‘It just doesn’t sit right with me, you know?’ Nallera sprawled on the cushioned bench in the heart of the Rooks’ Alpha Centauri offices. The rhythmic thunk of her rubber ball bouncing off the walls, ceiling, or floor as she tossed it about, always to return to her hand, punctuated her musings.

It also punctured the focus of the two sat at the desks in the main room, data flashing through their holographic screens. Falaris simply sucked her teeth and kept working, but after the next excessively heavy sigh, Aryn turned in his chair.

‘What doesn’t sit right?’

If Nallera noticed the snap, she didn’t let on. ‘We helped collar one of our own, you know? A Starfleet officer in an impossible situation.’

‘I’m not sure what situation makes murdering civilians an “impossible choice.”’

‘No. But the occupation was impossible, wasn’t it?’ She sat up, tossing her ball from hand to hand. ‘Get treated like a hammer enough, every problem’s gonna look like a nail.’

‘People have agency,’ Aryn pointed out. ‘She wasn’t in the occupation any more. I can sympathise with Vaughn without thinking she’s a victim with no culpability.’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Nallera shrugged. ‘I just… we came at this one with fire and fury, way we fix every problem, only we found another person stuck at the fringes of Starfleet.’

‘I don’t see the parallel. We’re not murderers,’ he said, and tried to not think too hard about some of his unit’s past missions. Then again, they had never identified defenceless individuals and deliberately assassinated them. There were degrees to all of this, Aryn conceded silently, but degrees mattered.

‘I… sure.’ Another sigh. Nallera tossed her ball against the ceiling. ‘Just wish we had more of a clear-cut baddie. Not someone who maybe needs help. Who saw and lived through things most people couldn’t imagine, and then did something fucked up.’

‘Forgiveness is complicated,’ Aryn allowed, turning back to his console. ‘But first you have to want it.’

Falaris cleared her throat. Even her interruptions were apologetic, Aryn thought wryly. ‘If you’ll forgive me, sir, Chief – this is quite intensive work and the philosophical conversations might be better held somewhere else…’

Nallera grumbled, catching her ball. ‘Right, right. I should let you dig up classified info without me moaning in the background.’ She sat up. ‘Is it even safe for you to do this from here, in the Liaison Tower?’

‘This is the best place for it,’ said Aryn. His job wasn’t to perform the data extraction, but double-check Falaris’s work as she did it, and ensure no technical expert or security system was noticing them snooping around the database. ‘After all, we’re still cleared for this level of data access under the emergency powers from the investigation.’

Standing, Nallera shambled over to him and put a hand on the back of his chair. ‘I thought Rosewood asked us to do this all quiet, like.’

‘He did. But our permissions don’t get shut down until the handover is officially finished, and this is the best way for us to access the information we need -’ Aryn paused as Falaris shot them another look. He cleared his throat and stood. ‘Let’s go get coffee. Coffee, Lieutenant?’

‘Latte,’ she said without looking up.

‘Coffee cart in the lobby it is,’ mused Aryn, and gestured for Nallera to follow him.

‘Do we get in trouble for this, you think?’ she asked as they wandered the corridor towards the lift. ‘Digging up illegal info?’

‘We dug up illegal info getting a lead on Vaughn,’ he pointed out. ‘Only it wasn’t illegal, because we decided it wasn’t.’

She made a face. ‘This is why I hate operating inside Federation space. Rules get hazy. Bad guys are less bad guys.’

Or they’re our bad guys. He shrugged and stepped into the lift. ‘Have you sent word back to your family yet?’

She made a noise like a toddler who’d been asked to put her toys away. ‘No. I might write a letter. For Mom, though. Let Dad stew a bit.’

‘It’s good that he’s reaching out. Family’s important.’

‘Family hasn’t been important since I was eighteen.’ Her voice held an ironic edge of petulance. ‘I made the family I need in Starfleet. Besides. When did you last talk to yours?’

He studied the lift controls. ‘When they told me they didn’t recognise me any more.’

‘Shit.’ Nallera shut her eyes. ‘Sorry, Mac. I know you mean well. But you also know… family isn’t as simple as blood. It takes work.’

‘My family,’ Aryn said delicately, ‘would prefer to not acknowledge a former drone. To them, I died years ago and never came back. And in many ways, they’re absolutely right. I’m not the same man who was assimilated, and I’ll never be, and they live in a world which is… not equipped for these complexities.’ He looked at her and smiled apologetically. ‘But it does mean I know what’s at stake. What you might lose. Don’t let it slip away by inaction, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘What, you mean, decide I don’t want them in my life and flip ‘em off?’

