Valance swore, breaking the quiet hum of her ready room. Over on the comfortable seating by the windows, Airex looked up from the PADDs he’d strewn across the coffee table, and she grimaced. ‘It goes from bad to worse,’ she explained with a sigh. ‘Thawn says that our power reserves and flow are heavily compromised. If we want to send word to Gateway of our condition, we’ll need to drop out of warp and reconfigure our systems to have enough juice. And at warp, our sensors will only be operating at about seventy percent.’

‘We can send a message once we’re out of the Storm,’ he said, voice quiet and reassuring. ‘It’ll still take some time for the transmission to arrive. The compromised sensors… I’ll do what I can. We only need to keep an eye out for trouble.’

‘I know.’ She swallowed the burst of frustration. ‘This could have been picked up earlier.’

Airex now put the PADD down, his eyes thoughtful. ‘We knew these systems would be compromised. I expect that Thawn didn’t know how much until she had a complete image of the damage. That assessment was always going to take time.’ He watched her a beat more, then leaned forwards. ‘Another, more experienced chief engineer, might have said something about it sooner, but it would have been a hypothesis with nothing firmed up. Or, more politely, a guess that would be corrected later.’

She had to smother her glare, this frustration from a completely different source. ‘Another chief engineer,’ she echoed. ‘That’s not what this is about.’

‘It’s about that you’ve not had enough sleep, and that we’re in a tight spot. Again.’

When Valance’s brow knotted, it was more thoughtful than irritated, this time. ‘I don’t mind the tight spot. I’m used to those. I want to make sure we’re not jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.’ She looked at his collection of PADDs. ‘Anything more on Rencaris?’

‘A little. Nothing noteworthy that Beckett didn’t cover.’ Airex slumped back, tossing a hand in the air. ‘The bad news is that I think Caede was right: this was practically the centre of local nobility, so to speak, for the Star Empire’s side of the Midgard Sector. Possibly their Alfheim, but with more sense of belonging to the core worlds.’

‘They don’t want unification, they don’t want the Republic’s concept of liberal democracy,’ she surmised. ‘But they’re not stupid enough to think the Empire’s coming back, and they’re… too far out from the Free State?’

He shrugged. ‘Or they think the Free State is the upstart child of the Tal Shiar. What data we’ve gathered over the last year suggests they have a small defence force from the remains of Rator’s navy, who didn’t want to go with either faction. The system’s rich in resources – minerals in an asteroid belt, a few useful gas giants – that they’ve got thriving industries around. Decent agriculture, but plenty of big cities. Orbital infrastructure. They still have the same governor from before the fall of Rator – Governor Vhiemm. He’s treated directly, or through his office, with what few interactions they’ve had with Starfleet.’ Airex shuffled through the PADDs. ‘And that’s… largely it.’

‘That’s it? That’s the sum of all of our knowledge of a star system less than thirty light-years from a major Federation starbase?’

‘By the time the Federation knew Rencaris existed, the Neutral Zone had been established,’ sighed Airex. ‘So we spent more than two hundred years with no idea about places even a stone’s throw over the border. And when Rator took over this region, they didn’t exactly welcome us. There’s a lot of our front door to explore out here, Karana.’

‘Maybe Beckett’s right,’ she sighed. ‘Maybe this is an opportunity. We have to hope they’re reasonable and know they’re better off with Starfleet as a friend. But they’re Romulans, and apparently traditionalist Romulans. They’re going to see we’re desperate, and then they’re going to try and take advantage.’

The door-chime sounded, and for a moment, Valance put on her mask of professionalism. That faded when the doors opened at her summons, and Kharth entered, shoulders hanging with weariness.

‘We’re out of the storm,’ she reported, her voice brusque but low. Her eyes fell on Airex. ‘Your recalibrations of our deflector shields to dissipate the plasma charge signature worked. At least, we didn’t get hit again.’

‘Hardly a data point, but a result I’ll take gladly, nonetheless.’ He lifted the steel coffee jug sat on the low table. ‘I brewed some of that Vega blend.’

‘Coffee at 0330? Don’t mind if I do.’

Valance watched as fatigue and familiarity washed away any of the usual wrong-footed tension between her two senior-most officers, with Kharth taking a mug off the small collection kept by the replicator, and Airex barely looking up from his notes as he poured, like he knew where she was without looking.

‘Rencaris,’ mused Kharth, glancing over his PADDs. ‘I didn’t say this in Sickbay, but Caede’s not wrong to be cautious. About the political implications, I mean.’

