brought punishment into a conversation about the Prophets?”

Taes didn’t know how to answer that question and she soon discovered she wouldn’t have to.  From behind her, pairs of vines began wrapping around each of Taes’ arms, gently tugging her away from Rals.

“My apologies, Nurse Rals,” said Doctor Nelli while they pulled Taes in the direction of their office.  “A casualty report for Captain Taes is significantly overdue.  As is your meal break; you should go.”

As Rals offered Taes parting pleasantries, Nelli maintained her grip on Taes until they had shuffled Taes into the office of the chief medial officer.  The rounded compartment was designed with narrow window panels that offered glimpses into the intensive care ward, a recovery room and a life sciences laboratory.  Nelli drew Taes’ attention to none of those areas.  Rather, they untangled their vines from Taes’ arms and then used one of those vines to tap a command on the office’s replicator.  A squat glass of pale blue liquid materialised in the replicator and Nelli proffered it to Taes.

“Your casualty report,” Nelli said.  Just this once, Taes thought she heard something sardonic from the device that mechanically produced Nelli’s voice.  Nelli explained, “Antarean brandy.”

Letting out a single chuckle of surprised delight, Taes accepted the glass.

“I didn’t think you approved of alcohol, doctor,” Taes said before she took a sip of the synthehol.  “Shouldn’t you be prescribing me meditation and exercise for my stress?”

“Joining Starfleet was my introduction to your concept of discipline,” Nelli replied.  “Disciplined thoughts, disciplined bodies, disciplined chain of command; none of these conceptions exist as you know them on Phylos.  There is no one right way to grow on my world.  I still believe in that principle, even after all this time in Starfleet.  Living a life of total discipline, with the expectation it will make you stronger, is a false promise.”

“Life is too short,” Nelli said, “to live without vice.”

Captain’s Log, supplemental:

 

We have reached the Ianua pulsar only to discover the system has been mined for hundreds of millions of kilometres.  Although the Constellation’s impulse engines make her one of the most nimble in the fleet, I have opted to map the minefield by way of probes.  Upon our first survey, we have found no evidence of a space station, time machine or spatial anomalies to explain the origin of the Lost Fleet.

 

All we have located is the scant wreckage of a small starship.  Perhaps the absence of… anything remarkable… is why the Dominion only protected this place with mines, rather than a patrol of warships.  Operating on the assumption this starship was the very first witness to the Lost Fleet, I’ve dispatched a shuttlecraft to search for their log buoy.

 

Repairs continue aboard Constellation in the meantime.  Despite the proliferation of our old prefix codes, our engineering team has found no evidence of a breach in our computer’s data security.  Otherwise, we have restored sixty percent of our shield capabilities and short-range RF communications.

“It’s still there, Nova.  That mine.  Now fifty metres off our starboard,” Science Officer Nune remarked.  He said it in the same timbre he might use to order lunch from a replicator.  The only evidence of urgency in his voice came when he stressed the word ‘still.’  Looking up from the sensor readings on his dashboard console, Nune turned to look out the shuttle’s angled viewport.  He pressed the flat of his palm against the transparent panel.

“Right.  There.”

Sitting close beside him, in the pilot’s seat, Nova spoke softly in reply.  “Activating thrusters,” Nova said.  “Course adjusted.”

Nune’s gaze lingered in the distance through the viewport, even as the mine slipped out of view behind the motion of the shuttlecraft Canis Minor.

“I’m missing something,” Nune said.  The statement was ponderous, his tone emphasizing the mystery rather than any self-doubt. He returned his sights to the tactical display on the dashboard.  Blinking indicators identified every Dominion mine within sensor range.

Nune explained, “There’s nothing out here but mines.  No habitable planets within light-years, no spatial anomalies.  The Iauna pulsar is certainly handsome in its own way but nothing I would write a hundred poems about.”

Seated at the science console, directly behind Nune, Laken loudly scoffed.

“Handsome in its own way?” Laken incredulously asked, echoing Nune’s words. “The Iauna pulsar has a staggeringly high solar mass of 2.567.”  Although he was a Romulan civilian among Starfleet officers, Laken demonstrated the poise and confidence to rise and point an instructive index finger over Nova’s shoulder.  “You’ll need to make another adjustment, lieutenant.  The gravitational pull is liable to drift us into that next mine if you’re not mindful.”

“I see it,” Nova replied through grit teeth.  Both of her hands swiped through separate and simultaneous adjustments to the shuttle’s path of travel.  After a couple more taps on the controls, she asked, “Remind me, between the three of us, who was certified as a level four pilot?”

Still, Nune went on to say, “I was expecting to find at least residual chroniton particles or neutrino disturbances.  But there’s nothing.”

As the shuttle tilted on its new course and the artificial gravity adjusted, Laken side-stepped behind Nune’s chair.  He clung to the headrest for support while he chided Nune’s line of questions.

“Shouldn’t you be focused on the locations of the mines, lieutenant?” Laken asked.  The rhetorical question sounded more grounded in ridicule than genuine concern.

Nune replied, “With the sensor module aboard this shuttle, I shouldn’t have to multitask.  The answers should be lighting up before my eyes.”

“Would you like me to show you what you’re doing wrong, sahe’lagge?” Laken asked and he didn’t exactly wait for an answer.  He was already leaning over Nune.  Laken interlaced his left hand with the back of Nune’s left hand and he began piloting Nune’s hand over the sensor controls.

Without looking up from her own console, Nova interjected, “Shut your mouth.  Nune’s not doing anything wrong.”

“Nova, he’s fine,” Nune gently insisted.  As warmly as he spoke, he let those words out rather quickly.  His hand glided easily over the LCARS controls, held in Laken’s grasp.  Smirking at Nova, Nune remarked, “I intend to be a star pupil.”

Laken instructed, “Don’t you see it right there?  Our treasure?  There’s hardly anything left of the wreckage.  Shattered shards, each piece smaller than a tricorder.  But if you look at those construction materials…”

“It was a Federation starship,” Nune said, arriving at the same conclusion.

Following Captain Taes’ orders, the away team aboard Canis Minor hailed the Constellation by the time it reached the wreckage in the midst of the minefield.  The voices of Nova, Laken and Nune were transmitted to the bridge, reporting on their inference that the obliterated starship had been Federation in origin.  Real-time sensor telemetry scrolled down one side of the viewscreen in translucent text and waveforms while they shared their findings.

“–absolutely no sign of a log buoy or flight recorder, captain,” Nova reported over the comms.  “There’s nothing but fragments out here.  Whomever they were, these were the first victims of the Lost Fleet.“

“Understood,” Taes replied.  From her vantage point in the captain’s chair, she saw Lieutenant JG T’Kaal looking back at her from the forward science console. Taes nodded to the science officer.

Taes said, “T’Kaal is going to check our logs for any records of Federation survey missions to Ianua in the past two months.”

“The only thing we’ve found,” Nova went on, “that actually looks like anything are three panels from the starship’s deflector dish.“

Laken interjected, “The molybdenum-duranium mesh panels appear to have survived the destruction of the starship because they’ve been hardened by tetryon radiation.“

“And captain,” Nova spoke up again, her voice lowering to the tenor she used when she had tried to resign her commission.  “Judging by the pattern of the tetryon exposure on the panels, the deflector was used to generate a subspace tensor matrix.“

“Ah,” Taes replied sourly.  “Will we never escape the USS Brigadoon?“

In Yuulik and Nova’s conspiracy to rescue the crew of the USS Brigadoon, Nova had modified a subspace tensor matrix to anchor the USS Sarek to the temporal vortex that had imprisoned the Brigadoon.  Although the Brigadoon was momentarily released from the vortex, the Sarek nearly sunk into a subspace inversion fold.  Nova and Yuulik had ultimately rescued the Sarek, and the crew of the Brigadoon, but Taes had hoped to never hear the words ‘subspace tensor matrix’ again.

“I don’t know what that reference means, captain,” Laken said, “But in Federation science, the manipulation of subspace tensor matrices was revolutionized by Doctor Lenara Kahn.  Her research into the creation of artificial wormholes was required reading at the Tri-Planetary Academy.“

Nune could be heard asking, “Uh, isn’t the Tri-Planetary Academy in the Federation?“

Flanking Taes at the expansive science II console, Ketris stabbed at the console to silence a shrill alarm.  The Romulan scientist swivelled her chair to better face Captain Taes.

“As much as it pains me to interrupt such fruitful teamwork between our joined science departments,” Ketris said, “Our sensors have picked up the USS Rubenstein.  The runabout is on an intercept course at warp eight.  I anticipate the away team’s arrival in less than a minute.”

Looking to her chief security officer, Taes asked, “Can you hail them, commander?”

Ache shook her large, multi-lobed head.  “No, ma’am,” Ache said, “they’re still out of our current comms range.”

Given the Rubenstein had been abandoned  among a swarm of Jem’Hadar fighters, Taes had to ask, “Can you detect any lifesigns aboard the runabout, Ketris?”

Ketris shook her head.  “Indistinct at warp, captain.”

Through the viewscreen, a flare-up of light heralded the arrival of the USS Rubenstein.  Despite the heavy amour-plating of the Orion-class runabout, there were visible scorch marks across the hull.  One of the Bussard ramscoops on the enclosed nacelles was flickering in an unhealthy fashion.

“They’re hailing us, captain,” Ache reported from tactical.  Her facial tentacles twitched in unison.  “And their shields are raised.”

