“How many fingers am I holding up?” the doctor asked.

“Definitely fewer than eleven, but more than zero,” said Anand.

“Careful, I don’t hold back when my patients are well enough to crack dumb jokes.”

Bohkat huffed in amusement as he hovered near the exit, scrolling through the incoming status reports. The assistant medical officer–Lieutenant Dvinak, as she’d introduced herself–was quietly added next to Lieutenant Zamora on the list of ‘people he immediately liked’.

Dvinak turned to a nearby cart and grabbed another pre-prepared hypospray off it; Anand hadn’t been the only one with vision complaints after the near-miss from Gomthree. Though he’d gotten the worst of it, he’d insisted on the rest of the bridge crew being treated first. Bohkat had quietly excluded himself from said group, taking advantage of his captain’s blindness to hide quietly in the background.

Bohkat rubbed his eyes and squinted at the PADD in his hands. He could still read, ergo he was fine.

“So tell me,” said Dvinak, shooting the hypospray into Anand’s neck without warning. Anand flinched a bit, then started blinking rapidly. “Do you also stare directly at a solar eclipse when it’s happening?”

“In my defense, an eclipse usually comes with a lot more warning.”

“Fair enough,” Dvinak conceded, then held up her hand again. “How many?”

Anand squinted. “Three?”

“Good!” She smiled broadly and set the empty hypospray on the counter as she sauntered over to the nearest replicator. “I had to double-dose you, but at least it’s working at all.”

Bohkat heard a few beeps and saw the shimmer of matter taking form, and when she turned around she had a pair of sunglasses in her hand. “The medication will make you photosensitive, so you’ll want to wear these for the next six hours– correction, you will wear these for the next six hours. Doctor’s orders.”

She pressed them into Anand’s grip and stepped back to watch as he put them on, hands on her hips. “The replicator lets you play around with the style, though, and I like to think I’m pretty good at accessorizing.”

Anand slipped them on, and Dvinak considered his face from a few different angles before nodding and giving him thumbs up. “How many fingers am I holding up now?”

“Trick question!” said Anand as he slid off the biobed and quickly made his way to the exit, hands hovering in front of him. “Thank you, doctor!”

“Just don’t walk into any solid objects, please!” she called after him.

“Don’t jinx it,” he replied, finding a wall with one hand and following it down the corridor.

Bohkat turned to follow him but stopped short at the sound of Dr. Dvinak loudly clearing her throat. He chanced a look behind him, and he could see clearly enough to tell that she was staring him down.

“Your turn,” she said.

Bohkat gestured vaguely after Anand, but Dvinak didn’t break eye contact as she picked up the last hypospray and patted the biobed. He sighed and marched himself over. ‘But I don’t look good in sunglasses…’

On the other side of sickbay, Ixabi pushed her prescription sunglasses up to dab at her tears. “Can I go now? I need to go apologize to the captain again.”

Ang handed her a tissue and tried his best to make eye contact through his own set of darkened lenses. “I’ve finished the scans, but I’m a little curious about what you think you need to apologize for.”

“I pushed it away!” yelled Ixabi, before hunching her shoulders and lowering her voice. “When I reached out to it, I felt it–”

She waved her hands in the air, soaked tissue still clutched in one of them. “I felt it recoil from me. I probably should have pulled away first, but I was curious. I really– I just really wanted to say hello.”

Ang nodded and crossed his arms over his chest, reaching up to tap his chin with his finger. After a few solid taps, an idea shook loose in the form of a question. “Did it recoil as if you’d just said something insulting about its mother, or did it recoil as if it had just burned itself?”

“I–” Ixabi let her arms fall limp into her lap. “I’m not sure. Maybe– I think it was more like the second one.”

“I remember you saying–well, thinking, since you were also still in my head at the time–that it was overwhelming, dealing with so alien a mind,” said Ang. “Do you think the creature might have been a bit overwhelmed too?”

“Huh.” Ixabi slid off the biobed and stumbled over to a replicator, depositing a small pile of soaked tissues. “Huh.”

She wandered back over to the biobed, absently trying to sit and just slumping over from the waist down instead, one steadying arm on the bed. “But if I’m overwhelming it, how do I– not do that?”

