By the time she heard the crack, it was too late.  Yuulik’s reflexes were too slow, always had been.  The layer of ice over the puddle felt reliably sturdy until it suddenly wasn’t.  Her boot crunched through the ice, like a spoon smashing through the crystallised sugar atop a dessert.

Yuulik cried out in panic when she dropped into the frigid water.  She only submerged up to her knees, but she didn’t know that for certain until her soles hit solid earth.  The puddle wasn’t too deep.  Even though Leander Nune was ten paces away from her, he reached out for her as if he could somehow catch her at a distance.  He spread his arms just as openly as his heart, just as clumsily too.  In his frantic gesture, he lost his tricorder, sending it spinning through the air.

Ketris, the Romulan botanist, remained crouched in the shrubbery, a mere meter from Yuulik’s predicament.  Her eyes always spoke of a wisdom that she clutched like a secret, along with an air of disappointment that no one else could see it too.  Her response was a dismissive huff.  Ketris dropped her gaze to the lichen she was scanning in the permafrost, as if Yuulik’s safety was of no consequence.

His dark eyes locked onto Yuulik, Nune asked, “Commander, are you injured?”

Before her first thought, Yuulik’s gut reaction was to fear that Nune’s question was a ploy.  A Betazoid mind game to imply she was weakened, incapable.  But it wasn’t Nune who would have anything to gain from such a strategy.  In the past year, he’d shown little sign of career ambition. He would even cringe at the mere suggestion of showing unkindness to Yuulik.  If anything, the warmth conveyed by his voice was welcome in the frigid air.

The prospect of looking foolish —incapable— in front of the away team was literally unthinkable.  This was her away team.  This was her planetary survey.  From the moment the scout ship Grus had located Buccarro IV, Captain Taes had deferred every detail of planning the survey to Lieutenant Commander Yuulik in her scope as chief science officer.  She was the chief!

Because Nune’s question was unfathomable, Yuulik could only reply by not replying.  She fetched a vial from her satchel and purposefully dunked it into the puddle to collect a water sample, as if this had been her plan all along.

“A pity this planet was never inhabited,” Yuulik remarked.  In defiance of the chill seeping through her boots and the grey skies, Yuulik spoke in a bright and eager tone.  “The remains would be pristinely preserved in these low temperatures.”

Nune squinted at her and shook his head.

Without saying a word, Lieutenant T’Kaal strode near and proffered a hand.  Her bland stare showed indifference if Yuulik chose to accept the hand or not.  Yuulik accepted the help without saying anything about it and stomped out of the puddle.


As Yuulik moved nearer, T’Kaal stated, “If I may, commander, wishing for dead bodies may cause the away team distress.”

Yuulik smirked at T’Kaal, appreciating the boldness.  Bold and wrong, but at least bold.

“Are you telling me to calm down?” Yuulik asked.

Cocking her head to the right, T’Kaal replied, “I wouldn’t say that.  I offer an observation freely.  Do with it what you will.  Since you travelled into the distant past to repair the Krenim paradox engine, I have noticed a growing predisposition for morbid conversation.  Perhaps, it was earlier still, since Addie—”

Firmly, Yuulik countered with, “You’re mistaken.  Would you have me lead without emotion?”

Feeling doubly exposed between the piercing air and T’Kaal’s piercing observations, Yuulik yanked the hood of her field jacket up over her head.  T’Kaal knew better than anyone about the challenge Captain Taes had set for Yuulik.  Whatever happened in T’Kaal and Taes’s mind meld during the Dominion incursion had convinced Taes to give Yuulik a chance as department head, as long as Yuulik did a better job of minding her temper.

T’Kaal took a step back.  The expression on her face was unreadable and her body language stiff.

“Don’t do that,” T’Kaal requested.

“Do what?” Yuulik asked.

T’Kaal stated, “Two days ago, you warned me not to enforce pure logic upon the shipmates assigned to my meteorology analysis.”

“That’s not what happened,” Yuulik immediately snapped back.  “I complimented you.  You’re a very bright girl.  Very educated.  I thought your team could learn a lot from you, but they don’t have to become you.”

“Respectfully, commander, those were not the words you used,” T’Kaal said.  “Not the exact words.”

Exasperated by T’Kaal’s pedantic deconstruction of a single comment, Yuulik spat, “Forgive me for a teaching moment about showing grace to colleagues!”  Yuulik shrugged helplessly at her.  “Taes says I may better learn emotional management by teaching to others.”

“You made no mention of grace, commander,” T’Kaal said.  “Expansive emotions cause me no distress.  I was skilled in emotional regulation from a young age.  However, my meteorology team were all victims of the Borg on Frontier Day.  The collective took away their emotions and enforced its twisted logic on all of us.”

Delivered with impassive finality, T’Kaal said, “I would never.”

The arrival of Doctor Flavia trampled over Yuulik’s response.  Like the scientists under her command from the Romulan Free State, Flavia was entombed in a thick silver parka that was notable for its massive shoulders.  Yuulik hadn’t seen Flavia touch a sensor device since the planetary survey began.  Her hands hadn’t even come out of her pockets once.

“T’Kaal, be a dear and fetch the dynoscanners from the tent?” Flavia pleaded.  Her vowels were elongated in a saccharine tone that had no energy behind it.  “The team at the cryo-volcano aren’t getting much use from their tricorders.  They need the right tool for the job.  You’ll know what to do.”

T’Kaal complied and stepped back.  She retreated into the tent they had set up as base camp on the planet.  Once T’Kaal was out of sight, Flavia put herself in front of Yuulik.

“A little friendly advice?” Flavia languidly said.  “You can’t let the hired hands speak to you like that.  If Ketris clapped back like that in public, I would have her executed.”

Yuulik winced.  “You’re joking.”

Flavia hugged herself tighter within her parka.  She vocalised a soft “tt”.

“Your Federation has laws, yes?” Flavia asked.  “Laws against genetic manipulation; your own Starfleet chain of command…”

“Of course,” Yuulik replied.  “Obviously.”

“Mmm,” Flavia said.  “Obviously.  Any law is a promise of violence from a government to its citizens.  If you break a law, you will be persecuted.  Security officers are a secret occupying force, hidden among you, prepared to take away your freedoms at a moment’s notice.  How are the Tal Shiar any worse than that?  At least they’re honest about who and what they are.”

Yuulik’s combadge chirped and projected Captain Taes’s voice, interjecting, “Taes to Yuulik.”

Startled by the sudden intrusion, Yuulik lurched back and swallowed a gasp.  Had Taes overheard any of the past three minutes?

Tentatively, Yuulik tapped her combadge.  “Yuulik here,” she said.

“Prepare for emergency beam out,” Taes ordered.  “We’ve received a distress call from the USS Grus and I’ve set an intercept course.  Something’s got them, and they don’t know what.  Let’s find out!”

While gazing into a darkened display panel, Kellin’s reflection stared right back at him.  He couldn’t understand the geometry of how his blond curls were hanging over his forehead.  That wasn’t how he’d styled his hair in the morning.  He fussed with his hair, trying and failing to get it out of his face.  He lost all sense of time until the hiss of subspace signal-distortion sharpened to a piercing shriek.

Commander Jeovanni’s voice was garbled by whatever interference lay between where he was transmitting from the USS Grus and the USS Constellation.  While the audio played from the speaker wafer in the overhead, half his words were lost to the digital noise.  But it wasn’t only the subspace distortions.  Even with his voice flattened through a hailing frequency, Jeovanni normally sounded resonant.  Speaking with his whole chest.  He usually sounded melodious.  Kellin thought he heard Jeovanni’s voice crack a few times, too.  

That sound gave Kellin a stomachache.

“Shields are– –to forty-seven percent,” Jeovanni said.  “Sensor read– –as well be in Bynar for all the sense–”  Another rising hiss of interference drowned out his words.  “Ionic cyclone damaged one of our impulse– –half strength and dropping.“

Elsewhere in the lab, Kellin heard another voice.  The young Zaldan’s voice was far more legible because he was physically in the room.  Even so, his voice also cracked when he spoke.

“This was the last known location of the Grus,” Dolan said.

Kellin moved to stand behind Melchor Dolan.  They’d been friends since the science officer’s first posting aboard Starbase 72.  Dolan raised a hand to manipulate a hologram projected on the broad astrometrics viewscreen before them.  Judging by Dolan’s posture in the chair and the tightness of his uniform around the shoulders, Dolan looked like he’d been working out.  A wireframe of the Saber-class Grus appeared in its relative position within the nebula, which had only been designated as D-067 so far.

“We can’t keep track of our own search pattern through the nebula’s severe gravimetric distortions,” Dolan reported.  “We’ve no way to know if we’re going in circles over the same patch of nebula.”

Again.  Dolan’s voice cracked again.  Kellin had always known Dolan to speak from the pit of his chest, with his whole heart.  All that had changed about six months ago, ever since Dolan had admitted to dating the Changeling who had posed as Kellin aboard Constellation when he was selected as executive officer.

