“You need to be careful…”

Slumped in the chair opposite the Chief Medical Officer’s desk, Keziah looked more than a little fragile. Being told that her XO knew about her compromised medical state was not something she anticipated having to deal with right now, especially on the march to possibly confront their most feared adversaries. Again. For the umpteenth time in the last year. But, she knew she had no one else to blame.

“I should have been honest with Noli from the start,” Nazir sighed, running a hand over her mouth and cheeks whilst shaking her head slowly. “She’s always afforded me that. I should have trusted her with the information,” she added, dropping her hands into her lap like a naughty schoolgirl who had been caught cheating on a test.

“Noli is a fantastic investigator,” Zinn shrugged, “she would have found out eventually. What worries me is her ambition. She’s never shied away from the fact that she wants the big chair. She could use this information against you, given the opportunity,” he warned the Captain sternly. He’d known Noli a lot longer than Nazir, but he’d never much cared for the woman and her brashness. Perhaps because it sometimes hit a little too close to home for his liking. But he stood by his commanding officer. He hadn’t always done that with Vasoch, and it cost them their friend, wherever he had perished after the Changeling infiltration of Starfleet. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

But, either to her credit, or her detriment, Nazir scoffed at the suggestion from the doctor. She couldn’t entertain Noli being a mutineer even for a single moment. She loved the rule of law and her shipmates meant everything to her. She’d never knowingly plunge them into such a disastrous move over something so small.

Would she?

“I’ll bear that in mind,” the captain found herself nodding along to his suggestion without even realising it. However, she couldn’t spend all day in sickbay entertaining the idea that her XO could be planning a mutinous assembly against her. She had other places to be, and she’d already been with Zinn for the better part of an hour.

“Am I good to go, Doctor?” she asked hopefully, sitting forward in her chair, preparing to launch to her feet at the hint of being free to go.

“I want you back here for another checkup at your earliest convenience,” the bald Deltan instructed but eventually relented with a smile. “And I advise you come clean to Noli as quickly as you can. But, you’re free to go.”

With a spring in her step, the captain bid farewell to the physician and made for the door…

…and an awkward conversation with her XO.

“So far,” Lieutenant Mar spun from the tactical wall she had been glued to and looked towards the captain in the center of the bridge, “sensors confirm the Borg ship is holding position roughly a thousand kilometers into the wormhole.”

“Just close enough to keep the aperture open,” Celeste added from the CONN, her fingers having a much-needed respite while Proteus remained stationary, guarding the gateway before them.

“Has anyone actually considered the obvious?”

Captain Quinn turned a fraction in her chair and looked at the mouthpiece to her left. “And what might that be, doctor?”

Lieutenant Nash Everett, perhaps the most inexperienced of the senior officers at Quinn’s disposal, had a habit of speaking before engaging his brain, and as soon as he noticed the captain’s expression, he knew he’d probably done it again. But, he’d come too far now to stop himself. “Well, I was just thinking, what if we simply collapsed the wormhole?” he asked.

Kael, the only person on the ship with more years of service than the captain, baulked at the suggestion. “Spoken like a true novice to space,” he scoffed. “We can’t just go around closing entrances to wormholes,” he chided the CMO.

“But why not?” Nash cocked his head, looking beyond the captain and to the XO. “We’re presented with a real, immediate threat just a thousand kilometers away. Surely the logical thing to do would be to close the wormhole and prevent them coming through?” he doubled down on his suggestion.

Quinn shook her head. “We have no idea who else is using this wormhole,” the veteran commander told her subordinate. “If we go detonating this wormhole, yes, we’ll likely destroy the Borg and stop them coming through. But we don’t know who else we might hurt along the way, or what other impacts closing the wormhole might have. It could be a civilisation’s source of trade and income. Or maybe their own means of escape from some terrible evil,” her words were a bit more pleasant and measured than those of the XO, but the sentiment remained the same; they weren’t going to close the wormhole. At least, not unless she had orders to do so from someone on high.

Speaking of orders, she turned her attention away from the sheepish-looking physician and towards the tactical chief who had confirmed their findings just a few short minutes ago. “I think it’s time we checked in with the response team,” she instructed with a nod. “open a channel to Lakota.”

Serina Mar, tough as the ship’s tritanium hull and surprisingly astute for someone so young and inexperienced, turned back to her station and input all of the correct instructions to open communications with Fleet Captain Nazir aboard the Lakota, only the channel didn’t open as required. She tried again. And a third time, this time directing the channel to the Proxima instead, but the channel didn’t open to them, either.

“I can’t reach them,” she called out, drawing a concerned look from the command team.