“I’m detecting one Arcadian biosignature,” Ketris said slowly.  “And two Trills.“

Taes snapped her head in Ketris’ direction.  Urgently, Taes asked, “Romulan?”

“None,” Ketris said tonelessly.

Turning back to consider the viewscreen, Taes took hold of her armrests and she gripped them tightly.  She said, “On screen.”

A holographic projection of the Rubenstein’s cockpit appeared on the viewscreen, centering on Lieutenant Yuulik.  There was a visible splatter of green blood on the Arcadian’s face.  Worse, the teal panelling across the upper chest of her uniform was caked in a massive pool of dried red blood.  Yuulik leaned in close to the visual sensor.

“Captain Taes,” Yuulik asked intently, “what did you and I find inside a cornerstone on the New Tenar colony?”

Sighing at the abrupt non sequitur of a question after how long the Rubenstein crew had been out of contact, Taes was quick to throw up her hands in frustration.

“I don’t remember,” Taes said, shaking her head.  “Yuulik, what’s the meaning of this?”

Yuulik stared back at Taes unblinking.  There was a hardness behind her crystalline grey eyes.  She inclined her head slightly.

“Computer, set a reverse course.  Maximum warp,” Yuulik ordered.

“For one thing, it wasn’t a cornerstone,” Taes spat out.  “It was a drawer.  And when you opened it, we found… we found… a, uh, a broken mirror?  And the vertebrae of a symbiont!” –Taes groaned– “Enough of this, lieutenant.  I need you to tell me what’s happened.  Where is Doctor Flavia?”

Yuulik slapped her palm down on her console, screaming:

“Kellin was a fucking Changeling!”

Overstimulated and in need of relief, Taes found herself in Sickbay.  Found herself was the aptest way to describe it.  All of her confidants were gone and she didn’t know what to do with herself.  She couldn’t remember choosing to go to Sickbay, couldn’t even remember walking across deck nine.  Her legs had carried her while her mind was lost in a fog.

Kellin Rayco had been Taes’ self-proclaimed best friend ever since she’d jettisoned her life as a science director.  The unjoined Trill had proven himself over-burdened with youthful wisdom about how to start a second life at that critical time when Taes was still finding her footing on the command track.  Kellin had always looked up to her from their first meeting aboard Starbase 72.  Truly, Taes had never quite understood the sheer admiration Kellin had shown for her.  Even so, she had grown to measure herself against the Captain Taes she could see reflected in Kellin’s eyes.

Elbon Jakkelb, her previous first officer and Kellin’s ex-husband, had known exactly how to temper Taes’ molten core.  He could reframe her thinking with nothing more than a sentence fragment.  Elbon had inspired her to reach for her better natures.  He made her believe she could leave behind the unbalanced Deltan ensign she had been, raging against her Starfleet culture shock.  Although absent, Elbon was more than deserving of the command opportunity that had taken him away from her.

At times, even Yuulik had proven safekeeping for Taes’ deepest thoughts, especially on those late nights of endless research. Taes had shared with Yuulik those things she was too proud to tell her good boys.  Yuulik knew half the mistakes Taes had made across her career, the things she regretted.  Taes repeatedly handed Yuulik the chance to make those same choices differently if only she ever cared to listen.

“Doctor, I need you,” Taes said, plainly distraught.  The words came out of her unbidden.  She could hardly recognise her own voice.

By the time Taes wholly perceived her surroundings, she was spry enough to cover for the momentary fugue state.  Marching down Sickbay’s wide centre aisle, she took notice of there being fewer patients patronising the biobeds.  In the time Lieutenant Pagaloa had been repairing Constellation, Doctor Nelli had been patching up the crew with just as much care.  Taes took that as permission to raise her voice in her formal timbre.

“Prepare a surgical suite,” Taes ordered, “and one of the biobeds that can– Ow!”

In her rush to reach the chief medical officer, Taes nearly walked into Nurse Rals.  To avoid the collision, Taes dodged to the left and she stubbed her toe on one of the pedestals beneath a biobed.  In senseless retribution, Taes kicked the pedestal again with the side of her boot.  And she kicked it again.  Then she raised her leg and she really kicked the biobed with the sole of her boot.

“Nurse Rals, please clear Sickbay,” Nelli said loud enough to still be heard over the clang of Taes’ boot connecting with the biobed’s frame.  Nelli’s red eye-stalks swivelled in the direction of the other medical officers, when they added, “Taes is my patient.  Privileged under doctor-patient confidentiality, of course.”

Rals had hustled the last patient out of Sickbay when Taes gave the biobed one last kick and a thunderous scream.  Nelli trod towards Taes on their motor trunks, their leaves quivering with every step.

Nelli asked, “Taes…?”

At the sound of her own name, Taes spun around to face the Phylosian doctor.  Taes was out of breath and her skin felt hot and she leaned a hip against the biobed for support.  She searched Nelli’s face for some sign of understanding or connection, but the plant-based lifeform offered none of the emotive qualities Taes knew so well.

“Kellin’s gone,” Taes spat out.  “Replaced by a Changeling.”  She braced a hand against the biobed.  “How could I have been so careless not to sense something was deeply, deeply wrong with him, Nelli?  I felt his pain.  I did.  But I thought it was just his divorce.  …Oh Ere’ka, How am I going to tell Elbon?”

Another wave of existential dread hit Taes like a kick to the stomach.  The very thought of Kellin being physically taken by a Changeling –restrained– rocked her until she was doubled over in pain.  Already leaning in a precarious posture, Taes lost her balance and she fell to the deck on her hands and knees.  She could see Nelli swoop into action, coming at Taes with five vines at the ready to help her.

“Stop!” Taes was quick to shout out.  “That’s an order!  You have three patients incoming, doctor.  Yuulik needs to be isolated here.  A second patient is stable.  He’s being beamed to the brig.  A third patient is in critical condition.  He needs emergency treatment, but he needs to be isolated inside a forcefield.  He’s only to be treated by medical hologram.”

There was a hesitance in Nelli’s body language when they started to step back from Taes.  They moved their legs towards an LCARS panel on the bulkhead, but two of their vines trailed behind, waggling in Taes’ direction.

Nelli committed, “It will be done, captain.”

The doors to the corridor hissed open and Taes scrambled to at least straighten up on her knees if she couldn’t make it to her feet fast enough.  It was Lieutenant Nova standing behind the doors.  Slung over her shoulder was a cylindrical carrying case and she held a tricorder at the ready.

“Captain, request permission to–” Nova started to ask.

Taes immediately allowed, “Granted,” as she got to her feet.

Beneath an arched sensor cluster, Nelli and Nova took up position on either side of a partially-reclined biobed.  Taes kept her distance.  She sat upright on the biobed she had kicked early, directly across from them.  She nodded to Nelli when she was ready.  

Atop the partially-reclined biobed, an annular confinement beam energized out of nothing, appearing as a glimmering flow of light.  By the time it faded, Sootrah Yuulik had materialised on the biobed.  Almost instantly, she raised her knees to her chest and she held out a bloody Argelian dagger in a defensive posture.

Nova offered a gentle, “Hey,” to Yuulik, but Yuulik didn’t react to her, didn’t look at her.  Rather, Yuulik glared at Taes.  If not for the five metres between them, Yuulik was holding the dagger exactly at the level of Taes’ throat.  For their part, Nelli offered no reaction to the blade.  Two of their vines manipulated the biofunction monitor to activate the full array of sensors protruding from the arched alcove.

“May I offer you pain relief, Lieutenant Yuulik?” Nelli asked.

Yuulik nodded.  It was a small movement, hardly millimetres.

“Yes,” Yuulik whispered.  “Please yes.”

Nelli pressed a hypospray to Yuulik’s neck, applying an analgesic.  A moment later, Nelli pressed a second hypospray to Yuulik’s neck, withdrawing a sample of blood.  Nelli raised the hypospray and she gave it a slight shake.  In considering the old Dominion War protocols, the blood remained blood.  If Yuulik was a Changeling like Kellin, the blood should have reverted to golden goo.

“May I take your knife, Yuulik?” Nelli asked.

Yuulik clutched the dagger to her chest.  Standing beside her, Nova held an open palm out to Yuulik.  She made her hand available without making contact.  Yuulik considered it and she sniffed at the air.  Hesitantly, Yuulik proffered the handle of the dagger to Nelli, who wrapped a vine around it and took it away.  Yuulik then took hold of Nova’s hand.

Watching them all, Taes put on her well-practiced ethnographic survey facade.  She wanted to appear pleasant without expressing any leading emotion in her voice.  She allowed herself marginally more personality than a Starfleet computer.  There were a dozen questions Taes wanted to ask Yuulik, and a dozen more she knew she ought to ask as Yuulik’s captain, but only one was ringing in her head over and over and over.

“What makes you say Kellin was a Changeling?” Taes asked.

“He changed!  His shape!” Yuulik retorted petulantly.  “Aboard the observatory, his arms turned into putrid orange slime and he used them to slap me around.  I suspect… with how much blood… I feel like he killed Navok already.  Kellin forced me to defend myself.  My mother taught me how to fight, but it was only ever ceremonial.  Like a dance.  I was able– I stabbed the Changeling in the chest and he laughed at me with Kellin’s face.  His mouth got bigger so he could laugh louder.  No matter how deep I cut him, he wouldn’t die.  He bled on me, bled all over me.”

Yuulik grabbed a fistful of her own uniform jacket, caked in dried blood.

