Elias Walker arrived at the captain’s ready room with a punctuality that made even Valance blink. She’d expected the put-together appearance, the uniform even more crisp than he’d worn it at Framheim now he wasn’t caught between stops on a long journey. With his age, she’d expected nerves or fussiness, the kind of orderly professionalism young officers presented to impress or appease superiors. Instead, he took the offered seat with a calm politeness that spoke more of his rank than his youth.

‘Coffee,’ he asked in reply to her offer of a drink. ‘Chicory blend, black, no sweetener.’

Valance, a raktajino-drinker by habit, wasn’t about to start judging someone’s coffee preferences, but she had to double-check his request was in the databanks. Some captains kept drinking china on hand, but she settled them down with mugs from the replicator itself.

‘I apologise for not seeing you sooner, Commander,’ she said. ‘There’s been a lot of material coming out of Commander Cortez’s team about the beacon, and I’ve had to get up to speed.’

‘Likewise, ma’am,’ said Walker, which was how Valance learnt he had clearance for those reports. ‘And it’s no trouble. It’s given me more time to familiarise myself with the ship.’

‘Adjusting well to Endeavour?’

‘Very much so, ma’am, though it’s only been a couple of days.’ He sat straight but easy, one hand around the cup. ‘She’s a fine ship. You can tell when a crew’s used to doing things properly.’ It was said warmly enough Valance couldn’t tell if it was compliment or evaluation.

‘We’ve been together for years, one way or another. I’m sorry there’s an element of instability to your assignment – that neither of us knows how long you’ll be here.’

Walker shrugged. ‘So long as you’re out here on your own, there’s value to this posting. I’m not here to tell you what to do, Captain, of course not. But Starfleet has strategic and political interests in this sector. Someone’s got to keep an eye on that ball.’

She gave a light, thoughtful scoff, and shook her head at his curious look. ‘It didn’t take long, did it? For this mission of exploration to become about threat identification, geopolitics, diplomatic standing.’

He smiled like they were sharing a joke, though she wasn’t sure of the punchline. ‘I think we both know, Captain, that exploration’s just another form of Starfleet’s power projection. It matters that the rest of the galaxy sees us here, not just the Klingons and Romulans. It matters that the people of the Shackleton Expanse see us here.’

‘You’re not one for the five-year exploratory mission, then, Commander?’

‘I think five years is too long a commitment in the modern age for any ship or crew. Take Endeavour – you’ve had continuity across ships and captains, but you’ve changed considerably. Taken on who you need, disembarked those you don’t, as circumstances change.’

Valance tensed. ‘Some of those people disembarked in a casket.’

He inclined his head. ‘I apologise; that wasn’t my intended meaning. I saw you had heavy losses at Frontier Day. But that is my point: you’ve been with this team for five years, ma’am. The galaxy’s changed a lot in that time. We must be adaptable to face it.’

It wasn’t the cold and cynical hand of the likes of Faust she felt at her shoulder with his words. Nor was it the gruff words of a battered warhorse like Jericho. Walker spoke with greater warmth and sincerity, an ardent youthfulness fused with belief. She didn’t know if it was a failing on her part that she couldn’t find the words to pick apart his implications.

Instead, she just nodded. ‘How are you finding StratOps? Lieutenant Beckett’s team is small…’

Walker smiled at that, and looked for all the world like an amiable young officer. ‘As I said, Nate and I go back a ways. We can share.’

He had to be a year or two Beckett’s senior, but somewhere down the line, Beckett had stopped being a fresh-faced ensign, too, and become the kind of officer that stood at the backbone of a ship’s staff. Like Lindgren, like Thawn. This generation weren’t, Valance mused, junior officers eager to learn any more. They were stamping their own mark on the galaxy, on Starfleet.

‘I’m sure,’ she said, more delicately. ‘But it’s important that as my Chief Intelligence Officer, he has a long rein to work as he sees fit. That’s what’s kept me with the information and perspectives I find useful.’ Perhaps, she wondered, Walker’s presence would tame the wild card tendencies of the perpetually contrarian Beckett, who would likely chafe at this fresh-faced old rival talking about exploration as ‘force projection’ and perhaps stop listening so intently to briefing material from outside the ship.

But before Walker could reply to this boundary-setting, there was a chirrup of comms and Kharth’s voice. ‘Bridge to Captain Valance. We’ve got something here.’