“Well, as I mentioned, it seemed like you were briefly in my head and the creature’s head at the same time. Maybe you could link up someone else instead.”

Ang tried to give her a meaningful look through his sunglasses, but Ixabi seemed to be staring off into space.

Suddenly she popped up off the biobed. “Qsshrr??”

“Maybe,” he said. “We don’t know anything about the biology of this creature yet, but all space-born entities that we do have data on are extremely long-lived. Horta are also extremely long-lived. The longevity of a lifeform tends to have an effect on its bio-neural signature. So…”

He shrugged.

Ixabi clapped her hands and bounced. “So that’s a great idea! It’s so clever! It’s almost like you’re a brain specialist of some kind,” she said with a wink.

“Well, that’s sort of– oh, okay, you’re being facetious. Yeah,” said Ang.

“Yeah!” Ixabi grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along with her out of sickbay to find Qsshrr.

“So there’s nothing wrong with the sensors?” Anand asked.

“There was nothing wrong with the sensors,” Szarka corrected. “That little light show from Gomthree fried about a quarter of them.”

She pointedly pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose to emphasize the point.

“Then how did we miss a Jem’Hadar fighter and Gomthree sitting right on top of us?” he asked, sounding lost.

Szarka was about to ask Qsshrr to solve the puzzle for him when Bohkat flew through the doors like an Anand-seeking missile zeroed in on its target.

Her barking laughter was an automatic response to seeing Bohkat, in his own pair of sunglasses, jerking to a halt next to their bespectacled captain. She couldn’t have held it in if she’d tried.

His shades protected her from his glare, but the flaring nostrils and clenched jaw were impossible to miss.

“Ha! I’m sorry,” she said, breathless with laughter. “I just never expected to be taking orders from the Blues Brothers.”

“The who?” asked Anand.

Bohkat was equally unfamiliar, and fortunately for Szarka, his confusion smothered his irritation until he shook both off and redirected his focus to Anand.

“Status update from engineering,” said Bohkat. “Impulse engines are back online–”

“Already?” said Anand, perking up.

“Shield generators are fully operational,” Bohkat continued. “They’re running final checks on the warp systems now. Diagnostics are still being run on the damaged sensors.”

“Fantastic,” said Anand, reaching for the PADD Bohkat held and pulling it closer and closer to his face before finally giving up. “How did they do that so quickly?”

The doors to the lab whooshed open again, and Ixabi came through with Dr. Ang in tow.

“Lieutenant Ixabi!” Anand beamed at her. She smiled back. He smiled even wider and the feedback loop threatened to break their faces. “I’m so relieved to see you up and about.”

Szarka was suddenly overcome with an impulse she couldn’t resist. She saw her opening and she had to take it before it was too late.

Like a cobra striking, her arm whipped out to grab the nearest unused PADD, and in less than two strides she was in front of the assembled crew, back turned to them as she held the PADD arm’s length in front of her.

“Shades Crew group photo!”

She grinned so hard she thought her cheeks would rupture, and she hit the shutter, only for the PADD to be immediately torn from her grip. “Hey!”

Szarka turned, saw Bohkat holding the PADD, and decided not to push her luck. Or maybe just push it a little. “Good idea! You keep it!”

“Where’s Qsshrr?” asked Ixabi, redirecting Bohkat’s attention.

“Here!” she called, skittering out from under a console. “I’ve just re-verified Officer Szarka’s findings…”

“Qsshrr!” Ixabi bounded over to the Horta and clasped her hands in front of her chest as she gazed down at her. “Qsshrr, I want to ask for your help. I want to link minds with you the next time I reach out to the creature. I think I might have frightened it off because my mind is so alien to it, but Dr. Ang thinks that your bio-neural signature might be–”

“Might be more similar, yes,” said Qsshrr, and she quivered. “I think the prospect is terribly exciting, and I’d love to help if you think I can be of assistance, but first it’s imperative that we finish briefing the captain on our findings.”

“Oh!” Ixabi stepped aside and turned towards Anand. “Of course!”

Qsshrr slid into the center of the group and pulled a small holo-emitter from under her mass. With a flick of one of her cilia, she activated a map of the vacuole-filled region which floated above her as she spoke.