“I don’t know why it’s still blood?” Yuulik asked.  “He changed.  Kellin was a Changeling.” 

Taes betrayed how unsettled she was by the tenor of her voice.  “I don’t know?”

Upon a soft instruction from Nelli, Nova loosened the front flap of Yuulik’s uniform jacket.  She helped Yuulik sit up, and Yuulik shrugged off the jacket, so Nova could help her out of the bloody garment.  While Nelli took the jacket to a laboratory desk, Nova clicked on a hand-held steriliser and used it to wash Yuulik’s face.

“Yuulik, what happened to Flavia?” Taes asked.

Yuulik cringed and she reached for Nova again.  Nova took Yuulik’s hand and she squeezed it.

“She got away,” Yuulik said, but her tone of voice suggested otherwise.  “Flavia dove into a Jefferies tube when I sliced open the Changeling.  But she– she must have lost her combadge in the scuffle.  I energised the runabout’s emergency transporter and it didn’t grab her.  I- I- I stalled as long as I could.  I hailed the Jem’Hadar; I threatened them not to attack or they would kill a glorious Founder.  But I couldn’t wait anymore.  I’m sorry, captain, I left Flavia on the observatory.”

After sucking in a desperate breath, Yuulik rationalised, “These Jem’Hadar, they come from a time during the Dominion’s non-aggression pact with the Romulans.  They’ll treat her like an ally, right?  At- at- worst, like a prisoner of war, right?”

Taes didn’t know how to respond to that.  She stared back at Yuulik and she didn’t look away.  She held the moment with her.

“That wasn’t Kellin you stabbed,” Nelli said.  With Yuulik’s uniform jacket spread out on the desk, Nelli scraped at the dried blood with a scalpel and scanned it with a handheld scanner.  “The Changeling’s body may have convinced our internal sensors they were Kellin, but as their matter degrades, it’s coming undone.”

Nelli scraped off another sample of dried blood and they said, “This is blood-like plasma, but when it’s broken down, there’s no Trill DNA in it.”

Taes crossed her arms over her abdomen.  “The Changeling who looked like Kellin knew things.  He knew so much about me, about our crew.  He even recalled the time Kellin accused Yuulik of stealing data for her own research.  That was back on the USS Dvorak.  He knew so much but… he said he pleaded for leniency for Yuulik.”

“He never did,” Yuulik said with certainty.

“He never did,” Taes agreed with certainty, annoyed with herself for not noticing at the time.  “He said the Dominion was the only true threat to the Federation.  Huh.  Maybe he was trying to unsettle me?”

Clearly taking energy from the mystery of the Changeling, Yuulik added, “I had breakfast in Kellin’s quarters the other day.  I should have known something was wrong.”

“He didn’t sound like himself?” Taes asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Yuulik said wanly.  “I hardly let him speak.  No, but the plants in his quarters were alive.  He remembered to water them.  That’s not Kellin.”

As much as Taes wanted to theorise more about the Kellin Changeling, she recalled the weight of her broader obligations.  Taes asked, “If Kellin, Flavia and Navok were left on the observatory, who did you bring back with you?”

Yuulik gathered herself.  Her posture strengthened and she braced her hands on the side of the biobed.  For the first time since materialising in Sickbay, Yuulik sounded like herself.  Focused.  Energised.  On the hunt.

“Based on the observatory’s sensor logs, I searched out the nearest communication relay station to the Ianua pulsar,” Yuulik explained.  “I found one a few lightyears away.  It had been seeded decades ago, during a golden age of exploration.  Its sensor pallets are rudimentary, but the relay station was even closer to the lost fleet’s arrival.  But it wasn’t the closest.

“Fillian and Trojet were stranded there on the relay station,” Yuulik explained.  “Their science ship was the first ship obliterated by the lost fleet and, with no M-class planets nearby, their escape pod was attracted to the atmosphere aboard the relay station.  Trojet was unconscious already and Fillian told me they were experimenting with artificial wormholes.

Yuulik declared, “They are to blame for the lost fleet’s arrival.  They deserved to get blown up by the Dominion.  So I stunned Fillian and locked him in the crew compartment with Trojet.  I acknowledge– I recognize that that was wrong of me.  I know, I know, I should have fed them to the Jem’Hadar instead.”

As she was wont to do, Taes was energised by Yuulik’s fierce and singular focus.  Yuulik’s aim was misguided –as it often was– but Taes could never deny how magnetic it could be.  Taes got to her feet and tugged at the hem of her duty jacket.  In the time it took her to straighten up her uniform, Taes buried her complicated feelings about Yuulik and dear Kellin, putting on the pristine visage of Taes the professional.  Taes, the scientist.  It was time to be Captain Taes.

“I must speak with them myself,” Taes decided aloud.  “Thank you for rescuing them, Yuulik.  I’m afraid I will have to restrict you to Sickbay until… I’m sorry, I don’t know, until I decide otherwise.”

She tossed that last bit off as she marched towards the laboratory desk, but she never made it.  Taes spun on her heels and rushed to Yuulik’s side.  Taes threw her arms around Yuulik in a quick hug.

“I’m thankful you made it back to us,” Taes whispered, but then she moved away, not wanting to know what Yuulik might say in reply.  She stepped aside to confer with Nelli at the research desk.

The moment Nova and Yuulik were alone under the sensor arch, Nova placed a small medical tray in Yuulik’s lap and she opened her carrying case.  Nova shook the case over the tray until four glazed donuts came tumbling out.

“I brought donuts,” Nova said.  “I find them… restorative.”

“What are you…” Yuulik started to ask, but quickly switched to, “Why would you…?”

“Stop talking,” Nova instructed.  She proffered a tricorder to Yuulik.  “Eat a donut with me.  You can quantum scan me for fun.  I know how much you want to quantum date my substance.”

“Are you sure?” Yuulik asked around the mouthful of donut she was chewing.  “…That’s so intimate.”

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather,” Nova said as she broke a donut in half and took a bite out of it too.

Boggling at the tricorder’s display, Yuulik muttered, “Over a hundred years old and yet your skin still looks like that…”

“Ketris has a message for you, captain,” Ache intoned.  As she stalked the corridor, the security chief held her wrists close together, her fingers waggling dramatically with each word.  Were she Deltan, Ache’s voice would have been considered high in pitch, almost childish.  That made it all the more chilling when the large-lobed Osnullus assumed an ominous inflection to her voice.

Ache advised, “She said: your agreements are with the Romulan Free State.  They were not with Flavia as an individual.”

Traversing one of the outer corridors that threaded deck twelve, Captain Taes kept apace with Ache.  Or it may have been Ache keeping pace with Taes.  It wasn’t immediately apparent.  In either scenario, there was a synchronicity to their movement.

“She’s already heading to the brig?” Taes presumed aloud.  “Isn’t she?”

The only immediate response from Ache was the characteristic side-bobbing of her head that communicated an ‘affirmative.’

Pausing to consider her next words, Taes clicked her tongue in vague frustration.  She didn’t slow her stride despite the meandering of her thoughts.

“After we speak with the Trill scientist Yuulik rescued,” Taes said, “you’re to confer with Doctor Nelli.  The Changeling posing as Kellin managed to fool all of our biometric security systems.  Even more vexing: when Yuulik stabbed him she says he leaked blood rather than gelatinous Changeling matter.  He bled a lot.  If we can’t trust blood tests or our internal sensors, I need your recommendation for new Changeling security protocols.”

Ache side-bobbed her head again.  “I’ll prepare a presentation for you within two hours.”  The assuredness in her voice was undercut by a sudden hitch in her breathing.

Then, Ache asked, “Kellin’s command codes would have given him access to our old prefix codes.  What else could he have learned?”

Arching an eyebrow at Ache, Taes said, “You’ll prepare a presentation on that too, I’m sure.  Ultimately, it may not be of consequence.  If the Changeling broke his cover identity at Kholara, he must have been confident the Jem’Hadar would destroy Constellation, putting an end to our mission.”

Taes looked right at Ache, when she said, “He underestimated the skill of my chief security officer.”

After a self-conscious titter, Ache quickly changed the subject.  “The Changeling would have replaced Kellin at Farpoint Station, yeah?” Ache asked.  “The Dominion had hardly crossed the Federation’s Deneb border when Constellation was launched.  They couldn’t have made it to the Lioh system before we left Deep Space 17?”

Taes winced.  “I can say your reasoning is sound, commander.  I wish I could commit to more than that.”

Puffing up a broader posture, Ache said, “If I may offer my first security recommendation, captain?  Don’t step into the brig with me.  If the Changelings have counter-measures for all of our security protocols from the war and the Dominion’s lost fleet allowed for a survivor of their first attack…  This scientist, Fillian, could be a Founder in disguise. You shouldn’t be anywhere near him.”

Taes clicked her tongue again.

“What do we know already?” Laken asked.  There was a strident quality to the Romulan scientist’s voice, raised to be louder than the din of other voices.  “And what do we think we know?”

The first time Nova had been introduced to Constellation’s Astrometrics lab, the combined Starfleet and Romulan scientists had searched for answers like an orchestra with Flavia as their conductor.  Flavia set the pace; Flavia guided the intensity; Flavia controlled the message.  Down in the pit, the orchestra was not to be seen or to be heard.  They crafted their scientific melody according to Flavia’s whims.

Returning to Astrometrics again in Flavia’s absence, Nova found the science department had deteriorated into improvisational jazz.