Walker didn’t only follow her out without asking, but made for the tertiary command seat as she headed for her chair. The bridge wasn’t awash with concern, but a steady hum of apprehension, tension.

‘Report,’ said Valance, seating herself.

Kharth was stood over at comms. ‘Ensign Kally’s picked up sporadic subspace transmissions. Encrypted, KDF coding. We’ve logged two bursts in the past hour.’

‘The thing is,’ piped up Kally at Valance’s nonplussed expression, ‘it’s repeating – same encryption strength, same strength, and that suggests the same source at roughly the same distance from us.’

‘You think we’re being followed,’ she surmised.

Kharth threw a frustrated look towards the fore of the bridge. ‘There’s more.’

‘I ran a sensor sweep when Kally reported the second burst,’ said Centurion Caede, sat at Ops. ‘There’s a pattern of graviton shears behind us, moving with our warp field.’

Walker arched an eyebrow. ‘A cloaked Klingon ship?’

‘Possibly,’ said Caede, voice clipped.

‘Maybe,’ chimed in Logan, leaning across Tactical. ‘We’re moving along a subspace fold that’s showing all kinds of signs of minor subspace distortion and shear from the collapse of the Shroud and, maybe, whatever energy pulse we’re following.’

‘And,’ said Kharth with audible reluctance, ‘we’re still on the Klingon side of the Expanse border. KDF ships will operate in this region.’ But her eyes met Valance’s, both women plainly thinking of Rourke’s warning.

That wasn’t the only pressing thought, though, as Caede twisted in his chair. ‘Am I the only one who remembers the House of K’Var trying to kill us when we were only as far out as the Mesea Storm, because it’s not a treaty violation if nobody sees it?’

‘You’re not, Centurion,’ said Valance briskly. ‘So we’ll keep monitoring the situation. But we also won’t jump at shadows. Our Klingon allies have the right to operate in this region, just as we do.’

‘If we fire a short, narrow-band subspace pulse down the fold behind us,’ Caede pressed, ‘if something’s there, it’ll disrupt the cloak’s field; they’ll have to recalibrate their stealth matrix or reposition, and we’ll probably spot something.’

Walker scoffed. ‘And if someone is there and means us harm, they know we know.’ He looked at Valance. ‘Ma’am, there’s one simple way to ascertain their intentions without showing our hand: we decrypt their comms signals.’

She gave him a level look. ‘You’re suggesting we decrypt military traffic from a current ally we’ve just entered new phases of cooperation with.’

‘We’re cooperating with the House of Koloth,’ said Walker, voice rather flat. ‘If this is a loyalist of Toral who sees us out here as an opportunity -’

‘Then at present, they’re not breaching any diplomatic accords. Every suggested action I’ve heard on this bridge does,’ Valance said tartly, and stood. ‘Kally, keep recording any further bursts. Passive only. Centurion, continue your sweep. Minimal power. If someone’s out there, we’ll know soon enough.’

Walker stood as she did, and at least had the grace to drop his voice as his bright eyes met hers. ‘No Klingon ship tailing us cloaked has benign intentions, ma’am.’

But before she could reply, Kharth was there, voice equally low. ‘Captain made her decision, Commander. You’re new to this bridge. Recommend you don’t rock it.’

He glanced between them. Valance kept her expression neutral, but Kharth hadn’t bothered. Then he inclined his head. ‘Apologies, ma’am. I just don’t like this.’ There was, she thought, a hint of the youthfulness in there at last, the agitation at the idea of doing nothing.

‘Me neither,’ said Valance, more appeasing. ‘But we don’t break the rules first.’

‘As you say.’ Another deep incline of the head. ‘With permission, I’ll head to StratOps. See if Nate and I can rustle up some ship movements the KDF will share with us. Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for that.’

He left as she nodded, and the bridge settled back down to the wary tension of their ventures deeper into unknown space, with a possibly very familiar threat behind them.

Kharth didn’t move, though, her expression staying studied as she muttered, ‘So we don’t tell him about how the House of K’Var almost definitely still want us dead on principle, right?’

‘I think,’ said Valance with a low sigh, ‘we can leave that on a need-to-know basis.’

‘Right. And that kicks in… when they decloak and try to kill us?’

‘Around about then, yes.’