“Dee, We’re totally sensor-blind on the bridge since we followed Grus’s distress signal into the nebula,” Kellin said.  “Flavia is futzing with a pulse?  She thinks she can approximate echolocation?”

From the chair beside Dolan, Science Chief Yuulik laughed.  “In this bog?”

“That’s why I promised Captain Taes you were cooking up a brilliant alternative, buddy,” Kellin said, almost pleading.  He squeezed Dolan by the shoulders, giving him a playful shake.

Defensively, Dolan said, “Ah, sir, you over-promised.  Every particle in the nebula has been ionized!  Captain Jeovanni reported nothing like this from the past week of surveying the nebula.  I’m sorry, I don’t know how to make the navigational sensors punch through this interference.”

In an absurdly high-pitched voice, Yuulik interjected, “I don’t want to hear that kind of negative self-talk, lieutenant junior grade.  Despite us being buffeted by an ion front, you haven’t unspooled the lateral sensor pallets.  That’s… impressive.  I knew I promoted you for a reason!”

“Gah!” Dolan shouted.  He recoiled from Yuulik, his chair rolling back into Kellin’s chest.  Dolan reached out for Kellin, his palms taking purchase on Kellin’s forearms.  Almost as soon as he’d done it, Kellin could feel Dolan’s fingers going rigid.

“Why are you being nice to me?” Dolan asked Yuulik, suddenly crossing his arms over his chest.  “Are you a Changeling now?”

“Don’t be foolish,” Yuulik said, her voice brittle. Her gaze darted in Kellin’s direction. Seeing the desperate curiosity in her eyes made Kellin feel like an amoeba under her microscope.

Bombastically, Yuulik went on to say, “Who else but me would point out the irony of the Grus going missing when she was literally our pathfinder scout through the Delta Quadrant for the past five months?”

“And what about you, Yuulik?  What brilliant plan are you designing to outshine Flavia?” Kellin asked.  Between Yuulik searching for his pain, Dolan’s instinctive search for comfort from Kellin, and his own fear for Captain Jeovanni, the words came out too gruffly.  Kellin could hear it himself as it was happening.

Yuulik leaned over the large LCARS console, tapping at its interface. Three more scrolls of sensor readings were layered over the nebula representation on the viewscreen.

“I have a gut feeling about the right direction,” Yuulik said cryptically, “but I can’t visualise it enough to put it to words yet.”

“You really are Yuulik,” Dolan flatly said.  He scooted his chair closer to the LCARS desk, too.  “You’d rather be correct alone than wrong together.“

Yuulik looked at Dolan and smiled.  It looked like the expression was paining her.

“Interesting,” she said.

Kellin cleared his throat.  “Yuulik, can I see you back here for a minute?”  He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.  An expression of confusion marred the smile on Yuulik’s face, but she nodded her agreement.  Yuulik followed Kellin to the astrometric lab’s back corner, and Kellin watched Dolan over Yuulik’s shoulder to see if Dolan was listening in.

“What are you doing?” Kellin asked in a conspiratorial whisper.  He waved his hands, indicating a noxious aura around Yuulik.  “This masquerade you’re giving is deeply unsettling.”

Yuulik shoved him in the chest, and she screamed, “You told me to do this!”  She sucked in a ragged breath before she continued in a quieter hiss: “You told me you’re not impressed by my brilliance, but you’ll be impressed by how many officers want to follow me.  You said you’d brag exponentially on my performance review for every success I mentor out of my team.”

Kellin cringed.  “You’re doing all that because of what I said?” he asked incredulously.

“You know I prefer a junior officer who shuts up and listens to me,” Yuulik said, “but your advice on mentoring sounds like the type of metaphysical nonsense Captain Taes would believe too.  C’mon, take credit for it.  I really valued your opinion this once.“

Yuulik looked down at the deck.

Even softer, she said, “Changeling Kellin never would have thought of that.”

“Commanders!” Dolan interrupted.  “We’ve lost the subspace signal from the Grus.“

“No!” Kellin exclaimed, and then, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”  Kellin chased back to the astrometrics station.  As if to taunt him, the holographic representation of the Grus winked out.

Too afraid to say it above a whisper, Kellin asked, “Was she destroyed?”

With just a glance at the readings on the viewscreen, Yuulik said, “No, there’s no sign of a matter/anti-matter obliteration.  We would have detected an energy discharge even through the gravimetric distortions.”  

Kellin couldn’t understand how she had learned so much from just a glance.  She didn’t follow him either.

“You’re my brilliant boy, Dolan,” Yuulik said effusively. “I trust you’re going to work the problem.  But, alas, I won’t see it.  My place is on the bridge.”

“Yuulik?” Kellin asked, but she had already ducked out of the lab.

“Commander, there’s something… else?” Dolan said, but he couldn’t have sounded less confident.  “Something else in our path.”

“Is it the Grus?” Kellin asked.

Dolan touched a contact on his panel, and a visual sensor feed took over the whole viewscreen.  It looked like little more than a red sandstorm, occasionally lanced with lightning; the particles of the nebula whipped up by the gravimetric distortion Dolan had described.  There was a single grid of the screen, though, where the sandstorm seemed to be swirling in a repeating pattern.  Everything else was chaotic and random, but a singular swirl was gaining momentum.

While he continued manipulating the sensor controls, Dolan bluntly asked, “Why do you spend so much time with Yuulik?”

“Because she’s my best friend,” Kellin answered guilelessly.

“You told me Captain Taes is your best friend,” Dolan countered.

“Taes is my best friend,” Kellin replied.

“That’s nonsense,” Dolan said.

“No, that’s nonsense,” Kellin said, pointing at the impenetrable nebula on the screen.

“I just saw Yuulik hit you.  You should press charges,” Dolan insisted.

“Hitting is one of Yuulik’s love languages,” Kellin remarked fondly.  “I know she would never lie to me, and I know she would never pity me.  Maybe it’s not much, but that’s a comfort.”

Constellation’s spaceframe groaned like an old house buffeted in a hurricane.  There was a hiccup in the inertial dampeners –just a microscopic one– but it still sent Kellin reeling backwards.  He crashed to the deck, rolling onto his shoulder and hip at the last moment to take the brunt of the impact.

“The readings make no sense!” Dolan exclaimed.  “It’s like a wormhole, but it’s weird?”

Through a painful sigh, Kellin lamented, “Why’d it have to be another wormhole?”

Dolan cried, “We’re caught in its gravimetric wave.  It’s pulling us in!”

There was a subtle dissonance swelling on the bridge of Constellation, and Captain Taes couldn’t find an adequate grip on the root to pluck it out.  

There was no outright conflict or calamity between her officers.  Taes couldn’t see it clearly enough to say the words aloud yet.  Sometimes, there was a pause before electroplasma resources were shifted from one system to another.  Other times, there was an order that needed to be repeated twice.  It was tactical and science changing the focus of the same sensor instrument simultaneously.  The disconnection between her senior staff was as elusive as it was fleeting.  

It never happened all at once, but it happened just enough to be noticeable.

Taes had assembled this crew amid the crucible of the Dominion incursion of Deneb.  Despite the manipulations of a Changeling disguised as first officer, the bridge crew had been born in an effortless harmony.  These explorers had pulled together in the unfamiliar world of espionage, desperately fighting for their lives against time lost Jem’Hadar.  Taes had observed that rebuilding the ship ahead of their exploratory mission to the Delta Quadrant had bonded them even closer together.  Only now, as the months in the deep of Delta dragged on, something had shifted.

Losing their way through the nebula had been a prime example.  Flavia had been so engrossed in measuring the subspace harmonics emanating from the tear in subspace that she never got around to warning of its dangers.  Luxuriating in her own voice, Flavia held the bridge as a captive audience to the minutia of her analysis of subspace oscillations.  Once Constellation had been caught up in the gravimetric undertow of the subspace aperture, Ensign Cellar Door was the first to moan about how they would all die.  And yet it was only the axionotic computational power of Cellar’s mind that protected the crew from far greater damage and injury.  He maneuvered the thrusters in a way that allowed them to ride the gravitational waves and tachyon flows rather than crash against them.

On the other side of the subspace tear, there had been a momentary surge of shared immersion.  They had all resonated on the same frequency of curiosity about the network of subspace corridors they discovered.  However, there were only so many hours a crew could spend staring at the whirling amber light on the viewscreen.  The shared energy had dissipated after the first couple days of wandering the corridors with sensors open wide.  There were limits to Taes’ influence on a one-on-one basis.  She gathered the senior staff in the observation lounge to unify them towards a singular purpose.  

What would that purpose be?  She didn’t know yet.  The only way to learn was by stepping into it.

“From our first moments after crossing the Barzan wormhole, I requested access to traverse the Turei Alliance’s Underspace corridors.  Starfleet’s Delta Exploration Initiative has been instrumental in negotiating foundational agreements for Starfleet explorers to navigate Underspace as a shortcut to locales across the Delta Quadrant.  Starship travel through this layer of subspace offers speeds far greater than any warp factor we know of,” Taes said, standing at the head of the conference table.  

