‘…specific scale – Kah’plar’s fifth mode? – that’s traditionally associated with Klingon victory rituals. It’s often seen in traditional war songs, but they’re using it here for something rebellious, subversive, counter-cultural -’

‘I just like bass, Aryn; I don’t know what to tell you.’

The thumping loud music had Rosewood stick his head out of his room with a flash of irritation, but it faded as he saw Aryn and Nallera in the door to Aryn’s quarters. He glanced up and down. ‘This a corridor party?’

Aryn winced. ‘Sorry. We were on our way out.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Computer! Stop music.’

Nallera grinned at Rosewood. ‘We’re hitting Gateway. Come for a drink?’ She was in a dark green bomber jacket thrown over a worn t-shirt of an Andorian band Rosewood didn’t recognise. The pockets of her cargo pants bulged with mysterious, practical objects, and her boots were scuffed and sturdy. As she talked, she set her right hand on her belt buckle, tapping against it with a chunky ring on her middle finger.

Aryn cut a sharp contrast in his tweed jacket and pressed dark jeans, and Rosewood’s lips had to curl as he saw the t-shirt under the blazer, a soft grey with the seal of the Daystrom Institute. This was clearly his nod towards dressing down.

He, meanwhile, was still in slacks and an old Red Squad t-shirt from the Academy. Rosewood sighed. ‘Hardly dressed for it. Go on without me; I’ll catch up.’

‘Damn. It takes you a while to throw on a shirt, huh?’ Nallera’s grin widened. ‘I’ll ping you when we’ve got a drinking hole.’

Rosewood couldn’t get defensive. She was right; it did take him a good ten minutes to get changed. They’d not said where they were going, though drinking on Gateway could range from the run-down Crowbar to the elegant Foxglove cocktail bar. Outside of the few physical objects he wanted to keep and was prepared to lug from assignment to assignment – the old Academy t-shirt, a favourite jacket – most of his wardrobe existed in a replicator database, giving him a near-endless array of options to scroll through. At length, settled on a deep burgundy button-down shirt, given texture through a herringbone pattern and a flash of a charcoal contrast fabric inside the cuffs and collar that helped it serve as a centrepiece fashion item. Throwing it on over dark trousers and polished boots, he figured he pull it off if they went somewhere nice, and roll up the sleeves if they were somewhere casual. Nallera would probably be happy to quaff fancy cocktails in a sleeveless t-shirt, while Aryn might wear a three-piece to a bar on Nimbus.

He wasn’t familiar with the location Nallera pinged him as he was heading down the Blackbird’s corridors, and peered in confusion at his PADD long enough to almost crash into Lieutenant Falaris when he turned a corner.

‘Prophets!’

‘Shit – sorry!’ He dropped his PADD and had to grab her so she wasn’t bowled over. ‘Didn’t look where I was going.’ Heart rate slowing down, Rosewood gave an apologetic smile. ‘The hell are you doing up here in uniform?’

‘I…’ Falaris worked her jaw, clearly recovering from nearly being smeared on the deck. ‘Someone has to watch the ship, sir.’

‘First: do I look like a “sir” right now? It’s John.’ He glanced up and down the corridor. ‘Second: I bet anything Ranicus is still aboard. Third: We’re literally docked inside Gateway, who needs to be on watch?’

A flicker of indignation tugged at her face, though her voice came out rather defensive. ‘Not everyone’s immediately got social plans the moment we hit the station, sir – John.’

‘Rooks are getting a drink. Someplace called the Driftwood. You should come with.’

She hesitated. ‘That sounds like the team going out for drinks.’

‘You were in our ear half the mission, told us how to find Verior, found us and saved our asses when the Tal Shiar were gonna kill us. I don’t think we should quibble about fieldwork to determine if you’re a Rook.’

‘Respectfully, si- John. You’re new enough to the team that I’m not sure you get to decide who’s in it.’

