Captain Taes calling for the senior staff to gather in the observation lounge offered Yuulik another opportunity to see Nova — after Nova had been so impertinent about avoiding Yuulik that morning. Uncharacteristically, Yuulik couldn’t find the will to offer Taes her undivided attention. Taes droned on and on about something or other to do with Underspace tunnels and something something Vaadwaur invading the Federation.  It was like they wanted to be the Dominion so hard.

Yuulik was captured, rather, by Nova’s practice of taking manual notes on her PADD even though Taes always sent a summary after her staff meetings. Yuulik spent several minutes studying Nova’s wrists. When she sat down at the conference table, Nova rolled up her sleeves as if she was too hot and then ordered a hot drink as if she was too cold.  Not only that, Nova favoured her left hand to make notations on her PADD but favoured her right hand when reaching for her mug.  Yuulik had never noticed these behaviours over her many coffees with Nova.

Nova really was a mystery.

Yuulik wasn’t so feeble that her passive perception couldn’t comprehend the content of Taes’s briefing. After the past year Starfleet had suffered, the talk of invasion was oddly familiar, if not comforting. An ancient species that was thought to be nearly extinct, the Vaadwaur Supremacy, had used the seemingly-collapsed Underspace tunnels in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant to invade the Federation and every major power beyond.

Constellation had been ordered to seek new alliances that would help repel the Vaadwaur — or start a new Federation if the old one were to fall. The weight of that kept Yuulik stuck to her seat as the senior staff rose and returned to their stations on the bridge.

There was a going theory that the Vaadwaur were responsible for the subspace blackouts back home, using the strange phenomenon to isolate the population for slaughter. Yuulik thought of her parents on their homeworld of Arcadia. It was the epitome of Federation utopia. Yuulik’s only hope was for them to have enough freedom to swim every morning.  Otherwise, she hoped Arcadia was a burning cinder in space. Anything in between was too much suffering for her parents to bear.

It seemed a cruel twist of fate that Yuulik wasn’t in the thick of the invasion in the Alpha Quadrant. She would be wasted on a diplomatic mission. Solving for unprecedented subspace phenomena was what Yuulik was made for. Diplomacy was for softer minds.

Breaking from her reverie, Yuulik found herself alone in the observation lounge except for Leander Nune, who was carrying the empty mugs into the replicator. Nune, who had confided in her about the slow collapse of his relationship with Laken. Nune, who had sought refuge in Yuulik’s department when he’d lost the will to run his own last year.

As she followed him into the side alcove, Yuulik asked, “How was your morning?”

She made no effort to hide the annoyed emphasis that betrayed how low-down terrible her morning had been.

“Fine,” Nune said as he deposited three mugs on the replicator plate. “My morning’s been fine.”

Fine. The most nothing word in existence.

“Oh, you’re fine?” Yuulik asked tauntingly. “So is a warp core before it explodes. I wish you a bad morning.”

And she stomped out of the room, onto the bridge. As she crossed to the forward science station, Yuulik’s attention returned to Nova, unbidden.

“I’ve conferred with the communications department aboard Almagest, captain,” Nova said. Just as Yuulik expected to cross Nova’s eyeline, Nova pivoted to face her console.

“Even with their ultra-long-range sensors and communications array,” Nova reported, “they have picked up no subspace chatter of the Vaadwaur attacking planets or starships in the Delta Quadrant.”

Yuulik dropped into her seat as Constellation dropped out of warp. She couldn’t be bothered to crane her neck back to look out the viewscreen. The sensors would tell her more.

“I’m detecting the wreckage of three starship hulls in this system,” Yuulik reported. She growled softly at the questions the computer couldn’t answer for her. Her LCARS display might as well have spat out ‘that ship is fine’ a few times.

“Two relics don’t match anything in our databases,” Yuulik said. “Not the Romulan database either. However, one matches the design language and construction materials of a Kazon starship.”

Finally, she looked through the viewscreen. The three shattered hulls drifted listlessly, like a celestial graveyard. One ship was cracked down the spine, another scorched from tip to stern, and the third was tangled in its own shredded nacelle pylons. No sign of the nacelles. She couldn’t help imagining this could be a similar sight in orbit of Arcadia.

From the secondary science station behind Yuulik, Flavia added, “The hulls are positively littered with tachyon particles. You may not recognise their planets of origin, Yuulik, but I’d hope that even you recognise that pattern of quantum joules and terahertz oscillation.”

Yuulik huffed for letting Flavia say it first.

“Starships can’t be produced by transporters from subspace-matter,” Yuulik concluded, “but they can be expelled from Underspace.”

From the centre seat, Taes asked, “What would the Vaadwaur gain by hurling Underspace detritus at a Kazon starship?”

Yuulik snorted. “They probably hate the Kazon too.”