‘Welcome back, Lieutenant.’ Airex watched as Kharth met and greeted Athaka at the turbolift the moment he set foot on the bridge. ‘Glad to see you’re on your feet.’

Athaka, for his part, looked like he wasn’t sure if Kharth was about to spring a trap on him, confounded by the warmth of his greeting. ‘I, uh. Thanks, Commander? Doctor Winters says I’m fit for duty…’

‘Then we need your help.’ Kharth stepped aside and gestured towards Ops. ‘The only thing keeping us on our toes out here is the fact our sensors are better than the Hirogen’s. Keep it that way.’

Athaka bobbed his head as he padded across the bridge. The young Coridanite was visibly unsettled by the level of attention he was receiving. He waved a hand vaguely. ‘I know – Commander Airex kept me up to date on conditions inside the nursery…’

Kharth gave Airex a quick look. ‘I thought you were under instructions to rest, Lieutenant.’

Airex feigned looking at the clock on his display. ‘I’ve got to be in stellar cartography,’ he said, making a big show of gathering PADDs. ‘Tell me if the Hirogen find us. Which they won’t. This is our best hiding place yet.’

Stellar winds swept around the edge of this protostar, stirring the particle clouds. It had taken careful calibration for Endeavour, nestled in the eye of the storm, to be able to pierce the interference in perhaps some of Airex’s best work yet. But it was done. And now they could wait and buy time.

Time, however, did not solve all ills, so Airex rushed off the bridge to see if he could find a more lasting solution to the current crisis. The only place that was going to happen was in a meeting of his own.

‘So I’ve been relegated to passenger,’ Caede growled when Airex arrived in stellar cartography and broke the news about Athaka’s recovery. ‘Great.’

‘I still want you here, Centurion,’ said Airex with a forced briskness. He did not particularly want to manage the grumpy Romulan’s feelings. ‘Your expertise on covert warfare is exactly what we need if we’re going to figure a way through this.’

Thawn, sat at the main display, wrung her fingers together. ‘I’m happy to help, Commander, but every minute I’m here is…’

‘A minute you’re not reinforcing our power conduits. I know.’ Airex raised a placating hand. ‘Unfortunately, Thawn, you’re one of the best minds aboard. I need your eyes here.’

‘Yeah,’ added Beckett, leaning against the display next to her. ‘You two are the brains. Caede and I are the eye-candy.’ Caede rolled his eyes.

‘Commander Kharth has given us instructions,’ said Airex, clapping his hands together as he advanced on the display. The press of a button brought it to life, updating the swirling hologram with the latest sensor readings from their scoping out of the stellar nursery so far. ‘We’re in hostile territory that so far is working for us. This is what we use to beat them.’

Beckett winced. ‘I don’t know why I’m here. Literally everything I could contribute, someone here’s better at.’

Caede gave him a scathing look. ‘You’re the Chief Intelligence Officer.’

‘And you have a little bit of everything,’ Airex interjected. ‘Not to mention more understanding of the Hirogen.’

‘More study of the Hirogen.’

‘That’s all most people have.’

Thawn gazed up at the display and sighed. ‘Okay. Our visibility is much better than theirs. Can we tilt that even more in our favour?’

‘Improve our sensors or worsen theirs?’ said Airex.

‘Either?’

Caede folded his arms across his chest. ‘If this were a ground op, I’d be talking flashbangs. Can you make a flashbang for ships?’

Thawn tapped her PADD stylus against her lower lip. ‘In an ideal world, I could recalibrate the deflector to create a massive energy pulse. Directed properly, that could impact the Hirogen sensors. Not enough to be meaningful in open space…’

Beckett brightened. ‘But pretty good when they’re already half-blinded by the nursery.’

‘Except,’ said Thawn, ‘there’s no way we could do that with Endeavour’s current power levels.’

‘It’s a start,’ said Airex calmingly. ‘Keep up ideas like this.’

Caede harrumphed. ‘We find an unstable region of the stellar nursery, using the shuttles to range further out. Then we draw the Hirogen there. Hope they don’t see the danger when we do. Let this place eat them.’

‘That needs,’ said Airex, ‘a suitable unsafe region. It’s not a bad idea, Centurion, but let’s kick this around before we start sending shuttle teams out there.’

‘Can we cause an unsafe region?’ asked Thawn. ‘Agitate the gases ourselves?’ But she bit her lip. ‘I have no idea what that might do to the local ecosystem…’

‘Let’s put a pin in that one, too,’ Airex agreed.

‘Wow,’ sighed Beckett. ‘This whole place is like an astrophysicist’s dream, and here we are, trying to turn it into a weapon. I swear the Hirogen are more fascinated by the wider galaxy than we are right now.’ He sounded sad rather than accusatory.

