‘Wouldn’t this be easier to do this down in the security office? We can make sure people are comfortable.’

Kowalski gave Rhade a dubious look as the turbolift whisked them down to the section of Gateway where the Teros refugees were being hosted. ‘That’ll make it look like we think they’ve all done something wrong.’

Rhade’s brow furrowed. ‘Won’t it look like we’re taking them seriously?’

‘There’s been a murder on the station. It’s serious.’ Kowalski rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Respectfully, Commander, you’re thinking like we’re in the Core Worlds. There, a show of strength from Starfleet or local law enforcement is reassuring. It reminds people that their protectors are around. What do you think Romulan refugees think of a Starfleet show of strength?’

Rhade, the son of a Betazoid noble house, gave a gentle sigh. ‘I suppose you’re right. That’s good thinking, Chief.’

‘I’m from Ajilon Prime,’ Kowalski mumbled self-effacingly. ‘I know frontiers.’

The turbolift halted to admit them to where the Teros refugees were being housed. It had taken delicate planning to make sure they were all kept together so they could be properly assessed and helped by the medical staff and the colonial planning team, without giving them the impression they were being corralled or even imprisoned. In the end, the refugees had been given some degree of choice, and chosen to stick together even if that meant their surroundings were a little less luxurious. Large groups were housed on corridors with sleeping and communal areas, but they were bunkrooms and small shared spaces, rather than the comfortable guest quarters which Gateway could offer but would have scattered them across the station.

They were in the corridor where Voler had lived, and Rhade kept silent as Kowalski gathered the other Romulans in the rather spartan communal area to talk with them. They’d already been told Voler was dead, so Rhade was spared witnessing that shock, but for a telepath this was almost worse. With the initial surprise wearing off, the grief oozed out of them like oil, while terror coiled tight around chests and throats and threatened to choke. They had come to the Midgard System for a better life, and now one of their own had been brutally taken away.

‘Anyone who would have wanted to hurt him was left behind on Teros,’ explained a gruff, matriarchal, older Romulan woman, who hushed the babbling confusion and fear that had begun to spill out over the gathering as Kowalski began his questions. ‘If you came to Gateway, you came to get away from violence. Not to bring it.’

‘I hear you,’ said Kowalski with a small nod, the big man with his craggy features unfailingly gentle when faced with the vulnerable. ‘Do you know who he spent time with here? If there’s anyone he met?’ He looked here to the gangly Romulan teenagers; Voler was a little older than them, but had acted as something of a big brother, a youth forced to grow up so fast he had to become responsible for others.

But there were only confused shakes of the head. Voler had been quiet and thoughtful, with no blood family of his own, but he’d still been a part of the refugee community. He’d been working hard with colonial affairs in the planning of what the surface-side settlement might look like, but otherwise had kept to his own. Nobody had any idea why he might go to the storage rooms, or who he might have left the housing section at night to go and see.

When they finished their questioning, the older Romulan woman slipped away from the crowd and joined them on what felt like a long walk down the corridor to the turbolift. ‘Is it true, Chief?’ she asked Kowalski, and Rhade felt her sense of trust in the security chief, who had been hands-on with them, far more than him, the stern senior officer who represented Starfleet’s indifference much more to her. ‘Is it true they had… done things to Voler?’

Kowalski grimaced, clearly mulling over what truths to tell. ‘It wasn’t pretty,’ he admitted at last. ‘Whoever did this planned it and wanted to hurt him. That’s all you need to know.’

The Romulan woman didn’t look much appeased by this, but she did let them go. Rhade waited until they were back on the turbolift before he shifted his feet. ‘She might have known something. About the horn. About the chains.’

‘Maybe,’ Kowalski grunted, ‘but I want to be sure we’re asking the right questions before I say there was some sick ritualistic shit.’ He reached into his uniform jacket and pulled out a PADD. ‘Forensics was done with the… props. The chains were civilian-fare replication.’

‘Federation civilian replication?’