Making her way to the horseshoe-shaped console in the middle of the compartment, Nova pointed at it.  She announced, “The additional sensor logs Yuulik recovered have been transferred over from the runabout.  You should have access to them now.”

Laken gestured to the hologram that was already projected onto the curved viewscreen.  While a sensor composite wire-frame of the first Jem’Hadar fighter glided through the Iauna system, detailed sensor readings popped out in separate panes on either end of the viewscreen.

“When the Jem’Hadar first left the Iauna system,” Laken said, answering his own question with a boyish eagerness, “the rate of neutron beta decay on their hulls was consistent with starships that had exited the Bajoran wormhole no more than four minutes prior to the sensor scan.”

Standing at an LCARS side panel, Lieutenant Nune entered a command to add another hologram to the viewscreen.  In another holographic frame, the engine systems of a Jem’Hadar fighter popped onto the screen.  The data was presented with the distinctive signature of the Borg-enhanced sensors of a Sagan-class starship.

Nune pointed out, “This sensor sweep by the USS Hathaway picked up on damage to the field coils in their engines.  That damage is consistent with starships passing through the verteron nodes in the Bajoran wormhole at speed.”

Making adjustments at the horseshoe console beside Laken, Lieutenant JG T’Kaal opened the most common sensor log that had been passed between every member of the crew at this point.

T’Kaal remarked, “The quantum-level scans by the USS Caliburn confirmed that the Dominion fleet comes from the year 2374.  Despite the 26.4 years that have passed since they were lost in the Bajoran wormhole, no further time passed for them.  Their path of travel has not been linear.  As illogical as it sounds, no time passed for them in the wormhole.”

Security Chief Ache was standing close enough to the forcefield that she could feel its spacial distortion through her facial tentacles.  When the forcefield between herself and the prisoner cycled through a frequency modulation, the field’s hexagonal energy pattern crackled before her six eyes.  Since being rescued by Yuulik and transported to Constellation, the Trill scientist Fillian had shrunk into the corner of his cell.   Sitting on the floor, he hugged his knees to his chest, taking up as little space as possible.  The brig officer reported Fillian had made no requests for explanations or food or freedom. 

Speaking in her formal timbre, Ache asked Fillian, “What brought you to the Iauna Pulsar?”

Fillian raised one shoulder in a diffident shrug.

“He asked me, I guess,” Fillian said, his voice hoarse.  He raised a hand to scratch at his temple, where the spots along his hairline had the widest spread.  “Doctor Trojet recruited me to scrutinize his theoretical models and to come aboard his ship as a technician.  Trojet was determined to build an artificial wormhole.  That’s what he did.”

“Why is it,” Ache asked, “that I can find no records of Trojet’s experiments?  The science ship Sef logged with Farpoint Station that it was engaging in a stellar survey mission.”

Fillian dipped his chin to his chest, practically speaking into his knees, when he said, “I wouldn’t know anything about that?  I was only the technician.”

From the other side of the brig compartment, a squeaking noise assaulted Ache’s ears.  

Ketris dragged a stool from the brig officer’s station and, because she didn’t lift it off the floor, the stool’s foot squealed in protest across the polished duranium deck plates.  As Ketris positioned the stool outside Fillian’s cell, it was quickly apparent how out of place she appeared amid the minimalist grandeur of Constitution III-class architecture.  Compared to Fillian’s silver boilersuit and Ache’s security uniform, the mature Romulan was dressed in glossy black slacks and a green blouse with remarkably severe shoulder pads and a dramatic ruffle at the neckline.  She sat herself on the stool and folded her hands in her lap.

“I must apologise for Commander Ache’s lack of hospitality, Fillian.  You know how security officers can be,” Ketris said in a mollifying tone.  “May I call you Fillian?”

When he nodded, Ketris said to him, “Before the commander tactlessly interrupted you, you were about to tell us why you had gone to the Iauna pulsar.  Specifically.”  It was a statement.  It wasn’t a question.

“Don’t you see?” Fillian asked.  “It was the solar mass.  Iauna is less than a hundred years away from collapsing into a black hole.  Doctor Trojet was positive the pulsar would amplify our magneton pulse.”  Fillian shrugged again.  “And I guess?  He was right?”

Ketris asked, “You speak of utilizing a magneton pulse to generate an artificial wormhole.  Doctor Lenara Kahn, of Trill, used similar methods in her own artificial wormhole field tests in 2373.  Were Doctor Trojet’s methods similar to hers?”

“Similar?” Fillian replied, “They were practically identical!  And Doctor Trojet was about as successful.  On his first try?  He created an artificial wormhole and it was just as unstable as Doctor Kahn’s attempts.  Almost as soon as the Jem’Hadar came out of the artificial wormhole, the aperture collapsed.”

Ache asked, “What would you say was Doctor Trojet’s purpose in creating the artificial wormhole?”

Before Fillian spoke, Ketris snickered darkly at Ache’s question.  She turned her head and narrowed her eyes at Ache.

“Why are you humouring the poor Fillian?” Ketris asked.  “He has unleashed a Dominion fleet upon the Federation.  He will be tried and executed as a traitor.  Nothing he says matters.” 

A month ago, almost:

“Lost” 

The aperture of the artificial wormhole coalesced before their eyes and it was, clearly, an abomination to every law of astrophysics.  The way the opening sliced into normal space at awkward angles –coming forth in a fiery explosion– it was like the wormhole was seeking retribution on the universe for allowing its detestable creation in the first place.

The loss of the science ship Sef had destroyed any true visual records of the artificial wormhole.  Instead, the holographic imagery being projected on the viewscreen in the Astrometrics lab was the computer’s best estimate of what the wormhole would have looked like, extrapolating from the fragments of sensor data Lieutenant Yuulik had managed to recover on her trek back to Constellation.

Despite the spectacle on the viewscreen, Lieutenant Leander Nune kept his eyes and his hands on one of the control panels lining the perimeter of the lab.  He used a finger to scroll through two separate lists of raw sensor readings.

“I may still be early in my science officer cross-training,” Nune called out, “but I would have expected to find resonance waves emanating from the aperture of a fully formed wormhole.  There are none.  Wouldn’t that mean this wormhole has no destination point?“

From the horseshoe console at the centre of the compartment, Science Officer T’Kaal added, “The sensors detected indicators of a stable subspace axis from the wormhole’s opposite aperture.  Further… two fully distinctive CTL regions.  That should not be possible.”

“Not only that,” Laken said from T’Kaal’s side; “Long-range sensors picked up dense concentrations of verterons.  These are identical formations of verteron nodes that have only ever been found within in the Bajoran wormhole.  Given the sheer magnitude of verteron pulses inside the Bajoran wormhole, we would have every reason to suspect it could behave as a natural attractor to an unstable, artificial wormhole.”

“The computer has analysed the artificial wormhole’s transkinetic vector,” T’Kaal offered, “and it’s drawn directly across the path of the Bajoran wormhole.”

Laken looked to T’Kaal with a muted smirk.  “It’s like you’re saying the artificial wormhole formed an unstable and volatile link inside the Bajoran wormhole itself?”

“What? A wormhole inside a wormhole?” Nune asked.  In a cheeky timbre, he added, “Laken, remind me how you were taught so much about Federation artificial wormhole technology at a Federation university?”

Tonelessly, Laken replied, “My parents defected to the Federation when I was a child.  Long before the supernova.  Long before I learned the error of their ways.”

“I don’t know anything about Dominion fleets.  You have to believe me,” Fillian said breathlessly.  

There had been a shift inside of him.  Ever since being recovered from the Sef’s only surviving escape pod, Fillian had retreated into corners, he’d kept himself to himself.  Now, he was standing tall.  Now, his palms were raised in a defensive manner.  His eyes darted from side to side; he was reacting as if he believed one of his interrogators –Ache the Osnullus security chief or Ketris the mercurial Romulan– were about to hit him, despite the forcefield that both restrained and protected him inside his brig cell.

“My research with Doctor Trojet went only as far as theoretical models,” Fillian explained.  “I’ve spent my career studying tachyons.  I don’t know anything about wormholes, all right?  I never even saw the practical designs for producing the subspace tensor matrix or the magneton pulse.  Trojet brought me back after all that as a mere technician.”

Seated on a stool outside Fillian’s cell, Ketris stroked her chin with her right thumb and forefinger.  Before she said anything, her face told an entire story.  Her brow ridges furrowed and her lips pursed; she made a couple of soft “hm” sounds; her eyes narrowed: every single one of her expressions communicated skepticism.

“Are you telling us,” Ketris said, “it was Doctor Trojet himself who designed this method for creating an artificial wormhole?”

Fillian waved his hands in front of him, shrinking into himself again.  He sighed quickly.

“Designed might be a strong word,” Fillian answered diffidently.  He swept his arms open wide before crossing his arms over his abdomen.  “Doctor Lenara Kahn designed an artificial wormhole.  Trojet is more like this ship?  This Constitution Three class starship.  Trojet created a Lenara Kahn Three class wormhole.”

Staring him down with her hands on her hips, Ache asked, “What are you telling us?”

“I asked around some academic circles before I set foot aboard the Sef,” Fillian said.  “I asked questions about Doctor Trojet.  His proposal to create this wormhole was rejected by every scientific institute in the quadrant.  Even the Corgal Research Centre.  But he persisted.  Trojet repurposed Doctor Kahn’s research.  He cut out what didn’t work and he hired experts to work on new components without context.  The greatest criticism of his theories was the way he filled in the gaps with modeling on how we all think the Bajoran wormhole works.  For Trojet, the Bajoran wormhole was perfection and anything less was a failure.”