‘Challenging hunting grounds, good prey.’ Caede shrugged. ‘What more could they wish for?’

‘A sustainable society,’ Thawn grumbled, studying her PADD. ‘Better sensor technology. To not be potentially lost through subspace corridors…’

‘Prey.’

All eyes landed back on Beckett. Airex tilted his head. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘They want prey.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘We give them prey.’

‘Aren’t we the best prey?’

‘So what about something better?’ Beckett reached for the controls and brought up the records about Skippy. ‘I think Skippy, as a species, was new to them, or they probably wouldn’t have paid something of his size much attention. What if Skippy were bigger?’

Thawn gave him a cautious look. ‘We’re in no condition to find the herd, if it exists, and we’re certainly not then using them as bait…’

But Caede had moved to join him. ‘A false trail. We make them go drag hunting. But how?’

Thawn was on her feet at that. ‘Modify the shields on one of the shuttles,’ she said, eyes widening. ‘We use our studies of Skippy to emulate those biosigns, but pretend it’s a much, much larger cosmozoan – something it’s worth the Hirogen diverting to go after, especially if it’s a day since they picked up our signal…’

Caede nodded. ‘Then get them when their backs are turned. If Logan can shoot straight enough.’

Airex straightened. ‘There’ll need to be a good tactical plan to exploit this diversion, I agree. But this is a good one. Let’s see if it’s possible with the shuttles, and if it looks promising, we’ll run it past the captain.’

A brief silence met his words, Thawn and Beckett exchanging a glance, before he realised what he’d said. The captain. Everyone had been so scrupulous about referring to Kharth as commander or just by name so far, but in the midst of a fight for their lives, that level of precision, avoidance, had eluded him.

Caede broke the silence, mercifully. ‘You’ll need a good pilot on the shuttle. More than you’ll need a good pilot on the bridge.’

‘Elsa’s a good pilot,’ said Beckett, a little sharply.

‘It’s going to take a strong nerve to be willingly chased by the Hirogen.’

‘She has a strong nerve.’

Airex raised a hand, his insides hot with a mixture of shame and relief at his earlier comment, like he’d broken the seal and wasn’t sure how to feel about it. ‘That’s a detail for later. For now, we prove it’s possible.’ His eyes fell on Thawn, who gazed up at the holographic display, eyes distant. ‘Commander?’

‘Oh. Sorry.’ She looked down. ‘I was just thinking… there’s so much to learn in this place. We might be lost, but we’re on the other side of the galaxy, and all we’re doing is figuring out how to use our environment to kill someone.’

Caede scoffed. ‘This is self-defence.’

‘He’s right,’ said Airex, but much gentler. ‘And before it was self-defence, we met a new form of life. Helped it. Studied it. And the fact that we’ve stopped and studied our new environment, reached out to it, made a connection with this place and the beings who live here, is how we’re going to survive it all.’

Caede gave him a sidelong look. ‘We’d have survived it if Kharth had simply left when we had the chance. Don’t everyone act so congratulatory. This is us trying to pull our asses out of a bad call.’

‘I, for one, welcome an ending where neither we nor Skippy has to die,’ drawled Beckett.

‘That’s naive to assume it’s possible. We’re going to have to fight the Hirogen. What happens if even one crewmember dies in the scrap?’ Caede challenged. ‘Will it be worth it, then?’

‘It’s worth trying,’ said Airex, but he kept his voice calmingly firm. ‘That’s all we can do: try to leave the galaxy better than when we left it. Failing that, we don’t leave it worse. We brought the Hirogen here. We have a responsibility to tidy up our own mess.’

‘They brought themselves here,’ Caede grumbled. ‘That’s not our fault.’

Beckett was glaring now. ‘It’s not Starfleet’s fault the Klingons are fancying invading the Republic,’ he snapped. ‘Should we stay so uninvolved then?’

Caede didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘If the Klingons aggressively expand to consume former Star Empire territory, including the Republic, that will make them unwieldy for a decade as they bring the region under heel. And then they will harness the resources of this new territory and become, under a man like Toral, the greatest threat the Alpha and Beta Quadrants have seen since the Dominion. I know what’s happening back home: the Republic is being used in what will soon be a proxy war for the Klingons and Federation to scrap over who dominates the quadrant. Don’t act like you’re doing us any favours.’

‘Then I guess,’ sneered Beckett, ‘we’ll just have to do you the favour of getting your arse home after you got stranded here with us.’

‘Enough.’ Airex raised his voice this time, added the sort of edge he wasn’t used to falling back on. Years of starship command a century ago echoed down from Tabain Airex and into him, and it was enough to shut them both up.

Thawn was on her feet, gaze more level. ‘Let’s see about those shield calibrations,’ she said softly, ‘and then bring this to Kharth. So we can all go home.’