“Describe what you saw in your own words chief.” The swarthy titan of a man across the desk from Tanek fidgetted uncomfortably like a naughty child in his chair as the captain began his questioning.

“Well…” the yellow-shouldered security officer twisted his face into a grimace, his potmarked face squishing in reticence. “It all happened very quickly, Captain. Sir.”

Tanek leant forward, picking a sugar-doused bon-bon from a misshapen blue dish on his desk. A gift from his third daughter, it still had the tell-tale fingerprints of her small hands fired into the clay. Indelible marks of her tactile engagement in its creation.

“Just tell me what you saw, chief,” Tanek repeated, reassuring the veteran crewman before tossing the bon-bon into his waiting mouth.

“We were all assembled in transporter room two, Lieutenant Atanak was doing his final checks whilst we waited for you guys upstairs to get through the disruption field.” He paused, his face suddenly filled with concern at his informal tone. “Is this a formal investigation sir?”

“I’m just trying to get a better picture crewman. This is all between you, me and the bon-bons.” Tanek presented his most paternal face as he pushed the tray across the desk. The crewman didn’t need to know of any other ulterior motive that hid behind Tanek’s practised facade.

The security officer lifted a pink candy from the bowl, a gentle snowfall of icing sugar trickling from his fingers onto the dark grey wood below. Caught between his gigantic digits, the tiny pink orb was little more than a dainty marble.

“Once we got the G-O from the bridge we went in; me, Ghillik, Krinikan and Atanak. We were prepared for a coordinated response; deployment pattern Sigma-Seven, rotating phaser frequencies, avoid close-quarters encounters at all costs. Standard Borg response tactics.”

Tanek nodded for the man to continue, all this he knew.

“Materialisation took a bit longer than normal, getting through the field and all that. Pretty sure I lost a few centimetres.” The crewman allowed a nervous laugh to escape his lips, Tanek offered him a smile for the old joke.

“And what did you see when you did materialise?” Tanek’s eyes met the officer’s, a sudden focus washing over his face.

“Nothing,” the man confessed apologetically.

“Nothing?” Tanek’s attention was laser-focused.

“Just a few disappearing transporter signatures, that horrible green smoke fadin’ away.” The security officer offered an apologetic shrug. “There was nuthin’ else, just Lieutenant K’Sal and the boss – I mean Lieutenant Commander Bahir – stretched out on the table with all them tubes.”

“Did you identify the figures before they dematerialised?” Tanek’s eyes didn’t stray from the man, this was the moment of truth. “How many were there?”

“Three?” The gigantic man answered, the slight lift of his voice betraying his uncertainty.

“Any distinguishing features?”

There was an awkward silence as a ripple of realisation crept across the crewman’s face.

“Are you asking if I saw the Commander, sir?”

“Any distinguishing features?” Tanek repeated slowly.

The security officer fidgeted uncomfortably again, his answer could lead down several different avenues.

Tanek pushed the small dish further across the table.

“You, me and the bon-bons chief,” he offered reassuringly.

“I don’t know who the figures were but they were all standing,” the chief paused. “None of them seemed restrained.”

The silence fell over the room once more, less awkward than before but still laced with tension. Both were clear on the insinuation in the crewman’s words.

“Thank you, Chief. That’s all I needed to know.”

“I’m glad to confirm that both Lieutenant K’Sal and Lieutenant Commander Bahir are fully cleared to return to duty.” Ashra leant back into the small sofa in the corner of Tanek’s ready room, the long trails of stars visible through the tall windows behind her.

“No ill effects?” Tanek’s voice was weary.

“Nothing physical, Bahir is pretty angry at himself for losing Bib. K’Sal? Suffice to say the dummies in the gym have got a few broken bones.” She punched the air with light jabs. “That young woman has got a lot of anger to work out.”

“I told them both, they weren’t to blame.” Tanek sat next to her, his eyes focused on the stars disappearing into the distance as Helios travelled back to K-74 at warp.

“As did I, but they’ll need to say it to themselves before they believe it.” Ashra rubbed her brow, pushing her flowery headscarf back as she massaged her temples. “I’ve referred them to Counsellor Yu-Win.”

“You think they’ll go?”

“They’ll have to won’t they?” The Deltan gave a wry smile, Tanek suddenly pitied any crewman who didn’t follow her medical recommendations. After a long pause, Asha turned to the captain next to her, his attention still lost in the trail of stars visible through the window.

“Do I need to write you a referral to a good counsellor?” Asha rolled the tail ends of her scarf between her long manicured fingers, her confident doctoral facade set aside for a moment.

“Why do you say that?”

Asha tilted her head sideways towards the dark wooden desk where the now empty candy dish sat, covered in a snowfall of icing sugar.

“You only eat that many when you’re worried,” she explained, resting a hand on his. “You’re not to blame for Bib either.”

“Two XOs in less than six months Asha.” Tanek’s form shrivelled as he fell back into the depths of the sofa’s plump cushions, his bravado of rank fizzling away. “Both of them to the Unimatrix.”

“So the rumours are true?”