Laid out on the table was a buffet of the senior staff’s favourite foods.  Sparkling above the food was a holographic star chart, demonstrating a sparse series of subspace corridors crossing much of the Delta Quadrant.

Taes pinched the bridge of her nose.  “My requests to the Turei were all denied.  While the Turei gave me no tangible explanation, I suspect our initial mission to scout the borders of known-Borg space was deemed too inflammatory.”

Sitting to Taes’ right, First Officer Kellin Rayco nodded at Taes’s words with the same weight as if they were laws of physics.  After chewing on a bite of fenza off the replicated bone, he eagerly swallowed to speak up.

“Considering the damage that’s been done to the Borg’s transwarp network,” Kellin remarked, “Underspace could prove mighty tempting if the collective somehow learned its secrets from us.”

Taes nodded back at Kellin, having suspected the same as one of three possible explanations.  She tilted her head at Yuulik and gave her a wink.  Sitting at the opposite head of the table, Yuulik returned Taes’s look with a toothy smile.  She spread her hands wide to indicate the holographic star chart between them all.

“In comparing all of our sensor readings to Starfleet’s logs, we and the starship Grus appear to have unwittingly found our way into Underspace.  These are the only access points to Underspace the Turei has told about us,” Yuulik said.  With a flick of her wrist, additional points of light appeared over the table.  “Through intelligence gathering and charting the Underspace tunnels, Starfleet has also learned of these access points.  To our knowledge, a centralized branch does not connect the access points.  A labyrinthine series of corridors diverges and intersect with no recognisable pattern.”

Without raising her voice, Flavia interjected, “You’ll notice, of course, there was no known access point in the nebula where we entered Underspace.  Either its location was kept secret by the Turei, or there was a reason the aperture was so gravimetrically unstable.  Because we have no context for where we entered, it remains unclear how near or far we are from Starfleet’s common routes through Underspace.”

Settling into her seat, Taes quickened a sip of tea before she asked, “How goes charting a reverse course back to the nebula?”

Hovering over his chair, Cellar Door dipped his beak-like hexagonal cone in a bit of body language that signalled defeat.

“Bad.  Real bad,” Cellar said in a stew of fear and shame.  “Our short-range navigational sensor assemblies were too badly damaged by the tachyon bursts and gravitational eddies.  We recovered the sensor telemetry from the probes we launched, but they were all destroyed by collision with debris in the network.  Sorry, captain, we have too little data about where we entered.”

“Without a map,” Yuulik added, “we can hardly identify the difference between spatial intersections and the apertures out of Underspace.  Given the tachyon turbulence, Constellation has wildly varying travel speeds as we pass from branch to branch of the tunnels.  Usually, we’re halfway to flying past the apertures by the time we spot them.  As we’re studying the last hourly data packet from USS Grus, their navigational data doesn’t correlate with ours.  They may have wandered down a different path.”

Chief Engineer Pagaloa offered, “We’ve recovered thirty-three percent of the navigational sensor pallets with replicated parts and repairs.  As for the rare detector materials, Captain, I was saving them until we started our loop back to the Barzan wormhole.  But I opened the stores. Repair teams have started the swap-outs.”

Through this, Flavia put her elbows on the conference table and interlaced her hands together in front of her face. She stared down Taes.

“Captain, may I suggest you and I retire to your ready room?” Flavia said.  Despite her choice of words, it sounded like a foregone conclusion.  As mission commander of the Romulan Free State’s scientists among the crew, Flavia was accustomed to great latitude.  She shifted her weight in her chair as if she were about to stand.

Taes gently shook her head.

“I think not,” Taes said.  “Our joint mission is as much about you and me navigating our priorities as it’s about finding our path through wonders like Underspace.  I’m comfortable with my crew hearing anything you need to say.”

“Henh. If you’re comfortable with it…” Flavia said, shrugging when she trailed off. “We have humoured your Starfleet spirit of adventure for long enough, captain. It is time we leave.”

“Tell me more about the method you’ve devised for doing so?” Taes asked.  As much as she tried not to sound condescending, she failed spectacularly.

Flavia leaned back in her chair.  She flopped a hand through the air to emphasise her recommendation.

“Pick a direction,” Flavia languorously said.  “Turn left.  And plow through the radial wall if that’s what it takes.”

Taes sipped at her tea.  She allowed space for the senior staff to receive Flavia’s recommendation and to consider it for themselves.  Kellin’s expression looked intentionally neutral.  Yuulik sniffed as if Flavia had just served a steaming plate of aged taspar.

Almost apologetically, Taes said, “No, I’m not prepared to abandon the Grus yet.”

“You gamble reaching into the penumbra to find a prize, but it may only be hiding wreckage and despair,” Flavia said to Taes.  She sounded exhausted, as she might sound from speaking to a recalcitrant child.  With further argument, Flavia began tearing apart the slice of vix vivax on her place.

“We can leave behind probes to continue the search,” Flavia said.  “A shuttle on autopilot if you must.  However, it’s time for Constellation to escape Underspace and conduct necessary repairs.”

Pagaloa drummed his fingertips on the table.  “That is– She does– that– That’s a good point,” he awkwardly said.  “We haven’t been able to recharge our shields much higher than seventy percent, given the constant barrage of micro-debris pinging our deflectors.”

“If you care not for your crew, might interstellar politics move you?” Flavia asked.  Her rebuttal was quicker now, her eyes tracking Taes with a hawk-like quality.

Taes only smirked.

Flavia explained herself, posing, “This ship is equipped with no cloaking device.  Would you risk endangering Starfleet’s relationship with the Turei by entering their Underspace without permission?”

“Our relationship can’t be that strong if my request was denied,” Taes said.  Instantly, she regretted it.  It was nearly as petty as Flavia’s dig about Taes not caring for crew safety.

After taking a bite of her vix vivax, Flavia spoke while she chewed, showing Taes how little regard she held for this debate.  Clearly, Flavia trusted that she had already won.

“This isn’t two smirking commanders mutually sneaking in on either side of the old neutral zone,” Flavia remarked.  “We could be perceived as invaders.  Couldn’t our presence be interpreted as an act of war?  The Romulan Free State will have no part in your conflicts on the impoverished side of the galaxy.”

“Even if I were to agree,” Taes said, “how do we identify an aperture early enough to change course?  Are your scientists prepared to climb into the Jeffries tubes and put their hands to work on repairing the navigational sensors?”

Flavia’s face darkened, but that wasn’t a metaphor.  Shadow fell over the burnt amber light flooding through the tall observation viewports.  Something was stalking Constellation.

The Kazon warship landed two more phaser strikes against Constellation’s shields, and Yuulik vowed bloody revenge on the warship’s maje.

As the bridge crew scattered out of the observation lounge to take their posts, the artificial gravity fluctuated under the strain of the warship’s attack.  Yuulik’s footing went wobbly, and she caught herself on the railing behind the command chairs.  That’s all it took.  In those seconds lost, Yuulik was eliminated in the fight for dominance of the bridge.

And it was all the fault of the awful Kazon.

Lieutenant T’Kaal was already seated at the forward science station beside flight control.  She had yet to apologise for her public chastisement of Yuulik on Buccarro IV.  Yuulik certainly wasn’t going to say something about it first.  That was one race Yuulik didn’t intend to win.  She would take that grudge to the grave if that’s what it took.

“Proximity alert,” T’Kaal announced.  “The Kazon ship is increasing speed.”

As Captain Taes settled into the centre chair, she ordered, “Match their speed, Mister Door.  Whatever it takes to maintain distance.  Put the Kazon on screen.  Reverse angle.”

The way Taes gave orders, she sounded like she was flirting with a replicator while ordering a cup of tea.  Truly, Yuulik questioned how the crew was supposed to understand any sense of urgency when Taes spoke in such a lyrical tone.

“It’s a Predator-class carrier, captain,” reported Lieutenant Commander Ache from the tactical station.  Judging by the dirigible-shaped predator on the viewscreen, it was easily three times the size of a Constitution III-class starship.  The shape of its forward section loomed over them with an anthropomorphised rictus grin as it increased to ramming speed.

Ache went on to say, “Between its deflector shields, plasma torpedo launchers and a dozen phaser emitters, Kazon carriers have proven a match for any Starfleet explorers passing through the Nacene Reach.  Our speed and maneuverability should be our advantage, but the corridors of Underspace limit our options.”

“I might re-think that speed if I were you,” taunted Doctor Flavia from the science two station.  While Yuulik had been stumbling into the railing, Flavia had taken up residence in the expansive sensor suite to the captain’s left.

“Long-range sensors are picking up a large metallic mass in our path of travel,” Flavia said.  “No energy readings emanating from the mass.  First look at the high-resolution series makes me suspect it is the remains of three distinct starships fused together.  Even the way they’re tumbling through the corridor, there’s insufficient clearance for Constellation between the fused wreck and the radial walls of Underspace.”

