One peril of command was how easily it built barriers between you and everyone else, making personal relationships forged outside of their duty all the more precious – and rare. Valance had never been good at building them, even before the centre chair had claimed her.

Mercifully, her colleagues in the squadron faced the same challenge. Shore leave meant watching one’s crew relax while knowing that joining them would compromise it all. Mercifully, Sirius Squadron’s captains included Gus Tycho, who took the bull by the horns and made sure they could be lonely together.

It had been a late night at what Tycho had been dubbing the ‘captain’s table’ – a booth in the Sundog bar, an airy venue high up in Port Faran with views to match. Nautical maps were lacquered into the tabletops, the lighting was low but warm, and the shelves behind the bar lined with a mismatched collection of rare whiskys and rums.

Even stoic, dutiful Teodor Borodin of the Scylla had been there, dragged by the Ranger’s Juliette Yves. Jokes and levity had flowed from her and Tycho, good humour and friendliness from Xhakaza and Galcyon. Valance had found herself exchanging wry looks with Borodin, drawn in by her fellow captains almost against her will. Then the live band had started up, and Yves had dragged Borodin to the dance floor, and the tone changed from comradery around a table to letting off steam.

So when a message came in on Valance’s PADD, she took the escape route.

‘You’re not turning in already!’ Tycho protested, bottle of something lethal in hands. He’d suggested shots moments before.

‘Let her go, Gus,’ admonished Galcyon. ‘Some of us still have to keep up with ceremonial duties.’

‘Ah,’ said Tycho, pouring Galcyon the shot instead. ‘I try to stay too unimportant for that.’

‘It’s not work,’ Valance said too fast, and at once wondered why she’d exposed herself when she had a getaway sealed. ‘I mean – I’ve got to see someone.’

‘Ah,’ said Tycho again, and tapped his nose. ‘Say no more. And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!’

Yves gave her an enthusiastic wave from the dance floor as she passed, heading for the door, before Borodin whirled her around in a move that spoke more of ballroom training than a dance in a bar. Hidden depths, Valance mused as she stepped into the warm, dark streets of Port Faran, from the skipper of the squadron’s gunship.

Just got into town, the message had read. Nightcap at Portside?

There’d been no deflection, no pre-emptive shielding against refusal. Valance knew that if she’d declined or simply not shown up, she wouldn’t have needed to give an explanation. That there were no expectations. And yet, the moment the message had come in, even at this hour, she’d dropped what she was doing and headed down to the wine bar by the marina.

Portside was carved into the upper promenade above the western docks, all glass and dark stone framed by low, arched eaves with open sides that overlooked the harbour. Live music was soft and slow, strings bowed and plucked in the background of a thin crowd of intimate meet-ups over murmurs, chuckles, and wine across low candles and the last finger-food of the night. And at a table near the edge with the best view sat Olivia Rivera.

Soft amber lighting turned the cream of her sleeveless blouse gold, its deep neckline catching the eye despite all of Valance’s vaunted self-control. Her dark hair fell in practiced waves over bare shoulders, her skin glowing warm in the low light. One arm draped across the back of the chair, too comfortable and confident for someone who was waiting.

Rivera didn’t stand when she saw her, just tilted her head slightly in greeting, her eyes bright even in the gloom, the curve of her lips unreadable.

‘I thought I’d scared you off,’ she said mildly as Valance padded over.

‘I thought I’d missed you.’

‘Mm. Not quite.’

Before Valance knew it, she’d sat across from her with a fresh glass of wine provided by a thoughtful waiter. She wasn’t sure she’d even ordered. ‘You said you’re covering the ceremony.’

‘Not from the ground. A slice of insight behind the curtain, what veterans of Alpha Centauri’s liberation really think of all this pomp and circumstance.’ Rivera’s voice turned wry as she swept a hand across as if painting text on a news ticker. ‘Someone has to tell the truth.’

‘I thought you always said it’s not about the truth so much as how people make sense of the galaxy?’

‘And to some people, the ceremonies are bread and circuses to cover up the gushing physical, infrastructure, and emotional wounds left by conquest, occupation, and liberation. Someone should say that, instead of just being the Palais’s stenographer.’ Rivera sipped her wine, eyebrows raised. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not asking you for a quote. There are thousands of other sources.’

‘And yet, here I am. At your invitation.’

‘I wanted to wind down. Wondered if you were free. Don’t tell me I tore you away from personnel reports.’

