‘Home, sweet home,’ Nallera groaned as the Rooks slouched off the transporter pad on the Blackbird. ‘Nobody better have touched my room.’

Commander Ranicus had her hands behind her back and her mouth open to address Cassidy – but stopped at that, squinting. ‘Why would anyone have… never mind.’ She shook her head and turned to the front. ‘Welcome back, Commander. I see we’ve picked up a stray.’

‘Consultant,’ Cassidy said bluntly, a hand on Q’ira’s shoulder. ‘She gets the guest room. She’s with us for the ride to our next destination.’

‘Which is?’

‘Oltanis IV. Set off at once. Max warp. Our target got a one-or-two day head start on us.’ Cassidy met Ranicus’s cool gaze without wavering. ‘We got a lot of Federation space to fly through to get there. If you want to argue, we can argue on the way before we get into trouble.’

Ranicus worked her jaw, then nodded and turned to Q’ira. ‘Ms Zherul. Let’s get you to your room.’

Q’ira balked at that. ‘How’d you -’

‘It’s my job,’ Ranicus said calmly. ‘This way.’

The Rooks watched the two women leave, gently nonplussed, before Cassidy shrugged and led them towards their section of the Blackbird. ‘Guess someone did their homework.’

‘I feel dumb,’ said Nallera. ‘Of course she’s got a family name.’

‘It didn’t matter before,’ said Cassidy. ‘You never know if it matters now.’

Rosewood sucked his teeth. ‘We’re taking her with us and not trusting her?’

Cassidy rolled his eyes. ‘You make it sound like being careful is the same as putting a collar on her. She’s spent years with the Syndicate. I believe she wants to take the Changeling down, I believe she’s not gonna go running to T’Mell. But she probably spent half her life thinking we’re the bad guys. I’m gonna be careful.’

Rosewood glanced at Aryn, whose expression was studiously blank. As the Rooks descended the ladder to their operations section, he broke the silence.

‘Why would the Changeling go to a black market hub for Borg tech?’

‘That’s the million-bar question, right?’ said Cassidy, visibly relaxing as they moved on to work. The Rooks stopped in the corridor, the four facing each other. Rosewood could feel how none of them looked towards the door to Tiran’s room. ‘You’re the genius. What could it do with Borg tech and the Regulator?’

Aryn made a face. ‘I don’t have enough information to begin to guess.’

‘Ugh,’ groaned Nallera. ‘How do you make the Regulator worse?’

‘Increase its scale?’ wondered Rosewood. ‘Slow down an entire fleet and keep your ship unaffected?’

‘Anything I could imagine doing to it,’ mused Aryn, ‘would very quickly hit problems around power supply. Which is something Borg technology might be able to help with. Oltanis IV might not be about the what, but about the how.’

‘Good start.’ Cassidy nodded encouragingly. ‘You said you didn’t have the info to guess, Aryn. Then you guessed. I want you and Nallera working on these kinds of ideas during the trip.’

‘Again, the options are potentially infinite -’

‘What else are you gonna do?’

‘I,’ said Rosewood, nose in the air, ‘am going to get some sleep on a proper mattress.’

It was another occasion to sleep as if the universe would be better in the morning, sleep until the stars all burnt out. When he finally woke, exhaustion had not left his bones, and the quiet in the Rooks’ section of the Blackbird suggested the other three were similarly trying to sleep off the nightmare of the past few days.

The ship hummed at warp with an intensity that confirmed Ranicus had followed Cassidy’s orders. This was as fast and hot as the little ship could go, pelting them across Federation space. They had further to go than he’d like, but they knew the Changeling had at least been given a regular ship – not only one that they could trace with the details from Pendeor, but one that wouldn’t outrun them.

It was the thought of tracing that had Rosewood eventually head to the small room aboard that was generously designated a mission operations centre, and was in practice a few seats and consoles giving access to major ship systems. From here, the Rooks or their mission support could run processes, make communications, or do other work without disrupting the bridge.

He’d expected it to be empty, and so stumbled in the doorway when he found a figure sat in the gloom, silhouetted by the lights of the control bank. ‘Jesus! You startled me.’