Yuulik craned her neck to examine the sensor readings on Flavia’s station, and almost immediately, she felt Nova’s eyes on her. Seated at the operations station, Nova offered an inviting nod to Yuulik. Judging by the direction of her head bob, Nova gestured to the guard railing around her workstation. A moment later, a holographic LCARS interface flashed to life over the railing. Yuulik scurried over to stand behind the holographic screen.

Taes looked at Yuulik.  Her expression was impassive –she barely moved– but Yuuilk could swear she saw an incipient sneer on her lips.

In an undertone, Taes asked Yuulik, “What are you doing at ops?”

In a heartbeat, Yuulik didn’t know how to answer.  The literal step-by-step of Flavia making it to the science station first was meaningless.  It was laughable as a justification.  Although it hadn’t been an intentional thought, Yuulik recognised a strange feeling within her.  There was an unfamiliar instinct to demure, to defer.  Taes had the presence of spirit to elicit that feeling in Yuulik like few others before… aside from her.  There wasn’t time to unpack what she was feeling or how those feelings had been tangled with this new instinct not to overshadow her science team.

Again, Nova saved her.

“We’re being hailed by the Kazon carrier, captain,” Nova said.

When Taes ordered the transmission on screen, a video feed of the carrier’s bridge appeared on the viewscreen.  One Kazon stood proudly in the middle of the bridge, wearing a green headband that crossed over his cranial ridges.  He was a centre of calm on the viewscreen, while Constellation’s bridge rocked again under the carrier’s phaser attack.

“I am Maje Midrell of the Kazon-Relora,” he said.  “I demand to speak with your captain to discuss the terms of your surrender.“

Despite his posture, Taes remained seated in the captain’s chair.  She only inclined her chin slightly.

“Surrender?  I offer no surrender,” Taes said in a quiet defiance.  She checked the readouts on her armrest panel.  Her voice expanded when she added, “I am Captain Taes of the Federation Starship Constellation.  We come in peace and friendship.  However, we appear to have lost our way on our mission of exploration.”

Midrell snorted.

“Did you sew that costume for yourself?” he asked.

“I earned this costume for myself,” Taes said surely.

“It’s true then.  You are Starfleet, overburdened with more arrogance than sense,” he said.  “I will speak to your captain now.“

Midrell turned his head, his eye-line shifting to regard Kellin in the executive officer’s chair beside Taes.

“I have claimed this subspace passage for the Kazon Collective.  By trespassing in our territory, you have become the property of the Kazon.  Prepare to be boarded or destroyed.“

Kellin demonstrated more sense than arrogance by not replying.  He only tilted his head to look at Taes.

“Your destruction is what we must discuss,” Taes urged.  “We are both of us on a collision course with abandoned starship wreckage.  They may have claimed this Underspace before you did.  We can’t locate any Underspace branches to escape between our present position and the wreck.”

Looking to his right, Midrell said, “Launch plasma torpedoes.”  Midrell then spit at the viewscreen, and the comms channel snapped closed.

Taes didn’t hesitate.  “I admire your direction, Commander Ache.  I’d prefer we out-maneuver the Kazon without firing on them.  However, if our shields approach fifty percent, target their forward phaser emitters.”

Beside her, Kellin clapped his hands together.  “We need options for maneuvers, people,” he enthused.  Although he added nothing productive to the conversation, his energy erased the tension of Taes’s stand-off with Midrell.  Nova squared her shoulders, and Flavia sat up in her chair.

Ache insisted, “There’s still time to destroy the wrecks.  I’m programming a full quantum torpedo spread to break down the starships into the smallest parts possible.”  While she spoke, her fingers danced over her vertical interface.  So focused was Ache on her task that she almost sounded robotic in her proposal.  That made it all the more noticeable when two of her simulations flashed red.  Her facial tentacles flailed angrily when the composites of the wreck exploded into a shower of debris that would still block Constellation’s path.

Nova’s dark eyes sparkled when she interjected, “I’ve been listening to captain’s logs about Federation starships who became lost in these subspace corridors.  Our Turei allies often used a resonance pulse to– to shove them out of Underspace.” –Her posture deflated again– “I understand the theory, but the exact frequency they used hasn’t been entirely clear from the logs.”

“Fear not,” Flavia announced with conviction.  She swiped a new LCARS frame to the centre of her display.  “I will find the frequency to kick the Kazon out of Underspace.”

Kellin corrected her by saying, “The wrecks ahead of us, not the Kazon.”

Flavia shrugged.  “So you say.”

Taes looked over her shoulder to ask for one more opinion.  She had already glanced at Yuulik several times, and now the depth of her brown eyes moved to drown her.

“Yuulik?” Taes asked.

Under Taes’s intense stare –and another attack by the Kazon– Yuulik gripped the railing to steady herself.  Nova was bright, impossibly bright, and Flavia rarely exposed a weakness.  Yuulik trusted their recommendations, but with Taes staring at her, Yuulik looked back and forth between the operations and science displays.  She studied the earliest stages of their plan and she didn’t like what she saw.

“Yuulik?” Taes asked, impatient now.

Taking care not to criticize what Flavia was already designing, Yuulik breezily asked, “How about full shields?  Our multiphasic shields have hardly been tested outside laboratories, aside from a Dominion skirmish here or there.  I don’t know that we’ve pushed the zero-point energy generation to its limit.”

“Full shields ahead,” Taes balked at Yuulik.  “You must be joking.”

On her holographic display, Yuulik expanded the doodle she had been scribbling in the corner.  A representation of the deflector dish appeared.  The waveform superimposed over the warp core power leads and force activators were clearly red-lined.

“Nova and Flavia are on the right path,” Yuulik said encouragingly, “But to extend our deflector screens over a wreck of that size?  It would burn out our deflector dish and still wouldn’t be powerful enough.”

“And that’s why you recommend we collide with the wreck; all power to forward shields?” Taes asked, baffled.

“Okay, fine,” Yuulik conceded.  “Flavia’s plan.  Flavia’s plan will work.  I believe in her.”

Taes swivelled her chair, facing aft and turning her back to most of the bridge crew.  Yuulik knew.  Yuulik knew what that meant.  Without even thinking, Yuulik closed the distance between them, approaching close enough for Taes to lower her voice.

“What’s your plan here?” Taes asked in a whisper.

“I don’t have a plan,” Yuulik admitted, her voice so soft, it came out hoarsely.  “You need me to break the laws of physics in an unfamiliar layer of subspace.”

“I know what I’m asking, and it wouldn’t be your first time,” Taes insisted.  “You saved the crew of the Brigadoon from a temporal inversion fold.”

“Nova did that,” Yuulik said defensively.

“She pushed the buttons,” Taes said.  “You did that.  So what are you doing now?  Who are you?”

“I don’t– It’s distracting,” Yuulik said.  “Managing people is harder than managing ideas.”

“Then forget all of that,” Taes snarled.  “The crew needs you.  I need you.”

Yuulik shook her head.  “Flavia will find another way.”

Taes simply said, “Stop.  I need Yuulik.”

“I hear you.  I’ll take care of it.”

There were equal parts desperation and resolve in how Yuulik assembled her think tank in the observation lounge.  In quick succession, she plucked junior officers from auxiliary stations around the bridge.  Yuulik claimed the ones who could be quickly replaced by other officers in reserve.  The ones Captain Taes might not miss while she steered the crew away from the edge of destruction.  What they didn’t know was that Yuulik chose these ones for one more reason: they once walked hand in hand into a dark frontier.

“–reverse the spatial distortion caused by the flux energy–“

“–train the conformal transmission grid to shape the shield bubble into a shield spike–“

“–close every EM window across the shields, and to hell with the navigational sensors–“

All of them were brilliant in their own fields, science officers T’Kaal and Dolan and even junior engineer Addae.  Although their recommendations were promising, their ideas needed testing and tempering.  Talking over one another in collaborative overlap, they demonstrated their solutions through the holograms projected over the conference table.  

A representation of USS Constellation hovered in the middle, with different hull sections magnified to show the modifications they recommended to field distortion amplifiers and coolant loops.  After entering Underspace from the Delta Quadrant days ago, no one could imagine a starship could travel through Underspace for this distance or duration.  Previous Starfleet transits beyond the Swallow Nebula had taken less than half the time, and Constellation’s long road was only leading them to a tragic collision course.  Ahead of Constellation spun the wreckage of three ancient starships crushed together.

Yuulik didn’t need a hologram to tell her what other accelerator was putting pressure on her think tank.  Through the tall viewports, the Predator-class Kazon warship fired its phasers again.  From where she was standing, Yuulk felt like the phasers were aimed at her — right at her.  The shields flared up to protect both the hull and Yuulik once again.