‘I know,’ Valance sighed, leaning back in the tall-backed, comfortable desk chair. She would not have treated herself to something this cushy, with faux-leather upholstery and thick stuffing she could sink into, but Rourke had never collected it after his departure. On a night like this, it was welcome. ‘We’ll have to weigh up our alliance with the Republic in any deal we broker with Rencaris.’

‘What are we offering them?’

Valance shrugged. ‘They’re hardly going to be paid off with some of our deuterium supplies. I was going to see what they say and negotiate from there.’

‘You need to come up with something. Or they’ll take it as an insult.’ Kharth’s expression flattened. ‘We need to, I suppose.’

‘Any chance they’ll like our fascinating scientific findings on how the Mesea Storm nearly blew us up?’ mused Airex facetiously.

‘The Storm isn’t new to them,’ she pointed out. ‘They know more about it than we do.’

‘Not necessarily since the subspace disruptions.’

‘Data is a good start,’ Kharth conceded. ‘We’ve almost certainly gone further into the former Star Empire territories than they have. Even our findings over the last few months – an update of their strategic and economic context – might be worth something to them.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Valance quietly, ‘I want to arm them a surviving branch of the Star Empire with information about a first contact we made.’

‘Other things, then. Survey results.’ She paused, brightening. ‘Survey results from inside the Neutral Zone. They might not want it. But it’s not an insulting offer. And it’s a start.’

Valance nodded. ‘Have Beckett put together a package, including a few choice samples.’

Kharth’s improved mood was short-lived. ‘He’s going to make a song and dance about classified data.’

‘He suggested Rencaris. Remind him of that.’

‘When did he fall in with the party line for Intel so much, anyway?’

Airex grimaced. ‘I’d say he’s just doing his job, keeping our information security in mind, but the division has a way of clouding your thinking like that. He has more interaction with an outside chain of command than anyone else on board. Even my dealings with Starfleet Science are mostly… well, academic.’

Valance glanced at Kharth. ‘What are the odds he gets his marching orders from his father?’

‘Admiral Beckett and I aren’t much on speaking terms anymore. I didn’t think Nate is, either, but if there’s one toy the admiral probably won’t give up so easily, it’s his son.’ Kharth shrugged.

Airex watched Valance, eyes narrowing. ‘What’re you thinking?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It didn’t matter much when we’ve spent the last few months outside of Federation space. If Rencaris gets politically complex, though, it’s going to be bad enough juggling our needs, Sector Command’s needs, and the Republic’s needs without someone even bigger getting involved.’

Kharth shook her head. ‘You’re doing that four-dimensional thinking that you reserve especially for finding trouble to worry about, Valance.’

‘I’m doing what?’

Airex snickered, but smothered his smile self-consciously as they both looked at him. ‘She’s, ah, right, Karana. I think we’ve got as solid a plan for Rencaris as we’ll get.’

Valance looked between them, eyes narrowing. If someone had told her a year ago that she’d be the captain of Endeavour being nagged by a command team of Airex and Kharth, she’d have laughed them out of the room. ‘In which case, we need to get there in one piece. What’s the mood out there?’ She nodded to the door, meaning not just the temperament aboard the bridge, but the ship.

‘Mostly?’ Kharth shrugged. ‘Sleep-deprived. Lindgren can see through the rest of the shift, though. I told the counsellor to go back to bed when he commed. So far as shipboard disasters go, this one’s more of an inconvenience than a trauma. He can tuck people in with warm milk in the morning.’

‘Sounds counter-productive,’ Airex said, but quietened down as his joke earned a tired, irritable look.

‘I want us all,’ said Valance carefully, ‘visibly clocking time with Counsellor Dhanesh when things like this happen.’

Kharth stared. ‘We blew a few EPS conduits, we hardly -’

‘This ship spent most of last year without a counsellor aboard. The crew went through Borg – twice – and got stranded on the other side of the galaxy. It’s been a quiet few months since the counsellor came aboard, but this is the first really bad thing to happen, and we’re going to set an example to the crew.’

Kharth looked like she’d been told to suck on a lemon, but then her lips twisted. ‘You gotta hate being captain sometimes, huh?’

‘Yes,’ Valance conceded irritably. ‘We have a few days to Rencaris. We’ll be licking our wounds all the way. Let’s set the right example to everyone.’ She stood, lifting her hands to her temples. ‘The good news is that it starts with sleeping.’