He subsided at that. ‘Fair enough. Another time?’ She nodded, and Rosewood softened. ‘You really did save our asses, Lieutenant. That was some shit-hot work up here.’

‘It wasn’t hard.’ Her nose wrinkled. ‘Once I’d figured out what the Tal Shiar were doing, putting the algorithm together to filter out the interference was straightforward. It just took a little longer; if I were really good, I’d have done it quicker -’

‘And if I were smarter I’d have noticed a guy on a rooftop with a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher. We all had our failings. Still sounds like you deserve a night off. If you’re staying here, run yourself a bath or something.’

‘I share a bathroom with six other crew.’

‘Alright, well – there’s a spa on Gateway.’ He grinned. ‘Go. God knows when we’ll get pampered again, Lieutenant.’

‘I… alright.’ Lips curling self-consciously, Falaris stepped back, nodding. ‘Maybe I will. Have a good evening.’ He was four steps down the corridor before she added, awkwardly, ‘Maive. It’s Maive.’

Rosewood looked back, still grinning. ‘Have a good night, Maive. You earned it.’

Nallera’s directions took him to a quiet corner of Gateway’s Arcade. The entrance to the Driftwood was marked only by a faded wooden plaque, etched with its name in several languages. Inside, warm, dim lighting cast a soft glow over a cosy space of mismatched chairs and stools tucked around tables made of polished, salvaged wood and sections of starship hull panels. The walls were lined with shelves boasting curiosities of well-worn star charts, faded physical photographs of alien worlds, and bric-a-brac from a thousand peoples. Metal stood out among the wood under the gleam of the lantern-like lights hanging from exposed metal pipes overhead. The decor and jazz music filtering through the sound system made Rosewood think of an old Earth speakeasy bar.

He found Nallera and Aryn at a table made of a misshapen hulk of wood near the wall. Tiran had joined them, and he lingered at the bar to order a drink, taking a moment to peruse the bottles lining the wall before settling on a smoky, single malt scotch and going to the table.

‘The clotheshorse made it!’ Nallera greeted him with raised hands. ‘Sit yourself down, Commander.’

‘Are we really doing rank?’ Rosewood asked, awkward as he pulled up a stool.

‘Rank and mockery, apparently,’ mused Tiran.

‘Hey, you got that crazy Romulan to open that safe room door,’ said Nallera with a shrug. ‘I’m impressed, but I’m kinda mad I didn’t get the chance to breach it.’

‘Without killing her or us?’

‘That would be the fun! The challenge of it!’

Laughing, Rosewood shook his head and looked to Aryn. ‘How’s the injury?’

‘I’m fine, now,’ he said ruefully. ‘It sounds like I was better off missing that fight. It would be nice to avoid a head injury, though.’

‘Come on.’ Nallera elbowed him. ‘You already know everything; you can stand to forget a few things.’

‘As the lone science specialist in the team, I can’t really afford to forget anything.’

Rosewood chuckled and turned to the others, focusing on Tiran. ‘So on a scale of one to ten, how normal was that mission for the Rooks?’

‘Can’t be that much!’ burst Nallera. ‘I hardly blew anything up!’

‘About a seven,’ Tiran agreed wryly. ‘We don’t normally cross Starfleet and have showdowns with Tal Shiar asking us to come quietly. Otherwise, about a normal level of annoyance and risk. You did well out there.’

‘I didn’t do much.’

‘You handled the target, like you were supposed to. And had our backs in the fight. Does there need to be much more?’

Rosewood’s lips curled as he sipped his scotch. ‘Is that my call to make?’

‘Nah,’ said a voice from above. ‘It’s mine.’

Nallera beamed as she looked up at Cassidy. ‘Boss! They let you out to play?’

‘For now.’ Cassidy was still in uniform, though he’d loosened the field jacket, dishevelled enough to give an instructor in basic training an aneurysm. ‘No doubt they’ll whistle soon and we’ll have to heel.’

‘Oh well,’ said Nallera. ‘Guess we better drink.’