A tactical system telltale sounded, indicating quantum torpedoes had been launched.  On the status monitor set into the bulkhead, a forward view showed six quantum torpedoes lancing through the swirling caramel corridor of Underspace.  Despite their velocity, they took over ten seconds to explode into the starship wreckage that was blocking Constellation’s path.  It took less than ten seconds to see the wreck hadn’t broken up as much as Commander Ache had promised.

“There’s something we’re missing,” Yuulik said.  “Our multi-phasic shields were reverse-engineered from Borg technology, and their cubes fly far more recklessly than we ever do.”

Throwing his hands above his head in frustration, Dolan asked, “You still want to crash through the wreckage?”

Shrugging helplessly, Yuulik posed the question, “Isn’t that what the Borg would do?”

“You’ll kill us all!” Dolan shot back.

“No, I’m asking you,” Yuulik said.  “I’m literally asking you all: isn’t that what the Borg would do?”

T’Kaal closed her eyes.  “Don’t do this.”

Yuulik enthused, “There must be something.  Something you remember.  The engineers had no technical manuals to explain the full capabilities of Borg shield technology.  They could only make assumptions based on our existing knowledge.”

“I don’t remember anything like that,” Dolan insisted.

“Nothing?” Addae challenged him from across the table.  “I remember.  Fragments.  Nothing solid or tangible, but I remember.”

“You were all assimilated,” Yuulik starkly said.  “You all attempted to build Borg Cubes at the Avalon Fleet Yards.  Even if you all only remember fragments, what if you each remember different fragments?  Complementary pieces to a singular puzzle.”

T’Kaal opened her eyes.  “Don’t do this.”

“We have to pool your faded memories together to find a way out of Underspace,” Yuulik demanded.  “If it’s beyond Starfleet technology, then we have to think like the Borg, and we don’t have time to brainstorm.”

Shaking his head, Addae said, “We can’t do what you’re suggesting, commander.  Our Borg DNA has been eradicated.  We can’t form a collective.”

“T’Kaal did it,” Yuulik said, “When Captain Taes needed to rescue artificial wormhole secrets from the mind of a dying Trill scientist.  You’ve all been in a collective before.  A little mind meld would be simplicity.  Don’t you understand: we’re all about to die!”

Bounding into the warp engineering deck, Kellin moved like a man on a mission.  Because he was.  Not just any mission, but a mission for the captain.  The crew was in danger and every moment mattered.  Taes needed her XO’s honest opinion on whether any of the bridge crew’s fantastical plans would work or if more desperate measures would be necessary.  

Despite the urgency, Kellin still blew past four engineers to close the distance with science officer Leander Nune.  As Kellin approached, he found Nune tapping commands into the master systems display amid a cluster of more engineers.

“How are the deflector modifications looking, Nune?” Kellin asked, a little breathless from the sprint.

Nune tapped a finger on the schematic of Constellation’s deflector dish.

“How do they look to you?” Nune asked without looking back.

Kellin’s shoulders tensed up.  He squinted at the digital schematics.

Diffidently, Kellin was quick to ask, “Do you care, or are you being polite?”

“When have I ever been just polite to you?” Nune asked, and then he met Kellin’s eyes.  “I care.”

Standing taller, Kellin answered the original question: “Flavia doesn’t think she found the right resonance pulse frequency on her first shot.  With the right frequency, these modifications should–“

Swiping a palm over the aft of the starship schematic, Nune interrupted with, “What in the Great Fire is that for?”  –He elbowed Kellin in the arm as he used to do, grabbing his attention as viscerally a possible– “Someone’s modifying the shield geometry around the nacelles.  And now the secondary hull, too.”

“Someone here?” Kellin asked.

Tabbing through an LCARS frame in the corner, Nune replied, “No, the bridge engineering station.  Biometrics read… Ensign Addae Danbo.”

“How will that protect us from the wreckage in our path?” Kellin asked.

Sounding increasingly surprised with each word, Nune surmised, “Our shields are harmonising with the Kazon’s deflector array.”  –He swiped more sensor readings over the MSD– “We’ve achieved a harmonic resonance coupling with the Kazon’s forward deflector.  We can– we can use the Kazon ship to amplify our pulse.”

“Captain!  Impact with the wreckage in ten seconds!” Nova announced.  She spun away from her operations station to lock eyes with Captain Taes.  Despite the urgency in Nova’s voice and the fear behind her eyes, Taes respected the precision of her countdown.  Taes offered a look of appreciation and a nod, and Nova spun back to her console.

“Nine seconds…”

“Let’s find out,” Taes ordered.  She swept a hand in Flavia’s direction, giving her the go ahead.

“Eight seconds…” Nova reported.

Taes held her breath.  Unlike their phaser and torpedo attack on the wreckage, there was no visual signature through the viewscreen when they took one last shot at the wreckage with the coupled deflector beams.

“Seven seconds…”

For two more seconds, the wreckage began to vibrate at the same frequency as the resonance pulse and then, in a blink, the entire mass of twisted duranium whisked through a subspace radial wall.  Constellation was saved for another moment longer, if their shields could hold out against the Kazon.  With the wreckage ejected from Underspace, there was time for the proximity alarm to go silent.  There wasn’t enough time for Taes to let out the breath she was holding.

“Captain!”  This time, Nova’s voice rose to a shriek.  “The Kazon have shifted their flight vec–“

She couldn’t even get the words out in time.  The swirling tunnel of Underspace filled the viewscreen and then vanished in a flash, leaving nothing but a swirl of stars in normal space.

“They turned the resonance pulse against us,” Nova deduced.

Momentarily less concerned with how they escaped Underspace, Taes asked, “Can you locate any navigational buoys?  Where have they left us?”

Yuulik strode out of the observation lounge. She rounded the command platform, and rather than lurking over the shoulders of science or operations this time, she took a seat in the mission specialist chair to Taes’s left.

After a soft gasp, Nova remarked, “We’re back in the alpha quadrant.  In the Deneb Sector.  Who knew Underspace extended this far?”

“I can’t say that came up in my negotiations with the Turei, lieutenant,” Taes admitted.

When she said that, Taes was already leaning in to Yuulik by her side.  “However did you do that, commander?” she asked at a whisper.

Yuulik blinked twice.

Softly, she replied, “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

The hail from the holo-communicator had sounded while he was on the treadmill in his quarters.  Feeling slick with sweat, Kellin’s heart rate was already up from a moderate jog, and so he ordered the channel to open.

It’s not like he’d ever had the stomach to say no to Elbon.

The holographic avatar of Captain Elbon Jakkelb materialised halfway between Kellin and the exterior viewports.  He looked smart in his uniform and even more devastatingly handsome than ever.  Kellin felt self-conscious momentarily, dressed for the beach in a tank top, shorts and high socks.

After making pleasantries, Elbon’s gaze dropped as if he were studying how we’ll he’d shined his boots that morning.  But he didn’t talk about his boots.

What he said was, “I’m sorry, Kel.  I should have reached out to you sooner.  Have you been well?”

The question.  That was a loaded question.  Kellin had spent the past months trying to fill the boots of the Changeling imposter who had been promoted to executive officer in Kellin’s place.  Everyone had assumed Kellin deserved that promotion, too.  Somehow, keeping the elevated rank still felt like stealing to Kellin.

But he didn’t say that.  Kellin gripped the treadmill’s handlebar, and he flexed his chest.

“Don’t I look well?” Kellin asked, and it elicited a snort of laughter from Elbon.  “I’m not holding a grudge if that’s what you mean.  I’ve been in the Delta Quadrant for months.  Live communication can only be scheduled through a MIDAS array.  I know you like to get to bed early after a bridge shift most nights.”

“Still…” Elbon said.  He rubbed the back of his neck while his eyes flickered, like he was examining Kellin’s face for any hints to his deeper thoughts.  “I meant to make more of an effort.  And then I waited so long, it felt like I had waited too long.  Didn’t know where to start.”

Blinking the sweat out of his eyes, Kellin averted his gaze.  Despite his easy familiarity with Elbon, the intensity of Elbon’s observation felt white hot to Kellin.  Alone in his quarters, there were no younger siblings or junior officers to defer his attention.  So, Kellin ran faster on the running deck and he pretended to squint at the heart rate monitor being projected by the treadmill.

“So why start now?” Kellin asked, sounding more petulant than he intended.

“I need a favour,” Elbon affirmed.  Crinkling his nose, Elbon gave that sheepish smile that always irritated Kellin right at the back of his teeth.  Kellin never really understood why that tick bothered him or why it still endeared Elbon to him.  

“The Underspace apertures have stabilised,” Elbon said, “and Starfleet has located Underspace corridors extending across the galaxy, from edge to edge.  The Turei claim they never knew Underspace extended beyond the Delta Quadrant, nor do they understand why new apertures have opened across every quadrant.