‘Yeah,’ said Kowalski, drawing the word out. ‘But remember that Teros had the industrial replicator we left there.’ The we almost took Rhade by surprise; there had always been such a tone of accusation when anyone talked about Endeavour’s aborted relief mission to Teros two years prior that it felt odd for someone to admit to being a part of it. Moreso, Kowalski had been on the surface when Endeavour had begun to withdraw and the people of Teros had rioted, the violence spilling out and causing the death of helmsman Connor Drake. At the time, Rhade had still been in the brig after refusing Rourke’s orders in orbit, but Kowalski had suffered losses at the hands of these people and continued to help.

So it seems. What about the others who lost someone because these wretched people felt they hadn’t been helped enough, and lashed out?

Rhade had to swallow the ungenerous thought. ‘What about the horn?’

‘That gets weirder,’ Kowalski allowed, oblivious to any of Rhade’s discomfort. ‘It’s real. The horn of a furjweit, which is apparently a fairly-common bovine creature farmed on a lot of Romulan worlds? Native to somewhere in the empire then bred and spread out. That’s as much as we’ve got so far.’

‘That would need importing.’

‘Yeah, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to be flagged on an inventory. It could have been brought by refugees, too – some keepsake from home.’

‘It would be strange,’ mused Rhade, ‘if they replicated chains on Teros and then used them in a murder on Gateway.’

‘It would be strange to truss a young man up with chains, slit his throat, and then impale him in the heart with a cow’s horn.’ Kowalski put the PADD away. ‘Colonial Affairs next. If Voler was working with some of them, maybe they know a little more of his comings and goings.’

‘You sound unconvinced.’

Kowalski winced and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I just think… taking people off Teros really hurts the power of the Rebirth Movement. We’d ask why someone would take a grudge away from Teros and not act on it until they got to Gateway, but there’s a damn good reason: to make this resettlement fail.’

Rhade thought of Petty Officer Amaru, so convinced that the Romulans were bringing their inherently violent ways to the placidity of the Midgard system. The Rebirth Movement were not the only ones who would have liked to see the resettlement onto the surface of Alfheim fail. But Kowalski either knew that or would not take well to hearing ill of one of his officers, and Rhade held his tongue.

The Romulan refugees were housed in a rough-and-ready part of the station converted hastily to meet their needs. Colonial Affairs, however, occupied sparkling-white premises far closer to Gateway’s recreation areas and seats of power, and even on one starbase the transition was like night and day. Here, there was no tangy taste of metal or ripples of terror and grief enough to make him choke.

Here, they were greeted by civilian Federation staff who gave them refreshments and ushered them through to the offices of the team working on the surface settlement for the refugees. Windows stretched across the far bulkhead boasted holographic projections of the gentle hills of Alfheim, showing the horizon and time of day as if they were near the settlement location itself, a comfortable island far from the human habitations of the planet.

Yes, they had worked with Voler. Yes, he was giving feedback on the planning and even looking to be trained in some of the housing systems to help the settlement be as self-sustaining as possible. No, they had no idea who he spent time with personally or why anyone would hurt him.

Perhaps it was the rich dichotomy, the sense that these people sat in an ivory tower of comfort and planned every inch of the lives of the desperate, housed in harsh metal confines, that made it hard for Rhade to focus. Perhaps it was that they were telling him nothing new. Or perhaps, in the absence of the telepathic onslaught of being around the refugees, something else in him rose to fill the absence. But their words began to wash over him, and his gaze settled on the holographic display of the gentle horizon of the Alfheim islands that would be their new home.

For the mere span of one blink, the skies in the projection blazed red.

‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ Kowalski sighed as they left the office and returned through the lobby.

Rhade swallowed hard, realising he’d followed Kowalski on automatic and that these were the first words to properly sink in. ‘We’re closing off avenues.’

‘And not opening new ones.’ But the turbolift doors opened before they got there, and when a wiry human man in his forties stepped out, Kowalski stopped and brightened. ‘And there’s someone we wanted to talk to. Mister Grimm!’

