It was 0330 when Beckett’s console chirruped, ignoring all directives he’d given it to be silent in the night. Thawn had reacted first, but only with a low grumble as she’d rolled over. She’d been working so hard, he thought, that she instinctively reacted to any computer alert – but also knew every chime, every notification, by heart enough that even semi-conscious, she knew this wasn’t her problem.

Beckett rose from bed reluctantly, scrubbing his face with his hands as he stumbled sleepily to his desk. At once, he saw why the sound had been made, overriding his settings: the priority one message from Gateway Station awaiting his attention. Pre-recorded, at this distance. Security clearance: Sigma-12.

That woke him up. But he did his best to not wake Thawn as he fished around for his uniform in the dark, hopping as he pulled on a boot and bumping into a cabinet, rattling his collectables sat upon it. She gave another grumpy sound as she stirred.

‘It’s okay,’ he whispered, leaning over with a hand on her shoulder. ‘I just gotta – some paperwork’s come in. Nothing big.

‘Mrrn.’

Had she been awake, she would have probably seen through his lies. Half-asleep, he could get away with giving her a peck on the cheek and leaving her be. He needed to view this message from somewhere secure. That meant locking himself in StratOps for thirty minutes.

When he was done, he badly needed a drink. But it was early morning, so he had to settle for a coffee in the Round Table, a selection of PADDs strewn out in front of him as he searched and searched for an answer. No, an answer was too ambitious now. A starting point. Mere inspiration.

He didn’t know how long he’d been there when there was a rustle, and Jack Logan slid into the seat opposite him, a veritable vat of steaming coffee in his hand. ‘You look like you got the weight of the world on your shoulders, kid.’

‘Me? I…’ Beckett looked up, blinking muggily, and knew at once he’d given too much of a startled reaction to cover much up. He should have gone back to bed, gotten more sleep, but he was too wired, and anyway, it would have meant lying to Thawn.

Logan looked like he hadn’t meant much by his approach, but now his gaze flickered between him and the PADDs, then back up again. ‘You okay?’

‘I… I’m fine. It’s nothing.’ Beckett reached to stack up his PADDs. ‘There’s just a lot of analysis work and…’

‘Woah.’ Logan lifted a hand. ‘You don’t have to explain nothing to me. I was just saying “hey.” You want me to leave you alone?’

‘No,’ blurted Beckett before he’d thought, but found he didn’t regret it. He hesitated, fidgeting with his spoon. ‘I dunno.’

‘If you’ll forgive how I sometimes can’t help but spot things…’ Logan gave a wry, apologetic tap of his cortical implant, ‘it looks like you got a hell of a message.’

‘If you saw that,’ Beckett said, more tensely, ‘then you know I can’t talk about it.’

‘Except I got the clearance.’ At Beckett’s blank, suspicious stare, Logan gave a faint smile. ‘You can check.’

He did, muttering, ‘The captain doesn’t have this clearance,’ as he flicked through files.

‘The captain didn’t work for Intel for years. They were happy to see the back of me but I got no doubt they’re keeping me on the books for a rainy day. Is it rainy?’

‘It’s… spitting,’ Beckett admitted, peering at the screen. Logan was right. He set his PADD down and glanced about the lounge, near-empty at this time of day. Then he leaned in. ‘The agreement between K’Var and Rencaris needs scuttling.’

‘I mean, no shit it’d be bad for us, bad for the Republic, if it went ahead.’ But Logan’s gaze was guarded. ‘There’s a reason they ain’t just told Valance to stop it?’

‘As if we’re politically allowed to order a captain to try to stop the Empire – nominally our allies – from making a resupply pact with a wholly independent world.’ Beckett rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s ignore that K’Var will use this to attack another ally. Command are abiding by the old norms like it’s twenty years ago, pretending nothing’s changed.’

‘So it falls on you. By hook or by crook, I’m betting?’

‘By…’ Beckett sighed, tossing his hand in the air. ‘They’ve not said “by any means necessary.”’

‘Nah. That’d expose them too much if you didn’t deliver.’