“USS Almagest has been equipped with a sensor pod to study the tract of Underspace leading coreward of the Ciater Nebula.  We’re travelling in a loop through the same series of apertures to study the workings and stability of the corridors.  Given the unthinkable speeds on offer, the Fourth Fleet is gagging to explore every inaccessible pocket of the galaxy.  We’re also using our ultra-long-range communications suite as a homing beacon for starships that have lost their way.  We’re calling our wayward sisters home to Leonis as a muster point.”

After a big breath, Kellin asked, “Could you add USS Grus to your roster?  We lost our scout ship back in the Delta Quadrant.  We suspect it was headed… generally… in this direction?”

“For you?  Anything,” Elbon promised with a wink.  “My comms officer will add the Grus to her hails within the hour.  Perhaps a favour for a favour then.  One of the apertures we frequent on the trailing side of Ciater, is also being studied by a Cardassian cruiser.  I don’t recognise the class of ship; it’s new.  They’ve ignored all of our hails and friendship messages.  We’ve observed them leaving navigational buoys in Underspace, and now they’re holding position at the one aperture, just outside Federation space.

“We’re all alone out here, Kel,” Elbon said, eye contact intensifying.  “You know what it’s like to risk a Sutherland-class starship with combat.”

Smiling fondly at the memory of their shared days aboard the USS Sarek, Kellin remarked, “A research city in space.  The best you can hope for is to defend your rear as you escape at top speed.”  –Kellin nodded at Elbon– “You need back-up.”

“You caught me,” Elbon said, and he laughed.  “I need you.  I hear Constellation literally fell out of subspace in our neighbourhood.  Docked at Caelum Station for resupply and repairs, you’re only a few days away.”

“Fewer if there’s an Underspace aperture en route,” Kellin supposed.  He grinned at Elbon, and then he caught himself.  This wasn’t the Sarek, and Elbon wasn’t his XO, nor anything else.  Kellin shook his head and asked, “But why are you asking me?”

“Don’t you worry, I’ll send a request to Captain Taes through the formal channels,” Elbon said. “I’m fond of Taes.  I respect her to Kelana and back.  But she listens to you.  And I miss you.”

Kellin said aloud the pang he felt, “I miss you too.”

Elbon’s favoured grin flattened out to a tight smile. At that moment, Kellin suddenly could see the age in Elbon’s eyes.

“Do you regret… anything?” Elbon asked wistfully.

“No,” Kellin surely said.  “You?”

“No,” Elbon replied, “and I miss you.”

“Shall I hail them again?” Nova asked.  

The cheery lilt to her question held the aroma of artifice, like that too-Jacarine flavour of Jacarine liqueur.  Taes appreciated the gesture.  It released the tense silence on the bridge; in moments, the murmurs of soft conversation rose up among the aft bridge stations again.

“We’ve been sitting here for four hours, staring at one another.  They haven’t responded to any of our hails yet,” Taes said, nodding at the Cardassians.  Through the transparent viewscreen, the shape of the Cardassian cruiser evoked a winged mythical beast with a proud chest.  

“They know where to find us,” Taes concluded.

Tiny workpods emerged from the cruiser periodically, swarming close to the mothership.  The cruiser engaged a tractor beam, positioning a length of semicylinder hull plating that a workpod had towed out.  From the science station, Yuulik asked for magnification on the screen.  A holographic frame zoomed in on the cylindrical deep-space platform that was being assembled by the workpods.

“It shows similarities to a sensor platform,” Yuulik commented, “or a defence platform.”

“You think they want to claim this Underspace aperture for the sole use of the Cardassian Union?” Nova asked, clearly energised by the scandal of that theory.  “So close to Federation space?”

Dispelling any distress over imaginary threats, Taes re-directed to what was directly in front of them.  She asked, “Are they constructing more of the navigational buoys they’ve been launching into Underspace?”

“I don’t believe so,” Yuulik said.  Her voice trailed off like it did when she was lost in thought.  She tapped at the sensor reading on her upper monitor and then shared, “The buoys in Underspace measure tachyon flows.  This platform is being assembled in a markedly different configuration.  It’s much larger and… and… that is a far larger power source.”

“Give me a full analysis, commander,” Taes requested.

“Oh?” Nova bubbled up.  She tilted her head and double-tapped on her console.  “Captain, we’re being hailed by the Cardassians.”

“Of course.  The moment we trained a high-power scan on their platform,” Taes remarked.  She took a breath and she planted her heels on the deck, pulling strength from the very spaceframe of the ship and her crew.  

Then, Taes ordered Nova, “On screen.”

The Cardassian who appeared on the viewscreen had close-cropped hair and heavy eyes. The slate-grey colour of her hair betrayed her advancing age, and the scar from her left cheek to her chin told the story of what kind of military career she had carved for herself.

“I am Gul Khem of the cruiser Vorkel,” she said.  Every word came out like a sigh as if Taes were a functionary requesting signatures in triplicate.  Even when she leaned in closer to the visual sensor, Khem couldn’t even make an accusation sound like anything but a trifle.

“Are you spying on me, captain?” Khem asked.

“I’m Captain Taes of the Starfleet explorer Constellation,” Taes responded without answering.  “We’re studying the Underspace aperture in this vicinity.  Much like you, I imagine?”

“Your USS Almagest seems far more interested in me,” Khem stated as fact.

“How so?” Taes asked.  She rubbed her chin in a posture of relaxed consideration, matching Khem’s energy.

Khem replied, “They’ve come through this aperture and circled us at least six times.”

“I believe you misunderstood, Gul Khem,” Taes said, using her title with deference.  “Almagest is a homing beacon for Starfleet ships that have become lost in Underspace.  She’s hailing them to Leonis if they’ve gotten turned around in uncharted corridors.”

“Hmmm,” Khem intoned.  “Leonis is on the other side of the border, inside Federation space.”

Sidestepping what Khem implied, Taes continued with her own gambit.  She raised her convivial energy as she spoke, emphasising her points with gentle waves of her hands.  In moments, she heard herself unintentionally mirroring Nova’s genial warmth.

“We notice,” Taes posed, “the navigational buoys you’ve seeded across Underspace in this region.  Could you tell me if you’ve scanned any star–“

“No,” Khem said before Taes finished the question.

Playfully, Taes asked, “No, you haven’t, or no, you can’t tell me?”

“No,” Khem said.

After a deep breath, Taes said, “Genuinely, I am asking for your assistance in locating dear friends who–“

Khem shook her head slowly. “How could I possibly offer anything to match Starfleet’s majestic scientific prowess? The Treaty of Bajor would hardly allow us to outpace your technological superiority.”

“Those phaser emitters of yours don’t agree,” Taes said plainly.  “They more closely resemble phased polaron emitters.”

Only now did Khem smile.

“How convenient for you to notice at this juncture, so I don’t have to mention it,” Khem said.  “Any Starfleet interference with our deep-space platform will be received as a hostile act against the Cardassian Union itself.”

And the communication channel abruptly closed.

The more her field of vision narrowed on the chronometer, the more Yuulik felt like she was drowning.  Her chest felt tighter with every tick of the second counter climbing higher and higher.  She knew the sensation to be unnatural, imaginary.  She was standing in the astrophysics lab, and the life support systems were fully functional.  There was no reason to feel this way.  As the saying goes, there had to be something wrong with the universe.

A time pressure was as welcoming as a warm bath to Yuulik.  It offered clarity of purpose and energised her so.  If anything, she was less productive without an impending deadline of deadly proportions.  The synapses didn’t spark as quickly.  This was supposed to be her element, her time to shine.  And yet, this time was different.

What was painful, exactly, was a deadline on which she was dependent on others. Being dependent on  the ingenuity of the science team—with their differing specialties, personalities, and the combination of Starfleet and Romulan Free State personnel—was torture. That was a cold plunge in the middle of a nap.

Captain Taes had called for a science department slumber party.  Nobody was sleeping until they solved the mystery of the Cardassian deep-space tetryon platform.  Yuulik had identified an emitter dish on the platform, which meant the Cardassians could collapse the local Underspace aperture with a concentrated beam of tetryons.  If the cruiser Vorkel attempted any interference with the aperture before the starships Almagest and Grus returned to Federation space, Taes needed a method to delay the Cardassians without resorting to armed conflict.

Yuulik had publicly grimaced and groaned at the juvenile suggestion of a slumber party. Still, her objections quickly evaporated as science officers gathered in their comfortable training uniforms.  If anything, Yuulik was overcome by nostalgia, when Taes joined in on the free-form research and brainstorming.  It almost felt like those honeyed days aboard the archaeology and anthropology ship Dvorak.  Except Yuulik hadn’t been the science chief then, and she hadn’t always noticed just how slowly and distractedly her colleagues worked through problems.  

Reaching for a forgotten brainstorm on a holographic LCARS projection, Yuulik quickly scanned her team’s list of half-formed ideas.  From inverse tachyon spumes to probe-generated antitachyon field, Yuulik aggressively crossed out ideas, saying “bad, bad, bad, bad.”  She didn’t cross out the beta-tachyon web, though.

