“I don’t get it. We go after one array, and you take a team to blow up the other, but who goes after the command and control hub?” Commander Cora Lee asked as she lay beside her lover. An engineer by trade, her life was built around redundancies, but this was the opposite, a plan where there were so many little things could go wrong, and if any of them did, the whole thing would topple over. That would be a tragedy for them, and one for the galaxy too. This strike, if they were successful, would deal a critical blow to the Vaadwaur’s command infrastructure.

“Sena is in the process of mapping the topology of the local Underspace corridor network right now,” Lieutenant Commander Ekkomas Eidran explained, staring out at the stars through the wide sweeping window over her bed. “Once she gets that sorted, we’re going to use the method we used during the labyrinth crisis to put out a call to arms.”

“If our forces respond to the call, why can’t they help us take out the arrays too?” Cora asked, the nervousness visible on her face as stared lovingly at Ekkomas. She couldn’t imagine losing him, and this seemed far too risky. “It would seem a far safer strategy than sending you halfway across the galaxy on an alien ship for some boomies.” She still remembered the last words of Ryssehl Th’zathol and Crewman Nam Jae-Sun as they detonated the orbital defense platform over Nasera while they were still aboard. So much could go wrong so quickly, and she didn’t want to lose her Ekko. If she did, her heart would break. “What if they discover the ruse?”

“We’ll do what needs to be done,” Ekkomas replied dutifully as his eyes met hers. “I promised that to Jake.” He neglected to share that Captain Lewis had originally proposed going himself. If he had, Cora would have wanted that instead, but the reality was that this choice would protect her better. It would be better for the squadron too. Captain Lewis needed to be on the bridge when the Serenity and the Ingenuity engaged the second array. “Don’t worry, my love. It’s going to be okay, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

She didn’t like it, but from his tone, it was clear his mind was made up, and so, instead of belaboring the point, she jumped to the other thing bothering her about the plan. “This plan hinges on the assumption that someone’s actually going to respond to Sena’s signal too. What happens if no one is listening?”

Ekkomas looked at her curiously. He hadn’t considered that up until now. When Sena had proposed the plan, he’d just taken it as fact that there’d be someone on the other side.

“That signal refraction technique is limited to the Underspace corridors themselves, and from all that SIGINT we’ve collected, it sounds like everyone’s on the back foot just trying to survive until tomorrow.” Cora pointed out. “I doubt anyone has the luxury, the time or the wherewithal to be cruising around the Underspace right now, just waiting for our signal.”

“You may be right, but we can hope,” Ekkomas shrugged. He didn’t have a good answer for her. “If no one picks up, I mean, I guess we’ll cross that bridge if we get there. It’s not like Jake is just going to tell us to charge in without support and…” His voice trailed off as he considered what he was saying.

“And what?” Cora laughed lightly. “Blow up a warp core?” That’s essentially what the Romulans had done with their singularity core when faced with an unwinnable situation, but Captain Lewis had just spent the last six months pouring every ounce of his being into keeping them safe on their long journey home. He wouldn’t throw that all away now, would he?

“I… uh….” A haunted look washed over the Betazoid’s face. “Shit. You’re right.”

She noticed the look on his face. “I was just joking.”

“But I’m not,” Ekkomas replied darkly. “You weren’t there with us in the brig. You didn’t see what I saw, the lengths he was willing to go to even just to get this information.” The blade as Sena cut him up. The captain smiling cruelly as he sealed the wounds with a dermal regenerator, only to let the Romulan do it again. The way they pumped the Vaadwaur full of psychoactives, intent on melting his mind. He had lived that pain, not just by seeing it, but by feeling it through his empathic senses too. The Betazoid began to shake as the experience played back in his mind.

“Ekko, what’s wrong?” Cora hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen what he had seen. But she could see him now, breaking in realtime before her eyes. “What happened in there?” Whatever it was, it had him torn up in a way she’d never seen from him.

“I… they…” Ekkomas stuttered. “I don’t even know.” He felt sick.

“Everything he does, he does for us,” Cora offered gently, wrapping her arms around him out of compassion, but still not truly grasping the magnitude of what he was saying. “Jake comes from a different time, and a different place.” She had not liked the old man at first, but over the last six months, she’d come to see his soul for what it was as he poured his entire being into getting them home. “But I’m sure whatever he did, it was…”

“No Cora. You don’t get it,” Ekkomas interrupted. “They tortured him.”

Those three words sucked the air out of the room.

“Cold and calculating,” Ekkomas continued. “Psychological and physical. Merciless and unrelenting. I never imagined… The captain and the Romulan, they became monsters in there, intent on breaking him by any means necessary. They put him through things no one should go through. But that’s not even the worst part.

“What’s the worst part?”

“I… I just stood there and watched.”

She could see the pain and guilt in his eyes. “I’m not sure what to say…” She usually knew, but in that moment, she was at a loss. She hadn’t seen what he had seen, and she was having a hard time even conceptualizing it. Yes, Captain Lewis was intense, but torture? He had been their rock, even a father figure of sorts, and it was hard to juxtapose that versus what Ekkomas was saying. Her mind went to that JAG trial the previous fall, the one for which he’d been acquitted. Maybe there had been something there though, another side to their captain than how she knew him. She didn’t know how to feel about that either though. The Vaadwaur had killed over three thousand Romulans here, and she could only assume orders of magnitude more across the galaxy, so the calculus was not so black and white.

“There’s nothing you can say,” Ekkomas shook his head. “There’s nothing anyone can say.” He didn’t know what to do about it. Would he report it if they made it home, or would he leave it be? If he was honest with himself though, that really wasn’t even what this was about right now though. Really, all he wanted right now was to get those memories out of his head. “This is just a thing I’m going to have to work through.”

Their eyes met again, and Cora didn’t flinch. She didn’t see him as a monster that’d stood by as the captain and the Romulan went to town. She simply saw a man she loved with all her being who was deeply in pain, and she wasn’t even sure if she’d have even done any differently if their roles had been reversed. “Well, no matter what, I’ll be there by your side. I love you.”

And somehow that made him feel just a little bit better.