Ketris raised an eyebrow at Fillian.  “What does the Bajoran wormhole mean to Trojet?”

“I wish I knew,” Fillian replied.  He stepped back from the forcefield and he sat on the edge of the bunk.  “After all this… I wish I knew.  He was too damn secretive.  He never told me of his convictions, but I could see he was determined.  Trojet didn’t care if he killed the crew of the Sef, he didn’t care if he tore open subspace across light years.  He was prepared to take any risk to succeed in his purpose.”

“And what did you say his purpose was?” Ache asked.

Fillian interlaced his hands behind his neck and he tilted his head back.  He stared up at the overhead as he thought and then he spoke.

He said, “I thought it nothing more than perfectionism at the time.  But then we got blown up by the Jem’Hadar and left adrift in an escape pod.  All I could do was fight to keep Trojet alive and to reflect.  Trojet showed no satisfaction when he created a wormhole on our very first experiment.  Doctor Kahn didn’t even form an unstable aperture on her first try.  Trojet did it.  He opened a wormhole and it wasn’t good enough for him.  No, Trojet needed a wormhole that allowed for passage.

“When the Jem’Hadar fleet flooded out of the wormhole,” Fillian continued, “Trojet understood exactly where they had come from.  I didn’t notice it at the time, but it struck me later.  It made me wonder.

“Would he do this,” Fillian asked, “Would he really do all of this just to publish an article in the Olympic Journal?”

“The patient is dying, captain,” Doctor Nelli advised.  From the vantage point of their office, Nelli waved a vine at the narrow transparent panel that looked into one of the surgical suites.  After tapping another control, the holographic opacity curtaining the window flicked off.  Inside the suite, said patient could be seen laying on a biobed: Doctor Marl Trojet.

“Doctor Trojet’s isoboramine levels have dropped to fifty-five percent.  Benzocyatizine treatment has slowed the decline in neurotransmitters and still there has been no improvement.  Given no further improvement, Trill medical protocol requires me to recover the Trojet symbiont from the host in less than six hours.  Such a procedure will kill the Marl host.  This one… I have never…“

“You’re wrong,” Taes said.  From where she was sitting in one of the office’s guest chairs, there was no challenge in her voice.  Taes spoke quietly, her words aspirational.  She spoke with all the peace of those with conviction.  “You’re going to save Doctor Trojet.  His starship and his research were destroyed by the Jem’Hadar.  We don’t know where he backed up his research on Trill.  Almost all of his crew were killed.  The only survivor has told us Trojet was obsessed with the Bajoran wormhole and he had a purpose in releasing the Dominion’s lost fleet from that wormhole.  That means I will speak with him.”

While Taes spoke, Nelli shuffled on the spot, shifting their weight between their four motor limbs.  Six of their vines coiled around the midsection of their trunk.  The movement lacked the organic grace that Nelli typically embodied.

“I protest, captain.  The prognosis is true,” Nelli affirmed.  “Marl Trojet will never regain consciousness.  Trill physiology may not be a specialty of mine, but my medical team has made every effort.  We can only make Marl comfortable until we reach a specialist starship or hospital.”

Taes nodded gently, understanding her rallying intentions had been lost in translation with her Phylosian physician.  Taes rose from her chair and, even though Nelli didn’t have eyes, Taes’ instinct was still to seek eye contact with them.

“I trust you have done everything medically possible, doctor,” Taes agreed.  “I have set course for Farpoint Station, but we can’t reach their hospital in six hours.  We won’t even make it in twenty-four hours.  Passing through Dominion-occupied space, our course must remain erratic to avoid detection by patrols.  Doctor, I must speak with Trojet.  Fourth Fleet Command needs to understand why he created the artificial wormhole and if anyone else is knowledgeable in his methods.  Frankly, I need to know if he was collaborating with the Dominion this entire time.”

Nelli trotted closer to the surgical suite window and their eye-stalks turned in Trojet’s direction.

“With apologies,” Nelli said, “I cannot transplant the Trojet symbiont into another host.  In Commander Rayco’s absence, we have examined the two Trill officers in our crew and Fillian.  None of them are biologically suitable to host a symbiont.  A joining would kill the host in the process, if not soon after.  In less than six hours, I must remove the symbiont and stabilize it in stasis or an approximation of a rejuvenating pool.”

Taes braced her palms on Nelli’s desk.  Her palms connected solidly with the metallic surface.

Lowering her voice to ensure her words were only heard by Nelli, Taes said, “We don’t know the state of Farpoint or the Deneb Sector at large.  Pagaloa hopes to have restored rudimentary long-range communications by the time we reach Federation space.  It could be days before Trojet is rejoined and an emergency joining is often traumatic.  The new Trojet may not have full access to his memories of what Marl Trojet has done.  I’m sorry doctor, our mission is critical.  We need to understand what motivated him to bring the Dominion fleet out of time and space.  Can you revive him, even for an hour, with pharmaceuticals?”

Nelli was quick to reply, “No, captain.  His brain injury is too severe.”

“You’re not going to be happy with me, doctor,” Taes said.  “This is where it gets complicated.”

“My mind to your mind. Your thoughts to my thoughts.”

– Tuvok

Captain’s Log, supplemental:

 

After dashing across the Deneb Sector in search of clues, we have located the architect of the lost fleet’s return.  Doctor Marl Trojet created the artificial wormhole that unleashed the Jem’Hadar from their captivity and they destroyed his starship in recompense.  Comatose and dying, Trojet lies incapable of answering my questions about why he brought forth the lost fleet and what ties may bind him to the Dominion.  My only option is to engage in a psychic rescue operation!  With the assistance of Lieutenant T’Kaal, a Vulcan mind meld will enable me to communicate with Trojet before his body dies and his Trill symbiont must be recovered.  In this manner, I will uncover the identity of any compatriots who can recreate his methods.  Selfishly, I also seek to understand why this experiment drove him to abandon every one of the Federation’s ideals.

Disoriented and disembodied, Taes could only liken the experience of this mind meld to the sensation of being beamed ship-to-ship at warp speed.  Her own empathic abilities had always proved challenging to put into words; it took better poets than her to describe the depth of emotions she could sense in others.  Accordingly, she expected to feel more of Marl’s being when the meld began, but every facet of his presence proved elusive to her.  In this unity between T’Kaal, Marl Trojet and herself, Taes’ conscious mind interpreted it far more visually than she expected.  Deep inside a psychic hallucination, Taes was walking the path of a muddy roadway and the skies were crying milky raindrops.  

The mindscape of Marl Trojet appeared to her as a city that had been levelled by a disaster on a planetary scale.  Every manufactured structure, as far as she could see, had been destroyed in wind and… ion storms?  Taes didn’t understand how she knew the city had been ravaged by ion storms, but the knowledge bloomed within her.  Just like she knew the rainwater resembled the liquid from the symbiont pools beneath Trill and its colony worlds.

“This is New Tenar,” Taes said, striding along the same path.  “I led a team of archaeologists here after the Century Storm.  It’s a Trill colony.  Could that mean Marl Trojet lived here?  What’s the probability of that?”

In a blink, T’Kaal was walking by Taes’ side.  The placid Vulcan’s face betrayed far more exertion than Taes had ever seen in the young science officer’s presentation.

“Apologies, captain, the statistics escape me at this moment,” T’Kaal answered.  “I must admit, I have never mind melded with a Deltan before.  The experience feels… distinctive.  Remember: in a mind meld the exchange is mutual.  New Tenar is as likely to be from your own memory as from his.  I choose not to speak for Marl Trojet.  I agreed to be your conduit only.  I opened the door for you, but you and he must decide how deeply you will intrude on one another.  Do not look to me for more than this.”

Taes asked, “Then how will I know where to find him?”

When she asked the question, Taes looked to T’Kaal pointedly, but T’Kaal’s form had vanished from the mindscape.  In her place, Kellin Rayco was keeping pace by Taes’ side.  In this interpretation of muddled memory, Kellin was wearing the high-collared uniform of 2400 in security gold.  He waved a tricorder ahead of him.  Looking back at Taes, he waved his tricorder at her vaguely.  Kellin grinned at her in his way which felt like he was pleasantly surprised to find her still by his side.

“We have to move quickly before the rain washes away the tracks,” Kellin said, in answer to Taes’ question.  “The boot treads look familiar, don’t they?  They remind me of the Jem’Hadar.”

“That’s not–” Taes started to say, but then she blurted out, “Could the Jem’Hadar have done all this?  Destroyed New Tenar under the cover of the ion storms?  Trojet would have every reason to hate them.”

“Come on,” Kellin said, tugging Taes in another direction.  “The tracks lead into the caves beneath city hall!”

Breaking into a run, Kellin approached an absurdly dramatic fissure in the roadway.  There was an improbable staircase leading down from the fissure, allowing access to the caves below.  Kellin bounded down the stairs, jumping them two at a time.  Taes chased after him.  No matter how fast she ran, Kellin raced ahead of her, always at risk of slipping out of sight around the descending curves of the spiral staircase.

“Wait!  Kellin, no, this never happened!” Taes called after him.  “I don’t– I’m not supposed to be here.  We have to focus.  We’re looking for Trojet, remember?  Kellin, you have to– I mean, I have to remember or this will all be for naught.”