Falaris looked up, owlish and guilty. ‘Sorry. Um. I work in here?’

‘You work on the bridge.’

‘My primary duty is to provide the Rooks with remote technical expertise and support analysis.’ She gestured at the screen with a stylus. ‘That’s best done from in here.’

At last, more awake, he took in the details of the operations centre. More specifically, the comfortable cushion under her chair, the blanket draped over the back of it, and the abandoned pads, empty mug, and personal bric-a-brac on the desk. ‘You’ve been at SB-38 for days.’

‘We came quickly to get you!’ she protested. ‘So I was in here trying to punch through the nebula’s interference and get eyes and ears on Kalviris. And now I’m trying to trace the Changeling.’

Rosewood paused, then headed to the replicator to get a coffee before he pulled up a chair behind her. ‘Any luck?’

‘I’ve been checking in with traffic systems for a ship matching the details you gave us.’ With the press of a button, the display shifted for a holographic projection they could both more easily see. ‘I’m getting a few hits. It would be easier with an exact reg.’

Rosewood scoffed. ‘I’ll feed that back to the Syndicate member we interrogated. It was just a random ship they had in their docks – do you know the reg of every ship available to us?’

‘I know the registry of every ship in the squadron,’ Falaris said with no apparent sense of irony. Then she flushed, realising this was rhetorical. ‘Um. Is that not normal?’

His lips curled. ‘This is good work, even if we can’t be sure. I don’t think the guy was lying, but he could also be, well. Wrong.’

She nodded, looking back at him. ‘It sounds like it got rough down there. Being stuck on your own. Needing to run interrogations with no proper facilities.’

‘The facilities weren’t the problem.’ He hesitated at her curious look, then shook his head. ‘Everyone was just a bit strung out. Including Cassidy.’

‘If it was getting to Cassidy, then I bet it was hard for all of you.’

‘Sure,’ said Rosewood, brow furrowing, ‘but I know what I’m doing. I’m not the one who nearly crossed a line down there.’

‘I… you’d know him better than me.’

Rosewood sat up, gaze sceptical. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t see that he’s basically vibrating with rage right now. That kind of thing colours your judgement.’

‘Well, I don’t see it, because I’ve not seen him since he came back aboard,’ she allowed. ‘But Tiran was – she was one of us. Part of our team. Aren’t you all mad?’

There’s no place for that anger to go. That was what Cassidy had observed when they’d met, and that was even believing the official story about his father’s death. Offering something for him to do something with that anger had been Cassidy’s big sell for bringing him into the Rooks in the first place.

‘Anger isn’t new to me,’ said Rosewood with a shrug. ‘I know how to handle it.’

Falaris watched him for a moment. Then she also shrugged and looked back at the screen. ‘Okay! Well, then if you want to stay busy because you’re so not angry, then you can help me scour these comm records to try to narrow down a ship trail.’ With a quick press of a button, she’d transferred data to a PADD which she shoved in his hands.

‘Who said – who said I wanted to stay busy?’

‘You came down here, didn’t you? And you thought you’d be alone.’

His eyes raked up from the PADD to her, to the blanket and empty mug. Rosewood tilted his head. ‘You were camped out in here.’

‘I… what?’ Now she looked wrong-footed, bashful.

‘After we called you to Kalviris. How long did you spend in here trying to find some sign of life from us?’

Falaris shifted her weight and turned back to the screen. ‘I know I’m not part of the team,’ she said quietly, a little embarrassed. ‘But I wanted to help. Even from a long way away. I wanted to do my part.’

Fleeing Redoubt, learning about Tiran, and discovering backup was days away had been terrifying, Rosewood thought. There had also been something lonely about it, about the knowledge they would have to navigate that dangerous world on their own. That sense of loneliness hadn’t faded, not really – only they could find this Changeling, stop this Changeling.

But as he settled down with the PADD and comms records to try to focus their hunt, give them even an iota more information as they tore across the Federation, Falaris’s concern was at least a little warming.