Rhade only knew of John Grimm, having never met the man before. His exact title escaped Rhade’s recollection at that moment, with the blood rushing in his ears and difficulty focusing, but he knew he was a staffer in the civilian government of the Midgard system, with its seat of power in the Alfheim colony, who had been running point on the liaisons between the local government and the plans to settle Romulan refugees on the surface. He was at least, by reputation, not the most vehement voice in opposition.

Grimm’s eyes lit up when he saw Kowalski. He was a hale and fit man with a swimmer’s build, grey creeping in at his temples, and wore the sort of suit Rhade knew was expensive and well-made but to the extent it hardly looked it, offering a simple, rather than showy, elegance. He made a bee-line for the officers, hand extended. ‘Chief Kowalski – exactly who I wanted to see.’ He dropped his voice as they came together at the outskirts of Colonial Affairs’s lobby, quiet and to the side but hardly private. ‘I heard about the Romulan boy.’

‘Damned rumour-mill,’ Kowalski muttered. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s bad business. Voler?’

Grimm’s brow furrowed in thought. ‘I know the name. That’s all, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Of course, you know that if the Midgard government can do anything to ease this process I’ll help, but once word of this gets out there’s going to be an absolute mess…’

And like that, his words fell into the usual politics of evading and excusing. Rhade knew that even if he was sincere, there would be people in local government who’d be delighted at the excuse to pull the plug on this settlement, but it was still enough for the air to begin again rushing in his ears, for his focus to drift.

Kowalski said something, and Rhade tried to blink back into focus, only to taste a bitterness in his mouth. At that, Grimm turned to face him, and Rhade had to grit his teeth and offer a forced smile as it felt again like cold metal binding tightened around his chest and throat.

Grimm stuck out a hand. ‘…a pleasure to meet you, Commander,’ he said, words just about audible through the rushing in his ears.

Rhade’s fingertips tingled as he shook the hand, unsure how hard he was gripping. ‘Mister Grimm.’

If Grimm noticed anything was amiss, he didn’t comment. ‘I need to talk with the planning committee,’ he said, nodding past them. ‘Touch base about… all of this. I’m very reassured to see you’re on it, Chief Kowalski.’ He looked back to Rhade. ‘And that the Old Man has sent his best, Mister Rhade.’

Grimm had left and they were back on the turbolift by the time the rushing in Rhade’s ears faded and he heard Kowalski say, ‘You alright, Commander?’

He’d taken a sharp step back when the turbolift doors had shut, he realised. Again, his mouth tasted bitter as he swallowed, and Rhade rubbed his temples to push back the roiling pressing on the front of his senses. ‘I didn’t get much sleep even before… all of this.’

‘Then you should maybe get some sleep now.’ Kowalski didn’t make it sound like a suggestion. ‘You look terrible.’

‘Maybe.’ Rhade felt Kowalski’s eyes on him, and shifted. ‘I’ve got a meeting down in A&A. Then I’ll sleep.’

‘Anthropologists can wait.’

‘Maybe.’ Kowalski didn’t push this second evasion, and the two men sank into silence, the big security chief likely with far more to worry about than his former team leader looking sleep-deprived.

And in truth, Rhade felt awake, alert – too much so. All around, Gateway Station hummed with life, and his telepathic senses thrummed with the feel of it all. Life, hope, excitement – and pain. He was not normally so sensitive to the station, and even if he did reach out, did not normally feel such an underbelly of anguish, grief, fear, like a rot somewhere deep in the heart.

Perhaps he did need sleep. But then Rhade blinked again, and this time for just a split second saw the turbolift doors again daubed in blood in a branching pattern before it vanished. It took effort to not gasp, to not take a step back, and he drove his fingernails into the palm of his hand as he stood firm.

Greg Carraway was far away, on Teros. But after the ritualised murder of a young Romulan, he knew Kowalski was wrong about one thing: anthropologists could not wait.