“I can tell you why,” the voice came from the adjacent station to Mar’s, the science officer there hard at work. “The Borg are emitting a distortion field,” Lieutenant Vos told, turning to the Captain. “They are jamming all communications.”

Rising to her feet slowly, with purpose and a look of almost panic on her wrinkled face, the Captain stared so intensely at the screen before her that she almost burnt a hole through the bulkhead. If her crew were not already on edge thanks to the presence of the Borg ship, just sitting on the other side of the wormhole entrance, they certainly were when she uttered her next words. Words she whispered, just loud enough to scare the hell out of the younger officers on the bridge – officers who had been dreading this day ever since they’d been assimilated on Frontier Day. A confrontation no one wanted now seemed inevitable.

“They’re coming…” 

“About five weeks…”

Noli sat beside the captain in the observation lounge, aghast at what she was being told. Her captain, her mentor and someone she had started to consider a friend, had been keeping her drug use and insomnia from her for over a month. But as she listened, she wasn’t sure who appalled her the most: the fact that the captain had done these things and not confided in her; or the fact that she, as XO and the one responsible for the crew, hadn’t noticed a thing until just the other day.

“Everything just got on top of me,” Nazir tried to explain, but her words sounded more like an excuse. “When we got back from the funeral I just couldn’t sleep. I’ve probably had about six proper nights sleep in that whole time where I haven’t needed help,” there was no hiding it now. She had to come clean.

“And Zinn’s been helping this entire time?” the XO asked, her tone a little harsher than she perhaps intended.

Nazir nodded slowly, ashamed of herself for letting things get so bad. “We were hoping to start withdrawing the medication with some rest at the station,” the captain revealed, “but then the alert came through and something just… triggered me.”

‘That much was clear,’ Noli told herself, thinking back to the incident in the corridor below decks. “You should have told me,” the XO countered bluntly.

“I know. I should have trusted you enough to tell you,” Keziah admitted.

Noli shook her head slowly, pursing her lips as she did so, “I need to know you’re not going to put this ship at risk. That there will be no more… moments… like earlier,” she appealed to the captain’s inner sense of responsibility, leaning in and looking a little less cold as she did so, a little more… human.

“As soon as this crisis is over, I’m going to take some shore leave and the ship will be yours until the situation is resolved. Until then, I’ll do everything in my power to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” the Trill told her concerned XO. But she could sense the incoming question on Noli’s lips, “And if it does, you have every right to remove me from command. But I am asking you to trust me, in the same way I should have trusted you.”

Noli didn’t get a chance to answer the captain. The room was swiftly engulfed in darkness, its normal lighting replaced by the eerily familiar red strobes that accompanied the sudden sounding of the red alert klaxons.

Pushing out their chairs at speed and propelling themselves to their feet, the two women marched for the bridge, Noli stopping at the last second to allow the captain to pass ahead of her, sharing a glance with her captain that made it clear to both that, whilst the situation between them was still somewhat tense and there remained work to be done, they were still united. For now.

“Report!” Nazir beckoned as she reached the command chair and spun it by the headrest so she could take her position in command of the Lakota.

It was the newcomer, Lieutenant Mitchell, who addressed the captain first. “We’ve lost communication with Proteus,” Lauren revealed, turning towards the command deck. “Last communication from Captain Quinn suggested the Borg were holding steady inside the wormhole, but sensors have detected weapons fire at their location,” the tactical chief concluded, turning back to her station to continue monitoring the sensor data as it came in.

“Increase speed to maximum warp. Have Proxima match our velocity,” the Trill in command ordered to no one in particular, simply knowing and trusting that her people could do their jobs well. “We’re going in, and we’re going in hot,” she added, with approval from the XO who now took her own seat to her right.

“Speed increased; Proxima is matching us,” Henry called from the CONN.

“All defensive and offensive systems are at your disposal Captain,” Lauren added from tactical again.

“Engineering reports ready for anything,” Noli added after reading the text transmission on the small display attached to her chair.

“ETA, ten minutes and fifteen seconds,” Henry continued, his hands dancing a merry jig across the helm station.

Hurtling through space in close formation with her Sovereign-class cousin, Lakota‘s streamlined frame meant she could close the distance faster than she would have been able to before her massive refit, which had its advantages. It did have one large disadvantage though. It meant the crew’s dance with destiny would be brought forward somewhat, and they certainly weren’t looking forward to clashing with the Borg yet again. But with one of their own under threat, they had no choice but to respond.

As fate would have it, they would soon be proven right. A deadly clash with the Borg was inevitable…