“At the moment we’re keeping it somewhat quiet but yes, it seems that Unimatrix Zero was responsible for the events on Pamack.”

“And the Syndicate?” Asha’s brows furrowed in confusion, accentuating the criss-crossing scars on her bald head in the room’s dim lighting.

“The Syndicate, The Empire, Starfleet… They played us all to get their hands on what they needed.” The last motes of his captain’s facade shrivelled away into the sofa cushions, his face a painting of defeat and frustration. “It was all planned.”

“But why tell us about the exchange in the first place? Why bring us into it at all?”

“We think they wanted intelligence, Bib knows a fair bit of sensitive information.”

“If I know Bib, he won’t be handing over the intelligence easily. They’ll torture him.” Asha’s mind raced with dark visions, the confident commander’s stoic face contorted in agony in each, how much could he endure before he broke?

Tanek’s dark, sullen eyes looked out from the sofa cushions as he gave the padd that rested between them a minute push towards Asha. She hesitated to take it, her heart beating out an allegro rhythm against her ribs. With a finger she touched the screen, causing eight words to appear on the screen in tall orange letters.

‘I WENT WILLINGLY. DON’T FOLLOW US. BIB.”

The pair shared a pained look before Tanek cast his eyes downward to the base of the padd, indicating the answer to Asha’s next question. Beneath the short missive scrolled several encryption keys, Bib’s personal identifiers. Only he would know those codes.

Asha sighed, her body slipping into the cushions alongside Tanek as she began to understand.

“We might need something stronger than bon-bons.” She looked back at him with a pained smile as she stood up and moved towards the replicator. “Doctor’s orders.”

Captain Varen Wyll was barely visible on the wall screen, the dim lighting of his office a thousand light years away on D-47 casting him in dark shadows. Behind him the green glow of the distant Rolor nebula crept through the Starbase’s windows, accentuating every edge of his normally jovial face.

“It’s done?”

“Yes Wyll, the rumour mill has started spreading the word that Bib has gone rogue.” Tanek rubbed his chest, attempting to dismiss the uncomfortable weight that rested on his heart.

“And your official report?”

“Will confirm that he was struggling with his losses at the Exodus sphere and during the Labyrinth event.” Tanek groaned as he rubbed his chest harder, the dark weight on his heart threatened to crush him.

“I know this is hard Captain. But we all agreed this was an opportunity we couldn’t miss. Right back when Oshira got that tip-off.”

“It doesn’t make it any easier that I sent Bib to the wolves, that we’ve made everyone believe he’s a traitor.” The dark pain crept across Tanek’s chest, suffusing into his soul.

“Bib knew that there might be a cost.”

“He’s a good man.” Tanek felt his chest might implode under the weight of their decisions.

Varen sighed as he lifted his glasses from his face and began cleaning them with the hem of his open uniform.

“I know Tanek, and when this is all over the truth will be told.” The weary officer lifted the glasses back to his face, their sharp edges glinting like daggers in the dim light. “I’m not a huge fan of this path but we do what must be done. Aramook is dangerous, he’ll do anything now he thinks he can restore the Unimatrix. The more we discover of his research, the more it appears he had already seconded a substantial amount of Borg tech into the outer regions.”

“Is it safe?”

“The Vinculum has been moved to a secure site, along with several other dangerous items,” Varen nodded.

“Where?”

“It would void the point if I told you Tanek,” Varen looked over his glasses sternly before pushing the conversation onwards. “How long until you get back to K-74?”

“A day or so.” The Deonbulan captain pulled himself up right into his chair, acknowledging the change in tone. The weight in his chest lifted slightly, reduced only to a sickly ache rather than a shooting sense of failure.

“Good, we’ve got a couple of leads for their first port of call. It seems that Aramook got sloppy with his encryption towards the end and we think we’ve identified a number of his stashes.” Varen pressed a sequence of buttons off-screen, causing several files to appear on Tanek’s workstation.

“Hopefully we’ll get to them before he does.” Tanek reached up as a pang of discomfort shot across his chest.

“Hopefully.” On the distant Starbase Varen leant into the screen, his dark eyes narrowing. “Go see Doctor Asha Captain, get something for the chest pains.”

“Does it help?” Tanek looked back, he thought back on the man he had met several years earlier, before his rise to Task Force command. He had been a joyful young officer, excited at the possibilities beyond the next horizon. The man on the screen looked agéd, world-weary and diminished by his deeds.

“I’ll let you know when mine starts working.” With a click Varen’s face disappeared, leaving Tanek alone in his office, the streaks of stars in the window casting a dim illumination across the room.

With a single finger, he reached for a padd nearby where Bib’s abrupt statement still glowed dimly on its small screen. With a hesitant press, he activated a series of prepared commands, a litany of passwords and encryption keys the pair of officers had prepared months ago after the events of Frontier Day. After a few moments, a new voice entered the room as the fuzzy recording of Commander Bib emanated from the padd; in the background, the slow grinding of metal and whirring machinery threatened to overwhelm his voice.

“Tanek, the team are alive in the Vinculum. We can save them. We can save them all.”