“To answer your previous question, Captain, we didn’t miss the Jem’Hadar or Gomthree per se; they simply did not exist in this dimension until the moment they appeared on our sensors. They seem to have come out of the vacuoles themselves. If I overlay our sensor data onto the above map, you can see it for yourself.”

Another flick of her cilium and a small approximation of the Jem’Hadar fighter and Gomthree each appeared on the map, both seemingly popping into existence just outside adjacent vacuoles.

Anand furrowed his brow and crossed his arms. “I didn’t know they could do that.”

Szarka shrugged; she’d already been rolling the problem around in her mind for some time. “As long as they’re not traveling at warp when they make contact with the vacuole, why not?”

“Most of our information on subspace vacuoles comes from observations made by Voyager in the Delta Quadrant decades ago,” continued Qsshrr, “But we do have evidence of humanoids passing through vacuoles seemingly unharmed. However, the idea of a spaceship traveling through one seems incredibly risky. As it stands, we have no way of knowing where any one of these vacuoles may lead, whether into the atmosphere of a planet or to open space, or to a dimension where our laws of physics don’t even apply. Or nowhere at all.”

“I wonder if Gomthree can tell somehow,” said Anand, staring through the map that Szarka was fairly sure he still couldn’t see. “Or if it’s just so desperate to hide that it doesn’t care.”

“Surely the Jem’Hadar can’t tell,” said Bohkat, slightly too emphatic, as if trying to convince himself.

“I don’t think the Jem’Hadar care, as long as Gomthree might be in their reach,” Szarka offered.

Anand’s head jerked up. “So another fighter could pop out of one of these vacuoles again with no warning? Bohkat, we need to go to yellow alert.”

Bohkat nodded, and after a few keystrokes, the alert indicators in the lab changed. Szarka could hear the alarms trilling down the corridor.

“So,” said Anand, heaving a deep sigh, “We’ve now got to look not only around these hundreds of subspace vacuoles, but inside them as well?”

There was no answer to his rhetorical question and the lab was eerily still for a moment, the flashing yellow alert lights creating only the illusion of movement.

Suddenly he clapped his hands and straightened his back, looking around at the rest of the crew. “Good thing that’s exactly what this ship is built for! We’ve got a full complement of all kinds of probes.”

“Probes out the wazoo, sir!” yelled Szarka, eager to keep the energy flowing.

“Well, we’ll just send out everything we’ve got,” said Anand, waving his hands out before him. “Sync them up first, make sure they’re set up for direct communication with one another on multiple frequencies on the off chance that any of these subspace vacuoles connect up with one another.”

He glanced down at the Horta. “Qsshrr, if Ixabi is still up for it in light of this new information, I think your time would be best spent in training with her.”

“I’m still up for it!” said Ixabi, doing a little hop in place. “Who knows! Maybe thoughts can travel through vacuoles too? Only one way to find out!”

“Then I would be absolutely delighted to train with you, Lieutenant Ixabi,” said Qsshrr, shutting off her holo-emitter and tucking it back in among her cilia.

“Maybe your training could start in sickbay so I can get some more baseline scans?” said Ang, gesturing over his shoulder as Ixabi and Qsshrr joined him and followed him out of the lab.

“Bohkat,” said Anand, “If you could monitor the situation from tactical I think I’ll lend Szarka and her techs a hand with those probes.”

“How??” asked Szarka, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

“I reconfigured so many probes when I was in ops and the JAG Safety Bureau,” said Anand, “I could do it even if I were completely blind.”

Bohkat nodded. “Aye, sir.”

“Yeah,” said Szarka, pointing with both hands at her sunglasses. “My ‘aye sir’-t, too.”

Bohkat stared at her blankly for a moment until the joke apparently clicked, and a choked sound that might have been a huff of laughter escaped. He shook his head as he barreled out the door, muttering, “Stupid…”

Anand gestured for Szarka to lead the way out of the lab, probably as much to do with his partial blindness as politeness. As they made their way down the corridor, he settled into step just behind her.

“You know,” he said, “When your previous captain offered me this posting, she said it was the most boring assignment she’d ever had.”

Szarka imagined Captain Banoub saying exactly that to Anand, and scoffed. “Is that what you wanted?” she asked.

“Not really,” he said hesitantly, “But it might have been nice for a few days. At least until I figured out where all the toilets are.”