Reaching the bottom of the staircase, Taes finally caught up to Kellin.  She grasped his shoulder and spun him around to face her.

“Why won’t you answer me?” Taes asked, “Because you’re a Changeling?”

Despite Taes’ firm grip on Kellin’s shoulder, it was Marl Trojet standing before her in Kellin’s Starfleet uniform.

“How could you question me, captain?” Trojet answered, speaking in Kellin’s affable voice.

Grunting out her frustration, Taes insisted, “No, not Kellin.  Doctor Trojet!  You created a thing of wonder and horror.  Your artificial wormhole tore into another wormhole, releasing a fraction of the Dominion’s lost fleet.”

“Did I?” Trojet asked back.  When Trojet replied, he no longer sounded like Kellin.  His voice was deeper than Kellin’s.  It was dark and sticky like ithian nectar.  Looking back at Taes, Trojet’s copper eyes shone with a kind of brilliance she had only ever seen on occasion.  In fact, there was something obscurely familiar about those eyes.

Taes released her grip on Trojet, swinging out her hands to emphasise her frustration.

“For what reason?” Taes asked.

Trojet shrugged as he tossed off a sarcastic reply.  

He said, “To see what would happen?”

Feeling empowered to ignore the nostalgic pull of her surroundings, Taes asked, “Your ship and equipment were all destroyed.  Have you shared your research with anyone else?”

“Who else could ever hope to understand it but me?” Trojet asked her through a sneer.  Laughing at Taes, he rhetorically posed, “You?”

Raising her voice to her most authoritarian timbre, Taes demanded, “Doctor Trojet, are you now or have you ever engaged in communication with the Dominion?”

“Never!” Trojet spat back at her in a performance of disgust.  “You’re only hunting Changelings and collaborators because Yuulik told you Kellin was a Changeling.  You know nothing.  The Changelings have improved their biological deceptions.  Yuulik could be the Changeling given how little you know.  Maybe she murdered Kellin and Flavia.  Go violate her mind instead!”

Stepping back from him, Taes said, “How can you know about the change in the Changelings?”

“I wish I didn’t,” Trojet said.  He put the pads of his fingers against his face in an approximation of a Vulcan mind meld.  “But if you know it, now I know it too.  Just like I know that.”

Trojet raised his arm and pointed at an archaic computer core.  A dozen soldiers in Jem’Hadar armour marched up to the computer core and yanked out data chips.  Taes blinked hard at what she was seeing because every Jem’Hadar soldier actually had the face of Lieutenant Yuulik.

“On New Tenar,” Taes remarked, “Yuulik was stealing the team’s data to inform her own private research.”  She hadn’t intended to speak it aloud, but it came forth in a stream of consciousness.  She couldn’t help herself.

Stabbing his index finger at the Yuulik army, Trojet said, “If she has such few scruples, there’s no guessing what else she might do for personal glory.  If there’s anything I’m an expert in, it’s wormholes.  And if there’s anything else I’m an expert in, it’s mad scientists.”

“You’re prevaricating,” Taes said in naked accession.  “You’re trying to distract me.”

“Of course I am, you disagreeable psychic creature,” Trojet snarled at Taes, “You’re invading my mind!  Why haven’t you questioned how Yuulik managed to find me, stranded on a decaying relay station?  In all the vastness of space, she happened upon me?  By coincidence?  Do you really believe that to be true?”

“You’re deflecting,” Taes insisted.  “Fillian told us you were disappointed in the artificial wormhole until the lost fleet emerged from it.  Were you expecting them, Doctor Trojet?  Did you summon the lost fleet?”

Trojet snorted.

“Fillian?  That skutfish?  If anyone bent to the will of the Dominion, it was him,” Trojet said.  “Fillian is lying to you and you don’t see it, just like you never saw any of Kellin’s lies.”

The deck rocked beneath Taes’ feet.  Those erratic movements stole any semblance of balance from the strength of her legs.  Taes fell to the deck and Doctor Marl Trojet did too, landing eye-to-eye with her.  Gasping for air, the antiseptic smell of the deck plates filled her nostrils.  Overpowering sense memory took her back to a previous time and place.  Bizarrely, the more she remembered, the more she recognised none of the memories as her own.

The heady mixture of Vulcan telepathy, Deltan empathy and Trill isoboramine had landed Captain Taes into a psionic mindscape intertwined between Lieutenant T’Kaal, herself and Marl Trojet.  Taes somehow knew she was laying on the deck of the escape pod that had rescued Trojet from the dying starship Sef.  Having already revealed so much of herself in their mind meld, Taes felt some small victory at piercing further into Trojet’s thoughts.

After nearly a quarter century in Starfleet, Taes had developed a familiarity with the movement of a starship’s deck.  She had a knack for feeling the tension between an impulse engine, the inertial dampers, and external forces.  The swaying of the escape pod felt nothing like she had ever felt before.  Scrabbling to her hands and knees, Taes crawled across the deck to reach for the porthole in the side of the pod.  Because the blast shield was retracted, she could see through the porthole and what she saw drained away every last bit of victory she had felt.

“Kunhri Three,” Taes groaned.  Trojet’s memory of the escape pod had landed deep into one of Taes’ experiences as captain of the USS Dvorak.  The escape pod was floating on one of Kunhri III’s seas.  Through the porthole, Taes spotted what looked like a campfire on the shore, where Taes and her senior staff had seeded an algae farm for the starving Reman population.

“I read your proposal, Doctor Trojet,” Taes said without looking at him.  “The Starfleet Science Academy retained it in their archives even after they rejected it.  I think I can see what Fillian was talking about.”

Taes shifted herself into one of the acceleration seats, and she asked, “How would you respond if I suggested your proposal relied on theoretical modelling of the Bajoran wormhole that our understanding of science doesn’t fully comprehend?”

“I’ve heard it all before,” Trojet said dismissively from the chair opposite.  “They were wrong and Fillian was wrong and you were wrong.  I proved it.  I created that wormhole and you never did.  If that wormhole unlocked a door to where the Dominion fleet was being held prisoner, then you should be looking at Fillian.  He was the one operating the controls.  He must have manipulated the transkinetic vectors.”

“Wouldn’t you have noticed?” Taes asked.

“Not with certainty.  Not an absolute guarantee,” Trojet said, his intensity translated into his sudden defensiveness.  “The experiment was decentralised.  None of my advisors, none of my technicians, saw more of the experiment than was necessary.  The experiment only ever cohered together in my mind.  Still, I could only spare to look at so many monitors at once.  Fillian had every opportunity to recalibrate the probes or the deflector dish.”

“You took a risk with stark compartmentalisation,” Taes said.  “It’s little wonder the experiment led to unimaginable, disastrous results.  Millions of people have died, Marl.  You could have relied on your compatriots for support–“

“What support?” Trojet retorted.  “I was rejected.  Me!  I could not believe.”

As incoherent as dream-logic could be, the shoreline appeared very far away from the lifeboat, and yet very near the lifeboat, simultaneously.  Even though their pod was still swaying on the water, the porthole revealed a view into a memory of Taes and Yuulik laying side-by-side in the grass around the campfire.

Looking up at the stars, memory-Taes said, “You can’t be afraid to be wrong when you have nothing.  You have to do something.“

Trojet waved a hand at the porthole.  “You said it yourself, captain.  When one is bereft of support, one can’t wait for the perfect day.  There is virtue in action.  One must do something.”

Overcome by vertigo for one heartbeat, two heartbeats, three: it felt to Taes as if the recollection of that memory had cost her something.  She felt like days had been shaved off the end of her lifespan.

Breathlessly, Taes asked, “Did you… do something?  Did you evoke my own memory?”

“You gave so much of yourself to Yuulik,” Trojet said, his dark eyes locked onto her.  His eyes felt like they were boring into Taes, seeing into her at a subatomic level.  “And yet Yuulik only took more from you.  She took and took and took.  Just like Fillian did to me.  Just like all the others before him.”

Taes shifted in her seat and she heard a splashing at her feet.  Looking down, she saw the escape pod had flooded up to her ankles.

“We’re sinking!” she said.

Looking up, she saw her reflection in the porthole, but it was T’Kaal’s reflection looking back at her, rather than her own.

“Lieutenant,” Taes asked, “What’s happening?”

T’Kaal’s reflection winced at Taes and she said, “The willpower of… the symbiont is unpredictable…”

“Oh no no no no, captain,” Trojet said, but this time his tenor was thick with menace.  “I was wrong.  T’Kaal saw it all.  You were the one who disregarded Yuulik even after she proved her capabilities.  You tossed her aside again and again.  On the Dvorak, at Kunhri III, you selected an inferior mind to serve as your science chief.”

“You’re nothing like me,” Trojet went on insistently.  “You’re just like every institute trying to stifle my research.  So you can hoard all the glory for yourself.  You put your puppet Priya in command to sideline Yuulik’s research.”

“Priya tried to lift Yuulik up,” Taes said, refuting his very premise.  The water inside the pod had risen to the level of Taes’ waist.  She dashed to the opposite end of the pod, patting down the escape hatch with the palms of her hands.  

Incensed by Trojet’s evasion, Taes kept saying, “Priya gave Yuulik every opportunity to do the work and Yuulik took every one of those opportunities to criticize Priya publicly.”  Frustrated that she couldn’t locate the manual release handle, Taes cried out, “Even after Priya died, Yuulik still insulted her to prove she should have been chief all along.  That’s no way to foster loyalty in a crew!”