He already had a beer, and Rosewood had to marvel at how such a big, blunt man kept sneaking into bars in plain sight and avoiding notice. He kicked out a stool to sit beside him. ‘Guess we better.’

Nallera swigged her beer. ‘Did the powers-that-be have any insight on that Tal Shiar chick?’

‘Falco?’ Cassidy grimaced. ‘She’s a known entity. We’d be lucky if her superiors give her a bad day for letting Ireqah go. But that means she’s trouble enough for us that that’d do well to keep her in the field.’

‘The intel she was privy to. About you, about us.’ Tiran frowned. ‘Suggests she’s somebody.’

‘It suggests she got eyeballs on us and could request a briefing, and she was given it.’ He shrugged. ‘The Liberty said the interference dropped at a time not long after we left the system. They had the resources to cause chaos, but not much else.’

‘It was nearly enough,’ said Aryn darkly. ‘They brought hell back down on Tau Mervana.’

Cassidy groaned. ‘I don’t need a lecture on how bad it was there. I already had Galcyon complain at me.’

‘Galcyon?’ Rosewood’s eyebrows went up. ‘She was in the debrief?’

‘No, just Rourke decided to schedule us back-to-back like a fucking idiot. So I got her crying about how hard we made her job.’

Even Nallera winced. ‘We did make her job hard. Greater good and all, Boss, but we did do that.’

Tiran shook her head. ‘Was she particularly self-righteous?’

Cassidy frowned at his beer for a moment. ‘No,’ he said at last, not looking up. ‘Not particularly. I’d have been worse in her shoes.’

Rosewood fidgeted with his glass. ‘Any word on Ireqah?’

‘Only that she got where she needed to be.’ Cassidy gave him a suspicious, sidelong look. ‘That’s all we’re gonna know. We don’t get told much what happens after. That a problem for you?’

‘You mean…’ Rosewood took a deliberate sip. ‘Is that going to be a problem on future missions?’

‘Yeah. The hell else would I mean?’

‘I don’t know.’ He grinned toothily, in a way he knew would be directly annoying. ‘Sounds like you’re saying I’m in. The Rooks, I mean. Long-term.’

Nallera laughed at that, and Aryn gave a small smile. Cassidy just rolled his eyes.

‘You got too many friends in high places for me to boot you without good reason. You didn’t fuck up anything bad enough for that.’

‘A glowing recommendation!’ Nallera guffawed.

‘One I will take with pride,’ said Rosewood, leaning towards Cassidy with even more of an irritating grin. ‘It’ll be my delight – no, my honour – to continue to serve alongside you, Commander Cassidy.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Cassidy snapped at last, shoving him back – but his touch was light, in the same bantering, bickering tone. ‘All the more chance for me to get an off-the-books mission to some forgotten backwater where I can dump your body.’

‘And I look forward to being murdered in the fringes of the galaxy by my team.’

Any gruff retort from Cassidy was smothered by the laughing of the team – Nallera the loudest, of course, but even Tiran and Aryn were chuckling at that. Cassidy rolled his eyes anew, swigging his beer as he shook his head.

‘Alright, alright,’ he said, waving away the laughs, and Rosewood fancied he saw amusement on the gruff commander’s lips. ‘Just you wait. We don’t know what comes next. After all, outfit like ours? They could send us anywhere.’

‘Anywhere.’ Rosewood said the word like he was tasting it. He’d spent years on structured ships with set missions and duties, and while there’d been twists and turns, he’d broadly known what his tomorrows looked like. This wasn’t quite the uncertainty of exploring the deep, of being like those wayfarers on those early Earth starships venturing into the galaxy for the first time; the ones whose ships he’d seen at those museums with his family what felt like a lifetime ago. This held, if nothing else, the promise of a lot more blood.

John Rosewood still nodded and sipped his drink, lounging at the table with this new ragtag team of mysterious operators, volatile demolitions experts, and meandering academics. ‘Anywhere,’ he repeated. ‘I could get used to that.’