He gave a tight but sincere laugh. ‘If that’s what decisiveness looks like.’

The coffee cart in the lobby changed every day, a different Alpha Centauri City small business setting up shop in the middle of the Starfleet Liaison Tower so workers could get a taste of local cafés right in their offices. Now, in the middle of the morning, it was a short wait to get three hot drinks, so Aryn wasn’t too surprised to see Falaris on her feet when they got back to their office, waiting expectantly.

‘I’m sorry, there was a queue -’

‘I’ve got it.’ Normally, he would have expected jubilation from the young officer. But Falaris’s eyes were wide, intense, and she wrung her fingers together. ‘Located the file. Adjusted our permissions. It was – it was really easy in the end, sir.’

Of course it was easy, he thought bitterly. We’re spooks like them, after all. We’re all on the same team. All with the same agenda of shutting down the truth.

‘Hey!’ Nallera cheered, handing over her coffee. ‘Congratulations, you win one latte!’

She took it, but her eyes didn’t leave Aryn’s. ‘You should see it, sir.’

Swallowing a new knot in his throat, Aryn swung around to see her screen. There were times he pretended he read only as slowly as the average humanoid, or times he was slower to make sure he didn’t miss anything. This wasn’t one of those occasions, as he scrolled through as fast as his implants could allow to absorb the information on the long, meticulously ordered document Talia Vaughn had insisted existed and proved her right.

At one point, he paused. ‘Ben Ryan?’

Falaris all but hopped from foot to foot. ‘Signed an order confirming the culpability of fifteen civilians in anti-Vaadwaur activity. Then they were all executed.’

‘Wait,’ said Nallera. ‘Ben Ryan the fucking mayor?’

‘Benjamin Jefferson Ryan,’ said Aryn, voice flat. ‘Mayor of Alpha Centauri City. Yes.’

‘Ben Ryan the fucking mayor who’s been out kissing babies and pulling toddlers out of rubble and basically patching everyone together single-handedly?’

‘Who kept his post throughout the entire occupation,’ said Falaris, nearly stumbling over her words as she gestured frantically. ‘And seems to have, at multiple points, aided and abetted the Vaadwaur law enforcement. In interviews, he explained to Commander Ingram’s team that this was in the name of containment – that the Vaadwaur would punish people anyway, and threatened him that if he didn’t help them maintain this appearance of legitimacy by cooperating…’

‘They said they would execute culprits for the sabotage of the transit system from Port Faran,’ Aryn read, slower and more emotionless as it sunk in, ‘and that they had a long list of suspects. If Ryan didn’t sign this order to confirm the guilt of twelve of them, the Vaadwaur would kill thirty.’

‘Well, that’s…’ Nallera worked her jaw. ‘That’s just impossible for him, isn’t it?’

‘He also,’ squeaked Falaris, ‘demanded that in exchange, his family and friends be removed from Alpha Centauri City. That they be allowed to relocate to the city of Venture, which had basically no Vaadwaur military presence. The Vaadwaur allowed it.’

‘There’s more,’ said Aryn quietly. ‘Newton, Castaneda, Chu – Vaughn’s victims – they really did cooperate. A lot. All with their own stories for why. Castaneda handed over intel that this report suggests might have caused the deaths of several resistance fighters. Probably Vaughn’s people.’

‘Okay, so it’s like – there are degrees of collaboration and culpability, right?’ said Nallera. ‘Are you guilty if they were holding a gun to your head?’

‘They were holding guns to our heads,’ Aryn said. ‘We fought them.’

‘We’re Starfleet.’

‘He’s the mayor. And now he’s being painted as a hero.’

‘There’s – sir, keep reading,’ squeaked Falaris, knuckles white by now as her fingers tugged at each other. ‘Not on Ryan. Keep reading.’

Aryn did. And paused. ‘Oh.’

‘Oh?’ echoed Nallera. ‘Don’t fuckin’ oh me, Mac -’

‘There’s more names on here. This list has categories with recommendations – levels of culpability, people worthy of further investigation, people who might need charges bringing against them. Most names have a low categorisation, but there’s – there’s a dozen or so at that high level. Ryan’s one of them. The three victims are on there, too. And more.’ Aryn rubbed his temples, eyes closing. ‘Someone call John up here.’

Falaris nodded and scurried off, but Nallera just stared. ‘Why?’

‘Because his brother’s on this list.’