Taes bashed her fists against the escape hatch, as futile as it was.  She punched the duranium panel until her knuckles bled and the water had flooded up to the level of her neck.

“Who could blame her?” Trojet roared back at Taes.  The taller man easily kept his head above the waterline, but he made no effort to escape the pod.  “After you humiliated Yuulik and ground her into the mud, she had to fight her way back to her feet.  Just like my wormhole project.  Maybe the Jem’Hadar dished out a few bloody noses, but Daystrom and Starfleet won’t forget my name now.  My proposals will never line the bottom shelf again!”

“You’re right; you’re just like Yuulik,” Taes gasped out, tilting her head back and desperately paddling to keep her face above the water.  “The hubris!  You’re unnecessarily secretive and you cut out all your peers.  You say it’s because you know better, but you just want all the credit to yourself.  You’re a creature of emotion, doctor.  You’ve made a terrible mistake out of a moment of need and that fundamental need was denial.”

“You’re lying about Fillian,” Taes said.  There was so little air left in the escape pod, her lips were practically touching the overhead.  “You’re scared of the Dominion, you’re scared of this mind meld, you’re scared about what’s… happening to you.  It’s natural.  So you lied!”

“All right, you caught me, captain,” Trojet allowed.  “Fillian isn’t worthy of being joined.  How could he possibly know even the first step in sabotaging my work?  It was me.  It was all me.  I created the artificial wormhole to rescue the lost fleet.”

The water overtook them; the pod sank to the bottom of the sea.

“- – and the winner of the Okuda Award for 2401 is… Doctor Marl Trojet!”

In his finest formalwear jumpsuit, Marl Trojet ascended the stage of the Daystrom Institute’s Graves Ballroom.  He accepted the crystalline award in one hand and he accepted a microphone in the other.

“It was me,” he said into the microphone.  “It could only have been me.  No one but I could have summoned the dark cloud of the Dominion to galvanize the Federation.  The reduction of war will allow us to cast all distractions aside.  Science will lead the way for the Federation to become the greatest power in the galaxy!  Wormhole travel will eliminate the need for warp drive, for dilithium.  Our people will know no boundaries!”

Through the towering windows behind Trojet, the Okinawa cliffside was nowhere to be seen.  The vast night of space was all that was waiting on the other side of those windows.  Jem’Hadar battleships swept by, circling the ballroom in a holding pattern.  Further out, the unholy pyramid of the artificial wormhole burned in the distance.  By all appearances, the ballroom was free-floating in the Iauna system.

On the ballroom floor, another Marl Trojet stepped out of the crowd, wearing the same tattered jumpsuit he’d been wearing aboard the escape pod.  He raised two flutes of sparkling wine and he handed one of them to Taes.  Taes had found herself in her dress uniform, somewhere far deeper into Trojet’s thoughts and experiences than before.  The flute was the only thing she was accepting from him.

“I don’t believe all that,” she said.

Pressing himself into Taes’ personal space, Trojet asked, “Do you deny history?  The story of the Federation is littered with scientists of hubris.  You said it yourself.  You’ve been mentoring one for the past year after all.  We make it possible.  You wouldn’t be travelling the galaxy without scientists who overreached.  Even your failed colony on inhospitable Nivoch must have been a bold scientist’s experiment only a couple of centuries ago.”

Trojet clinked his glass against Taes’ and he took a sip.

“War has a way of clarifying priorities,” Trojet said.  “No one will ever reject my proposals again.”

Sighing, Taes shook her head at him.  She handed off her glass to a passing waiter.

“That’s too easy,” Taes said.  “It’s a story you’re telling me.  How deep is the need inside of you that you could knowingly unleash such a terror on the galaxy?”

Trojet scoffed at her.  “How could you?” he asked and he gestured at Yuulik with the wave of a hand.

Behind Yuulik, through one of the tall windows, the USS Sarek passed into view.  Directly in its path of travel, a temporal vortex swirled out of the nothingness of space.  Despite the protestations of the Sarek’s impulse engines, the Sutherland-class starship went tumbling into the maw of the temporal vortex.

Memory echoes of Lieutenant Yuulik and Captain Taes were seated at a table by the window.  Taes was tucked into the table in her captain’s chair.  A bridge science console protruded from the dining table surface where the echo of Yuulik was sitting.

Raising an eyebrow in mild irritation, that other Taes asked Yuulik, “What have you done?”

Through a self-satisfied smirk, Yuulik answered, “I couldn’t risk asking for permission.  I’ll beg for your forgiveness instead.”

With only the table between them, the other Taes fixed Yuulik with a disappointed stare.  Other Taes raised her chin and she huffed out a breath.  

Looking back on that interaction from the start of the year, Taes literally saw herself from a new angle.  She had spent the past couple of months punishing Yuulik with silence.  In that moment between them, the prolonged silence grew heavy, almost unending.

“Say something,” Taes said to her other self.

Silently, Other Taes blinked at Yuulik a couple of times.

“Say something!” Taes shouted at herself.

Other Taes rubbed the back of her neck, her gaze starting to wander to another diner around the table.

“Say something!” the voice of T’Kaal chimed in from the very air around them.

Another Trojet interjected, “You said she was my mirror.”  He moved out from the crowd of partygoers and he sashayed in Taes’ direction.  He was leading a companion by the hand.  

Another Yuulik followed Trojet’s lead, shufflying in an obedient manner.  Yuulik was dressed in a hospital gown and there was a hypospray hanging absurdly from the side of her neck.  Taes hadn’t seen Yuulik in such condition since their mission to the Delta Quadrant.  In fact, this Yuulik hardly appeared conscious, despite remaining on her feet.  She seemed more like a twisted mirror of what might have happened after Yuulik experimented on herself to uncover the secrets of blood dilithium.

“She’s secretive like me, you said,” Trojet intoned to Taes.  “She trusts nothing with her peers, you said.  She’s confident in her abilities, but you say that means she wants all the credit for herself.”

Trojet shook his head at Taes, making a “tsk tsk tsk” sound as he dropped his chin to look down at her.  “What has this war done to you,” he asked, “to make you distrustful of your closest confidants?  Your crew?  Aside from dearly departed Kellin, Yuulik is essentially your only family, isn’t she?”

Her throat tight, Taes said, “She danced on the knife’s edge of Federation law against genetic experimentation.”

“When she did this,” Trojet said, “did you invade her mind?”  He side-stepped Yuulik and took hold of her by both shoulders.  Trojet pushed Yuulik to face Taes, forced Taes to stare deeply into Yuulik’s vacant eyes.  

“Did you visit her intentions?” he asked.

“No, I had no reason to do so,” Taes retorted.  “There were no risks to Federation security.  She was only a danger to herself.  I insisted on mandatory counselling for Yuulik and I consulted with JAG to ensure she had broken no Federation law.”

Out of nowhere, T’Kaal was standing by Taes side.  She asked, “Did you discipline her?”

Taes blinked at that question.

“Ahhh, no,” Taes said hesitantly.  “Yuulik had broken no laws, given the grey areas of epigenet–“

“Captain, you have altered the conditions of my question to you,” T’Kaal evenly said.  “Technical matters of law aside, did you overlook Yuulik’s conduct unbecoming of a Starfleet officer?”

“Nuh– No,” Taes replied. “I recognised her faults.”

T’Kaal’s voice raised by an eighth of an octave.  “And then you chose to keep that recognition to yourself?”

“No,” Taes said more sternly.  “I recognised her faults.  Yuulik knew how I felt about her mistakes.  She’s been attending mandatory counselling for–.”

“Captain,” T’Kaal said, “If you issued no discipline, no controls for further misbehaviour, logic would dictate you condoned her faults.”

Snapping back, Taes said, “You’re twisting my words, lieutenant.  I recognized Yuulik’s faults and I recognized the mitigating circumstances.  Under the Brenari influence, Nune had manipulated Yuulik.  Manipulated her need to prove herself.  She was desperate to prove herself, just like Trojet, to prove she should be the chief science–“

In a pique of unearthly rage, T’Kaal snarled, “I do not care if Yuulik felt bad!”  

Every circling Jem’Hadar battleship fired torpedoes on the ballroom in thundering pathetic fallacy.  It took less than five seconds for the Graves Ballroom to explode in an inferno of fire and splinters and smoke.  

Taes, T’Kaal and Trojet remained.  

Unharmed.  

Alone together.  

They floated in an empty patch of space.

“I didn’t ignore them.  I recognised them.  We all did,” Taes whispered.  “We’re all experts at recognizing the faults in others.  It can be rather more difficult to recognize our own responsibility for those same faults we see in others.”

Considering Trojet, Taes said, “You wanted absolute control over your experiments.  No input; no oversight.  Those scientific institutes clearly overlooked the genius in your wormhole design.  You encouraged their rejection by holding your experiment so close, so tightly, you refused to take in their feedback.  You wanted to be the famous wormhole inventor so strongly, you’d rather take credit for the lost fleet than admit you brought this terror into the universe by accident.“

“Six years,” Trojet said.  “Fourteen failed proposals.  It can’t have been for nothing.  It can’t.  It can’t.  I won’t get another chance.  I’m dying… aren’t I?”

Taes nodded.  “You didn’t know the Jem’Hadar would be on the other side of the wormhole.  You never worked with the Dominion.”