All too abruptly, Yuulik could feel Captain Taes’s eyes on her.  She couldn’t anticipate what judgment Taes would place on her.  It wasn’t as if Yuulik was shouting at or scolding any team members, but even dismissal was too harsh in Taes’s assessment sometimes.  Rather than examining this assumption further or seeking clarity from Taes, Yuulik evaded the self-doubt.  She hurried into the department head office, where the Romulans were gathered in a clique.  It was the first time Yuulik had seen some of them in casual clothing rather than their utility jumpsuits.  For a moment, she wondered why it mattered to any of them to play into Taes’s whims and whimsy.

“You are absolutely correct, Yuulik,” Flavia said in greeting.  She waggled a finger at the holographic display where Yuulik had crossed out half of the ideas.  “None of those ideas were going to be triumphant.”

Yuulik tentatively muttered, “Uh, thank you.”  She was always skeptical when Flavia showed her kindness—perhaps less so since Flavia had saved her life from Addie’s schemes. Yuulik also noticed that all of Flavia’s team’s brainstorming was written in Romulan script, keeping it obscure until Flavia chose to share it herself.

“Science trickery is too obvious,” Flavia clarified.  “It’s the automatic lazy crutch of the Federation.  When you don’t know how to escape the holes you’ve dug for yourself, you douse it in radiation or pulses.”

Yuulik smiled sweetly when she asked, “Our harmonic coupling with the Kazon deflectors served us very well, didn’t it?”

Flavia narrowed her eyes on Yuulik.  “And how exactly did you achieve that?  I studied the logs of your maneuver, but it resembles no research I’ve ever read, not even on the fringe of theory.”

Seating herself on a stool just outside the office, Yuulik stared back at Flavia, and she shrugged.  After Frontier Day, Flavia and her team had been wary enough to return to Constellation.  Aggressively mining the Borg memory fragments of her junior officers was a detail Yuulik was better off keeping to herself in an alien language that only she could read.

“I’ve always said,” Yuulik shot back, “you could afford to be better read.”

Flavia cleared her throat and said, “In the spirit of the Treaty of Bajor, there is little difference between firing on the Cardassian platform with an anti-tetryon beam rather than a phaser beam.  I don’t imagine the rage of the Cardassians will be quelled by a technicality.”

“You’d be surprised how much Starfleet gets away with based on little more than technicalities,” Yuulik said, even though she knew Flavia was right.  “So what would you do?”

Shaking her head slowly, the shine faded from Flavia’s eyes as she said, “You don’t conquer the Cardassians with technology.  You manipulate their environment.  We’re too far from the Kzinti border, but Laken is devising a gambit to lure a Breen interceptor to claim this aperture.  

“Or Ketris recalls the captain of the Almagest, Elbon, from our assignment to USS Sarek.  If we invented a story about Gul Khem murdering his parents in the uridium mines of Bajor, he could almost get away with destroying the platform as a justifiable target.  We haven’t found the precise angle–“

“But his parents weren’t on Bajor during the occupation,” Yuulik interjected.

Flavia laughed.  It was a shrill sound, falsetto and brittle.

“As if Bajorans keep reliable records,” Flavia remarked.

“You, uh…” Yuulik started to protest, but the chronometer was still ticking on another display in her field of vision.  She couldn’t afford to ignore any angles, not when the Cardassians could complete the platform at any moment.

Finally, Yuulik said, “You keep working on that.”  She rose from the stool and ran off before Flavia could try to get in a last word.  Across the lab, Yuulik spotted a gathering of giggling junior officers sitting under the curved display wall.  Nune was lying on his side, listening intently to the others; Dolan was sitting on his knees, wearing a research helmet; T’Kaal was seated in a meditative pose, speaking to the others with deep sincerity despite the others’ cackling reactions.

Before Yuulik could march into their midst, Taes grabbed Yuulik by the arm and dragged her into the analysis chamber.  Taes closed the transparent door, keeping the content of their discussion private, even if everyone could see them.

“Don’t,” Taes insisted.

“But I didn’t do anything,” Yuulik rebutted.

“No,” Taes said again, “Don’t.  Take a breath.  Let them think it through.”

Yuulik glared at the junior officers through the transparent panels before returning to Taes.

“That’s a puzzle game on Dolan’s face plate,” Yuulik said.  “I don’t see how that will tell them anything about tachyon flows.”

“Willpower is not a limitless resource,” Taes said.  “You have to let them find their way, sometimes.  I know it’s not easy.  I’ve heard from the USS Caliburn.  Their analysis reached the same conclusion: the emitter dish on the platform could close an aperture, and enough of them could collapse the entire Underspace network.  Worse, there are more of these large Cardassian platforms. Waiting for the right solution demands a lot of patience from you.  I recognise that.  But that’s also what the third pip is for.”

Yuulik shook her head.  “You might not have to be patient much longer, captain.”

Taes grimaced.  “Tell me.”

“I have a bad idea,” Yuulik told her.  “A very bad idea.  I can’t go rogue this time.  In fact, I need you to implement this very bad idea yourself.  You and Captain Elbon.”

Because of the great distance between them, the change in state was hardly visible. Framed by the expansive transparent viewscreen, there appeared to be little more than a single blue spark—a flicker in the night, just another shooting star in the endless void. Anything could look beautiful, given enough distance.

Disquieted, Kellin Rayco felt his hands go numb. The apocalyptic potential of that spark was beyond his comprehension, yet he comprehended what a deeply personal danger it posed, too. He pressed his palms against the armrests of his chair, trying to flex the feeling back into his hands.

“Magnify,” Kellin ordered.  It was better to know than to assume what the flickering meant.  He glanced at Taes by his side, and she nodded her endorsement.

After the anbo chohr exchange between Taes and Gul Khem, Taes had requested great space to think.  She had ordered Constellation’s withdrawal to a range of two hundred thousand kilometres from the Underspace aperture.  Despite how she phrased it then, it was clear that what Taes really wanted was distance from the Cardassian cruiser Vorkel and its tachyon transmitter platform.  

In private, Taes had admitted to Kellin that she sought to minimize any temptation into conflict with Gul Khem when the only weapon Taes held was a type-XIV phaser array.  The Treaty of Bajor demanded a different way forward for them as Starfleet officers.

A holographic projection of the Cardassian’s deep-space platform centred on the screen.  Seeing it close up, it was activated, emitting a crackling blue burst into the void.  Under the attack of the burst, normal space tore apart.  The aperture opened, revealing the burnt caramel glow of Underspace, spilling slightly into regular space.

To Captain Taes’ left, Yuulik swiped a hand over her science console, sending a scroll of sensor data across the bottom of the viewscreen.  Her sharp blue eyes bulged wider when she made passing eye contact with Kellin.  Yuulik would never admit it, but Kellin could intuit the platform was being activated far too soon.  They weren’t ready for this.

“The platform is emitting a beam of tetryon particles at the aperture in a pattern I’ve never seen before,” Yuulik reported.  “Captain, we’ve only managed to transfer sixty percent of the anti-tachyon loads into the Bussard ramscoops.  I don’t– I don’t think that will be enough to disrupt a tetryon beam of this intensity.  In my opinion.”

Kellin was surprised to see Yuulik’s confidence buckling, but he supposed it was still strange and new for her to fully support a course of action that her team had developed without her.  Seeing her progress like a baby konari on new legs, Kellin felt compelled to offer reassurance.

“We still need time to feign damage to the ship,” Kellin suggested. “If we flew into the aperture, could a navigational error through the path of the tetryon beam be enough to explain our ‘accidental’ discharge of an anti-tachyon cloud?”

“Maybe,” Taes said in the precise tone of voice that meant ‘no.’  Leaning forward to perch on the edge of her chair, Taes gave new orders to the bridge crew.  

“Mister Door, hold position until you have my say-so.  Nova, has the aperture opened enough to transmit a subspace signal to USS Almagest in Underpsace?”

“Hailing Almagest now,” Nova said in a musical lilt.  “I’ve locked onto the subspace relay platform they planted on the other side of the aperture.”

Splitting the viewscreen with the tetryon platform, Captain Elbon Jakkelb appeared on screen from the comfort of his own bridge.  Before he could speak, he was rocked from side to side by what was probably tachyon turbulence.

Captain Taes said to Elbon, “You’re out of time, captain. The Cardassians have activated their tachyon emitter.”

“As we feared, captains,” Yuulik interrupted, “the concentrated tachyon beam is destabilising this aperture.”

Forgoing the correct chains of command, Kellin said, “Jakkelb, it’s time to run!”  Despite the creeping death of their marriage, Kellin held no ill will for his ex.

“We’ve made contact with USS Grus,” Elbon said. He had that patronising smile whenever he found a way to out-maneuver Taes and Kellin without explicitly shutting either of them down. 

“They’re en route to your aperture at maximum warp, but the exact distance is too nebulous to measure in Underspace. They could still be near galactic core, or they could be two minutes away. We never managed to map as far as the corridors Grus is travelling.“

“Toss a homing probe behind you and run!” Kellin barked.  “It’s crash position time.  I didn’t jump with you at Temtibi, but I beg you to jump with me now.”