‘But I think I’ve got to deliver, Jack.’ Beckett’s expression folded, gaze going distant. ‘I don’t just mean for the good of the sector. I… there’s implications… I owe people…’

‘You ran up a line of credit with the division,’ said Logan, softer and more sympathetic as he watched the younger man, ‘and now they’re comin’ to collect. That’s the problem with an organisation that runs in favours an’ discretion as much as it does. It’s never worth getting indebted to them like that, kid -’

‘You’re alive because I got indebted,’ Beckett said, sharper than he meant. ‘How do you think Endeavour managed to follow that probe through transwarp? You think Airex packed twenty years of study into an afternoon?’

That brought a pause, Logan sitting back on the bench. His expression twisted as he chewed on this nugget, before he eventually asked, ‘Who knows about that?’

‘Nobody. Airex maybe suspects. But nobody really.’ Beckett didn’t look up from his notes.

‘Thawn?’

‘Nobody.’

By not looking up, he didn’t realise Logan had leaned forward until he dropped his voice and said, ‘Anyone said thank you for that?’

Beckett paused. ‘I didn’t do it for thanks.’

‘You’re owed ‘em anyway. Your superiors give you any starting point with this assignment?’

‘No.’ He scrubbed his face with his hand. ‘There’s so little known about the situation that I’m the only expert. So it falls to me to stop this alliance.’

‘Without, I expect, tellin’ Valance.’

‘She has to keep our reputation,’ Beckett found himself sneering as he scrolled through records on Brok’tan, as if they’d give him a charged phaser he could shoot at the Klingons’ negotiations. ‘So our hands are clean.’

‘Anythin’ I can do?’

Now Beckett looked up. ‘You’re out, Jack -’

‘Ain’t no such thing. They’ll call if it’s convenient.’

‘And I won’t.’ Beckett hesitated, surprised by his own forcefulness. Then he sighed. ‘If I think of anything, I’ll… I’ll say. But just this? It… helped.’

Logan gave a tight smile. ‘A word of advice?’

‘Sure. Because I have no idea how I’m going to do… anything.’

‘That’s the point. Don’t ask yourself “what would a super cool, awesome intelligence operative do?” That ain’t the point. Play to your strengths. You’re in this job for a reason.’

‘I’m in this job because of my father,’ said Beckett, fighting a scowl.

‘An’ I were in the job ‘cos I was an xB at a time I had no other choices. These are how and why they hook us in. It ain’t why they want us. Think about it, Nate: what was your biggest professional win?’

Beckett worked his jaw. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Think about it. Figure it out. You don’t need to tell me. But that’s how you do this job: playing to your strengths.’

‘And what about if I should do this? Lie to the captain? Go behind her back?’

Logan faltered at that, drumming his fingertips on the table. ‘These aren’t bad orders. They ain’t illegal orders. They ain’t even immoral orders. What happens to the Republic if this deal goes ahead? These are just the kind of orders Starfleet don’t like to say out loud.’

‘There’s a reason for that.’

‘If you don’t want to do it…’ Logan worked his jaw. ‘Find a way to say that. Make the most of havin’ an influential father. You got choices others don’t. But I can’t make that decision for you.’

‘I wasn’t asking you to -’

‘You’ve had one foot out the door for this whole job. You gotta think about why you took it. Why you want it. If you want it. An’ take it from there.’ Logan stood and picked up his half-empty mug. ‘See you later, kid.’

Alone, and with more questions than answers, Beckett sat with one drink, then another. Staring at the bulkheads, at his PADDs, at the gentle curves of Rencaris III out the window, didn’t help. It just meant ideas fizzed faster in his head, circling and going nowhere. So he did what he always did when he couldn’t move forward: pulled out his journal, that leather-bound, paper-paged hub of all his thoughts and considerations. Writing by hand always ordered things; he had to make decisions about what to write, which made them more real in turn.

He flicked to an empty page and picked up his pen. Only for his eyes to fall on the last notes he’d written and, brow furrowed, he read. And flicked back. And read more. Read all of his last entry.

And when he was done reading about his recollections and reflections from his trip the Rencaris Institute of History and Culture, he picked up his PADD, and went looking for more things to read.