“I didn’t,” Trojet said.

“He didn’t,” T’Kaal confirmed.

Taes supposed, “You imported too many unknowable, trans-dimensional theories from the Bajoran wormhole in your designs without understanding why they work.  Without advice from those fourteen institutions.  It attracted your unstable, artificial wormhole into the very fabric of the Bajoran wormhole.  All because you hoped your wormhole would be better than Kahn’s.”

“I did,” Trojet said.  “You rejected Yuulik’s behaviour fourteen times, but you never stopped it.  You didn’t make her better.  You tacitly condoned it.  Every second chance you gave her was another opportunity to make the same mistake again.  You only hoped she would be better.  Better than her own worst instincts.  Better than you.”

“I did,” Taes said.

“You did,” T’Kaal confirmed.

She had barely opened her eyes when Taes asked, “Have they found him?”  

In her supine position, Taes blinked a couple of times, recognising her surroundings as the med bay because of brass arches surrounding the light fixtures in the overhead.  The quaver in her voice betrayed her despair at not knowing the fate of her best friend and first officer.

“Have they found Kellin?” Taes asked.

“No,” Yuulik said.  “No, they haven’t.”  

Yuulik was exactly where Taes had left her: sitting on the biobed beside the one where Taes was laid.  Taes had asked Yuulik to serve as Nelli and Ache’s experimental subject.  Now that the Kellin-Changeling had defeated all of their biometric security measures, Ache and Nelli were scrambling to develop new security methods for identifying Changelings. The fact Yuulik hadn’t been beamed to the brig was promising, Taes supposed.  It meant her identity as an Arcadian had been confirmed.

Taes wasn’t even sure a Changeling imposter of Yuulik could successfuly create more chaos than the real Yuulik managed without trying.

Bracing her palms against the mattress beneath her, Taes pushed herself up into a sitting position.  She groaned at the effort required.  Clearly, her mind-meld with Doctor Marl Trojet had been as taxing as it was illuminating.

“I have to prepare my report for Fourth Fleet Command,” Taes said.  She said it out loud mostly to convince her own self.  All she really wanted to do was lay her head back down, but she had lost enough time already.  “Doctor Trojet unleashed the Lost Fleet by accident.  He was never working for the Dominion.  I know where to find the only remaining records of his research.”

Taes’ elbows buckled and she fell back on the biobed.

“I have to tell Fourth Fleet Command,” Taes said, willing herself to get up, but her body wouldn’t cooperate.  “Trojet’s research must be secured, so no one else can use it to release the rest of the lost fleet.”

“Long-range comms are still broken, captain,” Yuulik said.  “We remain en route to Farpoint Station, but not fast enough.  Marl has died.  The Trojet symbiont is stable.”

A ragged breath escaped Taes.  She rolled onto her side, cradling her own head with her upper arm as a pillow.  She took a deep breath.

“I haven’t been fair to you, Yuulik,” Taes said resolutely.  “I shouldn’t have ignored you these past months.  I wish I hadn’t shut you out.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Yuulik said, shaking her head at Taes.  Laying back on the biobed, Yuulik lowered herself to share the same eye-line as Taes.  Yuulik lay on her side, mirroring Taes’ posture.

Yuulik whispered, “I worship you, T.”

Taes said, “After what you did, I should have written another formal reprimand or demoted you.”

“Uhhhhhh….”  Sheepishly, Yuulik said, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I’m sorry, Yuulik,” Taes said, “I’ve been a hindrance to your development as an officer.  It’s been my greatest shame as a leader.”

“I didn’t–” Yuulik started; “I didn’t know you considered my development to be delayed.  You always told me to be better, but you always made excuses too.  There were so many situational reasons why I couldn’t be science chief.  If you thought I was nowhere near ready, you were supposed to tell me that.”

Taes smiled tightly at her.  “I should have.  I’d lose my temper with you and try to inspire you, and then you’d dazzle me with your resourcefulness and insights.”

Yuulik said softly, “As the captain, I expected you to stop me if I was doing anything really wrong.  When I kept getting away with it, I assumed you were letting me be an old fashioned Starfleet cowboy.”

“There’s a truism among Deltan’s, written by someone far wiser than myself,” Taes said.  “To open one’s heart to another, to temper one’s fear with trust, to offer friendship… is an act of bravery.”

Taes reached a hand out to the space between her biobed and Yuulik’s.

“Will you accept my offer of friendship and a battlefield promotion to Chief Science Officer?” Taes asked.  “Don’t answer yet.  This will be your final chance.  If you break Starfleet regulations just to prove yourself right, we will never work together again.  …Answer from your heart.”

Nova blurted out, “The lights, captain,” with a delighted gasp.  Her head pivoted back and forth, between her console and Captain Taes and back again.  Pointing with her index finger, Nova drew an arc through the air, indicating the highest point on her Operations panel.  Colourful indicator boxes blinked on, filling an otherwise empty LCARS frame.  

Lieutenant JG Nova elaborated on her exclamation by saying, “The lights are coming on again across my board.  The galaxy is your oyster!”

From where she was sitting in the captain’s chair, Taes inclined her head in Nova’s direction.  Having recovered in the hours since her psychic rescue of Doctor Trojet’s secrets, Taes had the emotional wherewithal to offer Nova a fond, if perplexed, smile.

“I’m sure that’s very exciting, lieutenant,” Taes said.  “I’d love to feel the same.”

To Taes’ left, seated at the expansive science console, Lieutenant Yuulik chimed in on the exchange.

“Nova!” Yuulik insisted, “The captain can’t understand a word you’re saying!”

Stationed at the triangular engineering station to aft, Lieutenant Pagaloa interjected, “Long-range communications are functional,” translating for Nova’s ancient Earth slang.  Playfully, he added, “But don’t speak too loudly, captain.  We only have one operational transceiver until we can put into a drydock.”

Nova enthused, “We’re receiving pings from subspace relays all over the Deneb Sector.”  Then she recoiled her hands from the interface with the same intensity as if she’d been burned on a hot surface.  “Oh no.  There’s fewer than there used to be…”

Taes asked no follow-up questions about the state of the Deneb Sector at large.  Rather, she unfolded the narrow systems monitor arm from the side of her chair and she tapped at its LCARS interface.

“I’ve transmitted my reports to Fourth Fleet Command directly,” Taes reported, “along with my recommendations for Constellation to secure Doctor Trojet’s research from his facility on Trill.  Future researchers will have far more to learn from Trojet’s experiment but, for now, we must prevent the rest of the lost fleet from being released.”

After clearing her throat, Taes ordered, “Nova, please contact Farpoint Station and provide them with our ETA.  Ask if they have sufficient repair facilitates or if we should diver to starbase–“

From the forward tactical console, Lieutenant Commander Ache raised a hand, pointing her finger-mouths at the command platform.  Taes looked to her through Ache’s translucent free-standing console, where red points of light danced across a star chart like lightning-gnats at night.

“Excuse me, captain,” Ache interrupted, “If I may recommend a yellow alert because–“

“All hands: yellow alert,” Taes said, not needing to hear any reason other than Ache thought it was the right thing to do.

As yellow indicator lights flashed from every angle of the bridge, Ache explained, “I’ve been tracking Dominion fleet movements on long-range sensors and something’s changed. Nearly every Jem’Hadar battleship within our sensor range has changed course.”

Yuulik added, “These new courses- – they’re defying all of our predictive models.”  

Ache huffed a deep breath.  “Captain, from the perspective of our relative position, the Jem’Hadar will effectively blockade our course to Farpoint Station.  I can’t establish a safe route.”

Taes nodded twice.  She dropped her palms to her thighs.  She gave the order for, “All stop,” and in mere moments the swirl of streaking stars on the viewscreen slowed to a stationary view of open space between Kanaan and the Deneb system.  Taes kept her eyes on Ache and on the holographic representation of the Lost Fleet’s movements on Ache’s tactical console.

“Commander,” Taes asked, “are they forming a blockade or are they amassing a thunderous strike force to invade Deneb and Farpoint Station?”

Tapping a yellow menu screen that appeared on the tactical console, Ache remarked, “You might be psychic, captain.  We’ve received an alert from Farpoint Station:  A massive Dominion attack wing is incoming.  Every starship in the Fourth Fleet is ordered to defend Farpoint.”

Sinking deeper into the captain’s chair, Taes sighed louder than she would have liked the crew to hear.

“We’re a crew of explorers,” Taes said, her voice filling the room.  

She went on with, “I know some of you only joined Starfleet to stretch your minds into new areas of research.  We’re meant to be out alongside the likes of the great starship Sef, pushing the boundaries of wormhole technology.  Many of you have spent your careers by my side, puttering through archaeological digs.”

Recognizing the Romulan Free State scientist, Laken, at the forward science station, Taes added, “Many of you aren’t even Starfleet officers, but you have dedicated yourselves to our cause because you understand we’re stronger in cooperation than we would be under the violent domination of the Dominion.”

Taes got to her feet, saying, “More than a century ago, there was another crew of explorers aboard another starship Constellation.  At great personal cost, they managed to destroy a planet killer device.  I know we’re tired and we’re scared and we need a month in drydock, but I think we can do even better than defeating a literal doomsday machine, don’t you?”

Descending the stairs of the command platform, Taes moved to stand behind the flight control station, resting her hands on the chair’s back.

“Set course for Farpoint Station, maximum warp,” Taes ordered.  

And she said, “Let’s find out!”