Elbon’s smile flattened.  Looking away from the visual sensors, Elbon sighed, “Helm, set course for the aperture and engage.”  Looking right at Kellin, Elbon said, “The subspace relays don’t have the same range as our sensor pod, but we’ll boost the homing signal for as long as we can.“

Seated on the other side of Captain Taes, Flavia swivelled her chair to lean back and nod at Kellin.  Although he was puzzled by catching Flavia’s attention, Kellin turned to gossip behind Taes’s chair, too.  He shook his head at Flavia in an expression of ‘So what now?’

“Such uncommon passion from you, commander,” Flavia whispered.  “Did the Changelings threaten your loved ones too?”

Kellin received her question like a jab to the gut.  He couldn’t understand why now, of all times, she would remind him of his time spent a prisoner of rogue Changelings while his Changeling imposter roamed Constellation.  It took a couple more heartbeats for him to catch the ‘too’ in her question.  That was the first suggestion of where Flavia had gone when she’d been lost during the Dominion invasion.  Had she, too, been kidnapped and replaced by the Changelings?

But Flavia’s attention was already returned to the viewscreen, and the holographic sensor panel that was projected from her armrest.

“From what sensors can pick up through the aperture,” Flavia said, “the very substance of the radial walls have begun to discorporate.  Underspace is coming apart.”

“The aperture is widening, captain,” Yuulik added.  “The ship is coming through!”

“Raise shields!” Taes ordered.  “Mister Door, set a course to position us between the Almagest and the Vorkel.  Put our ventral shield in the Carassians’–“

On screen, the projection of Elbon raised a hand, urging, “Captain–“

On the magnified image beside him, the tear in space widened, but the ungainly curves of a Sutherland-class starship didn’t emerge.  Instead, a blunt-nosed hulk of a starship pounced out of Underspace, its hull the colour of rust.  The Predator-class carrier hadn’t even escaped Underspace before it lanced phaser beams at the tetryon platform.

Flavia exclaimed, “Metallurgic analysis and subspace transponders confirm this is the same Kazon who attacked us in Underspace with such unfounded confidence. …Ah, that’s better now. The Vorkel is firing back at them.”

From the CONN station, Cellar Door’s vocoder chirruped with an error sound of surprise when he asked, “Maje Midrell found us out here?”

“Was that what he was called?” Flavia haughtily asked.  “His name is long forgotten to me.”

Taes raised her voice to be heard above the chatter.  “Mister Door, set course back to Federation space, full impulse.  Let the Cardassians and Kazon battle for supremacy over Underspace.  It’s not our fight.  There are other apertures in this region where Almagest and Grus could have escaped.  Let’s find out.”

Through the translucent holograms on the viewscreen, the starfield appeared to spin as Constellation turned away from the mounting conflict between their antagonists.  Elbon’s hologram frowned deeply, exaggerating the lines on his face.

“You’re not giving up on me so soon, eh?” Elbon asked.

Yuulik said, “The Almagest!  She’s coming through the aperture.”

“Keep running, Constellation,” Elbon added.  “We’ve received word from the Grus.  They escaped Underspace in orbit of Leonis.”  Elbon hardly got the words out when he was knocked back in his chair.  A shower of sparks exploded from the overhead as the Almagest took a stray blast from the Kazon or the Cardassians.

Swaying forward in his chair, Elbon laughed, “It takes us longer to get to speed, but we’re catching up to you presently.“

“He’s right, captain. There’s nothing left for us here.”  Her demeanour contrasted Elbon’s cowboy zeal in his excitement to dodge the Cardassians. Flavia didn’t even display her typical sly smirk, which betrayed the double meaning of most everything she said.

Flavia said, “The aperture has collapsed.  Perhaps this entire corridor of Underspace is gone with it.  The Cardassians had already done too much damage by the time the Kazon arrived.”

“It’s done then,” Taes concluded.  “Mister Door, increase speed to warp five.”

“It’s done then?” Flavia asked, echoing Taes’s words.  One arched eyebrow rose up her forehead.  “What’s done exactly?  Why did the Kazon attack the platform in the first place?  And so distant from where we left them?”

Elbon replied, “That would be my fault.  I added a recording of Captain Taes to the homing beacon we sounded from our sensor pod.“

Taes regarded Flavia. “I declared myself the queen of the Kazon-Remora, claiming Underspace for the glory of Starfleet,” Taes said, “I precisely described the Cardassian tachyon platform as my Underspace fortress.”

She nodded at Yuulik, “Yuulik said she knew how to enrage the Kazon into action.  Manipulate the environment rather than our deflector dish.  When Yuulik says she knows how to get under someone’s skin, how to irritate a person beyond the point of reason, I believe her.”

Flavia narrowed her eyes at Yuulik and Taes in quick succession. Her smirk returned.

“I never could have imagined Starfleet was capable of such growth,” Flavia said. “Still, you have far more to learn from the Romulan Free State. Perhaps this mission of joint exploration is more than self-indulgence after all.”

Captain’s Log, supplemental

It’s over.

By all accounts from Fourth Fleet Command, the Underspace apertures and corridors across the Alpha and Beta Quadrants have collapsed. Gul Khem was no outlier; the Cardassian Union was successful in its coordinated attack to protect its borders by removing the threat of Underspace. We don’t know if the original Underspace corridors in the Delta Quadrant have survived or if only the new extensions were lost.

I may never find out for myself.

The Constellation needs repairs from the damage we took in Underspace.  The continuation of our exploratory mission across the Delta Quadrant has come into question.  Our repairs may not be complete in time for the next opening of the Barzan wormhole.  Given the shifting politics of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, while we were gone, there have been whispers in Fourth Fleet Operations of a different mission for USS Constellation.  Whispers that our joint exploration mission with the Romulan Free State could use additional partners.

In the meantime, I have brought the crew to my homeworld, Delta IV, for much-needed shore leave on its largest moon, Cinera.  It’s been long months since we could enjoy the Federation’s luxuries, and I don’t intend to waste a moment of it.

Condensation dripped from overhead, but none of those water droplets offered relief when they kissed her skin.  Even though she was only covered by a thin towel, the magnitude of the heat weighed on Taes oppressively.  The heat radiated in waves from the pink crystals that protruded from every surface of the cavern sauna.  Each time she thought it couldn’t get hotter, another wave would roll over her.

She sat on one of three benches, gathered in a triangle formation.  One for her, one for Yuulik, and one for Kellin, gathered in a triangle formation.

“What am I thinking?” Taes asked.

Yuulik responded with an exasperated sigh that she punctuated by a slap on her thigh.

“How’m I supposed to know?” Yuulik shot back.

Taes shook her head mildly in disappointment, but she still smiled fondly.

“Have you been practicing the meditation I showed you at all?” Taes asked.  “Between the crystal lattice of this cave, my empathic abilities, Kellin’s isoboromine receptors, and even the potential for telepathy in Arcadians, we should be capable of expression without words.

Taes went on to say emphatically, “Our lives depend on one another aboard Constellation, doubly so when we’re beyond Federation space. We would benefit from attunement between our thoughts, like the choruses of Ramatis.”

After sucking in a breath, Yuulik huffed, and she closed her eyes.  She crossed her arms over her abdomen, and her brow furrowed with no small intensity.

In a broadly mocking tone, Yuulik offered, “Taes, you’re thinking: Oh dear, oh no, oh my, Yuulik has done it again.  She raised her voice to her staff and bullied them into a mind-meld of questionable morality, and even though she saved all our lives, I’m going to demote her to ensign.  …How’s that?”

Taes swallowed hard, hurt by Yuulik’s limited view of her.  She wiped a slick of sweat from her forehead.

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” Taes said.

Perched on his bench like a young student in time-out, Kellin opened one eye.

“Isn’t it?” he asked, his voice going up at the end.  “Maybe you heard my thoughts, Yuu.  Dolan tells me you keep using his recent promotion as leverage to get more out of him.  Like he owes you or something?”

Yuulik scoffed again.  “That’s what you told me to do: get to know my team.  Find out what’s important to them.  Motivate them with what they want to get what I want.”

Kellin shook his head and said, “We never told you to manipulate them.”

“Isn’t that what you both do?” Yuulik said with a dramatic shrug.  “With your sultry voices and your too-tight uniforms.  Plying the bridge crew with their favourite foods.  It’s all motivation.  It’s all manipulation.”

“It’s not the same,” Taes said, and she restrained herself from debating Yuulik point-by-point. That was always a path to pain and confusion.

“Maybe my mistake wasn’t in bullying Dolan,” Yuulik remarked, “maybe it was in trying to lead by your example.  I’ll grant you, I want to inspire my team.  I see the benefits.  That doesn’t mean I need to mimic the two of you.  Just because of the third pip, I won’t grow past my beliefs and priorities.  I’m growing from them.”