‘Drinks with the squadron captains, actually.’

‘And you ditched them for me? I’m honoured.’

‘I think Tycho was about to start table-dancing. It wasn’t my scene.’

‘I wasn’t sure Port Faran would be your scene at all. Wondered if you’d be in the capital.’

Valance shrugged. ‘I don’t need to give anyone an excuse to think I’m not using my time off appropriately.’ She sipped her wine. Full-bodied, dry. Just how she preferred it. ‘You’re staying in town, then?’

Rivera met her gaze levelly. ‘I have a suite.’ Her leg brushed against Valance’s under the table, and stayed there.

Suddenly dry-mouthed, Valance swallowed. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘Is it? You’ve hardly replied to my messages.’

‘You’ve hardly sent them.’

‘I guess we’ve both been busy.’ Rivera drained her wineglass, her gaze still locked on. ‘But now’s a chance for you to use your time off… appropriately.’

Valance didn’t finish the wine.

It wasn’t a long walk to Rivera’s suite. Valance still didn’t know her well enough to know if she’d secure a luxury room, or something practical, or something rustic and characterful. When they stepped inside and the door slid shut behind them, she still didn’t know, the two tumbling into each other before so much as turning on the lights.

Clothes came off in pieces, hungry but precise, needy but not racing. They stumbled together in the dark across the room, a tangle of limbs, until Rivera pulled her down onto the bed like she’d waited for it all day. For weeks. Months. The kiss broke only when they needed breath, but when they came back together, it was mouths on skin, not lips. A curve of the shoulder. The hollow of a throat. The line of a hip.

It wasn’t intimacy, Valance knew. It was oil on the surface of water set alight, blazing fiercely, but never deep. But it meant, at least, that she wasn’t alone with herself. And with the way Rivera whispered her name, just once, she thought she wasn’t alone with that sentiment, that need, either.

When they lay together, tangled in each other and bedsheets not quite kicked away, Valance knew more, at least.

‘This is a nice place,’ she said, once her breathing had settled, eyes sweeping across the shrouded hotel room as the night lights of Port Faran reached through the window enough to cast shadowed silhouettes.

Rivera’s chuckle was low, throaty, her cheek resting against Valance’s bare shoulder. ‘That’s what you’re thinking of?’

‘It’s what I’d wondered on the way here – what sort of place you’d have.’ Valance paused. ‘Otherwise, I wasn’t thinking.’

Fingers curled across the curve of her abdomen, trailing up. ‘That’s rare for you.’

‘I’m supposed to be relaxing. It’s shore leave, after all.’

Rivera shifted up onto her elbow. ‘You can stay the night, if you want.’

‘You’ve not got an early start?’

Her lips curled. ‘I’m interviewing Starfleet officers on shore leave in Port Faran. You think they’re having an early start?’

‘We could do breakfast.’

‘Woah, woah. I can call you for a “nightcap” where you take me to bed at the snap of my fingers, but breakfast? Straight to warp ten, here!’ Rivera laughed, first at her own joke, then at Valance’s indignant expression, flopping onto her back in the bed.

‘It wasn’t a snap of your fingers –’

‘Fine.’ Rivera’s self-satisfied grin remained as Valance half-rose. ‘A snap of yours. You asked where I was staying.’ Her gaze softened. ‘I’ll be around these few weeks. We could do this more often?’

This. It was never defined, never discussed. Nightcaps and breakfast, sex and wine. There’d be a dinner out in the mix somewhere. A walk down the promenade, no doubt. Conversations about what work they could share. Sometimes the conversation would be serious, even, pressing. The state of Starfleet prestige. The recovery of the Federation. The burdens of Starfleet captains and journalists, both ostensibly shackled in the same duty to the truth – but what truth?

Weighty topics where they could match wits and critical thoughts, press each other on principle and deed.

But not what ‘this’ was. What it meant. Where it was going. What kept them awake in the night, what kept Valance’s heart pinched tight in meetings with the whole squadron staff. And if Rivera had similar burdens and concerns, she had no idea what they were. Because they’d both kept it that way.

Valance leaned over her and felt Rivera’s breath hitch as her hand came to her hip with a decisive touch. ‘We could do this again right now,’ she murmured, and pinned her down as she kissed her, slow and deliberate, taunting and teasing and not surrendering so much as an inch of control.

Because without control, this might turn into something. And that was a new horizon of uncertainty she didn’t yet want to face.