“You dare to speak of love to me?!” Akki cried through her vocoder, the small golden device at her shoulder translating her myriad of clicking sounds into Federation standard as she waved her upper limbs with wild abandon.

“Your love is a weak and feeble trickle of water compared to my love,” she whispered. “Barely enough to dampen the riverbed with its paltry flow.”

Akki fell to one knee, her chitanious exoskeleton landing with a sharp crack as it made contact with the carpeted floor of the science lab. With slow, deliberate movements, she ran a long, needle-like finger through the thin loops of the carpet’s weave, its path twisting too and fro.

“It could not raise the fields nor quench a man’s thirst.” Her finger stopped against the side of a console that rose from the deck before drawing back within the folds of her loose shirt.

“The wave of your love would crash against the smallest rock and leave it dry.”

A dramatic silence fell upon the room; even the consoles held their breath as the Xindi stood once more, raising her hand to her upper thorax, where a humanoid’s heart would lie.

“My love is like the flood,” she announced with a slight quiver of her lower antenna.

“All encompassing, all embracing. Overwhelming in sight and sound and taste and touch.”

A sharp intake of breath from the corner caused Akki to spin sharply towards her small audience.

“My love is as vast as the ocean itself.” She lifted a long mustard finger to the corner of a wide round eyes and drew away a non-existent tear. “It would shatter you to stand between it and my beloved.”

Akki drew herself to full height, her slender mustard exoskeleton creaking as it unfurled fully beyond the heads of all others in the room. With a hesitant breath, she reached towards the small window of the science lab and the pinpricks of starlight that hung in the still darkness.

“Pray you do not find yourself standing against…” Akki paused dramatically “… my love.”

Applause erupted from the trio of audience members, bouncing upon shouts of bravo and cries of acclaim as the Xindi officer dropped her character and returned to her normal height. Simmons took two quick steps across the floor and slapped Akki firmly across the shoulders as the applause continued.

“I never watched Love Across the Mud Pits before. Who knew Tellerite novellas could be so good?” He laughed with a wide smile. “That was the best twenty minutes of my life.”

“Was it only twenty minutes?” Post muttered as she spun in slow circles on her chair at the far lab station. “Felt like longer.”

“Don’t listen to her Akki, that was a masterful performance.” Teym threw the Bolian ensign a dark look from beneath her twisting curls of hair. “Some people don’t appreciate good art.”

Post rolled her eyes with audible effort as a yawn escaped her slack mouth. With a wave of an arm, she dismissed the trio and returned her attention to the progress bar that crept frustratingly slow across the screen.

“Yes, Akki, that was very impressive.” Rommigan stood to join the group, his golden skin twinkling in the lab’s warm lighting. “Did you really learn the entire episode?”

“I may have watched it a few times,” Akki confessed. “Just to get the specific motions correct.”

“Well, it shows! Perhaps an offering for this week’s talent contest?” Teym raised an inquisitive eyebrow. The cadet’s regular event in the mess had started several weeks ago when Britannia found itself marooned near Risa. Unfortunately, candidates for performance continued to be elusive despite her continued enthusiasm in recruitment.

“Perhaps Cadet.” Akki chittered in a tone that echoed with a polite but firm no.

A trill of the workstation interrupted the post-performance review as the ship’s computer announced it had completed its assigned task, much to the joy of Ensign Post, who lept upright eagerly. All heads snapped towards the large bank of screens set into the wall expectantly, only to find the words ‘TRANSMISSION UNSUCCESSFUL’ stretching across the screen in dark crimson letters.

“Test transmission two hundred and eighty-five, unsuccessful,” Post announced as she thumbed the test log, her form deflating back into the tall-backed chair.

“What reason?” Rommigan asked as he crossed the lab and summoned the test data to a nearby screen, all memory of the award-winning performance dropped from his mind.

“Same as last time,” Post shrugged with resignation. “Subspace interference causing signal degradation.”

“I was sure that frequency boost from the deflector would push through it,” Simmons sighed as he joined them at the bank of screens.

“It didn’t even make it to the relay shuttle.” Post entered a short instruction to the console, causing it to transform into an astometrics feed.

A small blue dot flickered in and out of existence as the words Culloden hovered nearby, identifying the automated shuttle they had sent off into the void to act as a booster. A pulse of signal erupted from the familiar shape of Britannia at the edge of the screen before fading away into nothingness centimetres from the blinking dot, each one deceptively condensing a thousand metres of real space.

“It really was very good Akki,” Teym whispered as she laid a small hand on the insectoid’s shoulder before she dashed off to join the others.

“Don’t we have an exceptionally powerful comm relay?” Teym asked, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Like super powerful?”

“We do, but it’s all predicated on the principle of using subspace to support the carrier wave though,” Rommigan explained. “Which is great until-”

“-Someone builds a giant subspace dam.” Post finished through gritted teeth.

Silence dropped on the room like a leaden weight. It was another failure, one amongst many that continued to frustrate the team and the entire crew.

With a trilling noise that the team had come to understand meant a sigh, Akki pulled her thin cloak around her body, fashioning it back to a more formal semblance of a uniform than that of her theatrical costume.

“Package the test data and relay it back to Risa via the civilian relay ships.” Akki rubbed her antenna between a pair of yellow fingers. “Perhaps our colleagues on Sirona will find it useful to their investigations.”

“I will inform the Captain.” Akki let out another frustrated chittering of her mandibles. Her form tightened with nerves, the disappointed visage of Captain Harrison flashing across her mind’s eye.

“Packaged and sent.” Rommigan pressed a large button glowing with the word SEND.

The team began to disperse with a series of quiet, frustrated mumbles, their shoulders slumped at the latest in a series of failed experiments. With the majority of the senior staff disembarked, enjoying a much-earned break on the surface of Risa, it was the junior staff’s chance to shine. Everyone secretly held the small flame of hope that they would be the one to save the day, but reality, it seemed, had different opinions on the matter.

As the lab’s doors swished aside to send Akki on her journey to the bridge, a high-pitched chirp cut through the hiss. The infuriatingly familiar sound of a failed transmission bleeting from the console caused Akki to stop in her tracks.

“Lieutenant?” Post murmured, her eyes fixed on the screen where the words TRANSMISSION FAILED had reappeared, this time under the small icon that represented the data packet.

“The relay ship Golik Maru is missing,” Post continued in a whisper.

“Now is not the time for jokes, Persephone.” Akki chided.

“Its ID beacon is gone from sensors.” Rommigan confirmed “So is Ahdin Kai, Tollick Rue and Gilded Ox.”

Akki hissed in frustration, her short mandibles quivering as she imagined the crews of the bulky transporter ships getting bored and sailing off to things more interesting and likely underdressed. She had not personally agreed on drafting the civilian ships into service as vital comm relays, but it had not been her place to question the captain’s decision.

“Check again, they’ve probably drifted from their assigned stations.”

The minutes passed with frustrating slowness as Rommigan repurposed several of Britannia’s numerous sensor arrays to reach out into the space that lay between the ship and Risa. A normally instantaneous search was extended to a slow slog as the short-range sensors battled against the omnipresent subspace interference.

“No sign of them,” Rommigan announced as the screen filled with emptiness. “They are gone.”