“Not to be rude,” Sidda Sadovu announced as she barged into the ready room, “but what is this?”

Charles MacIntyre sighed as he looked up from the drudgery of reports before him, ready to stare daggers into his XO. But then the warm scent of fresh baking hit him as she set a small plate down on his desk before plopping down in one of the two seats opposite his desk. A buttery croissant was, he decided, suitable recompense for barging in.

“Good morning to you too, Commander. I’m doing great. Yourself?” he asked, pulling the plate close, out of her reach.

And immediately Sidda sat up straighter in her seat, a polite smile on her face, nodding in recognition of her transgression. “I shouldn’t have barged in,” she said. “Morning, Captain. Couldn’t be better, save for this.” She then held up a padd she’d been carrying in her other hand.

“Well, that’s not the chief engineer’s weekly written report, because Evan still keeps sending that to me,” Mac grumbled. Then his stomach grumbled in solidarity. The croissant was right there. “What is it?” he asked before starting to pull the pastry apart.

“And I quote,” Sidda said, looking at the padd, reading as if from scripture. “‘As a general advisory to all ships in the Expanse, I have it on good authority that there may be other underlying subspace anomalies at play in conjunction with any lingering effects of the Shroud effect. Please monitor expected and actual travel durations as well as subspace communication delays outside of the norm.’” She lowered the padd, staring at him. “And then you cited Lieutenant Beckman as your expert authority.”

“She is,” he replied. “And she’s still not fit to return to duty if you’re about to ask.”

“I wasn’t,” Sidda answered. “I’ve told Jreltin to expect to keep covering Beckman’s shifts for now.”

“Good,” he said with a nod. “I don’t see a problem,” he continued, picking up the previous thread, a nod towards the padd to guide his Orion first officer.

“Every captain out here in the Shackleton Expanse is going to see that and raise it with their senior staff. Questions will get asked, and just about every single CMO out here got asked by Blake if they know anything about Polluxian physiology. They’ll say something, more questions will get asked, and we’ll end up being known as the ship with a crazy helmsman. ‘The roads are shrouded and broken for a reason’ ring a bell?”

Mac wasn’t phased as he popped a piece of pastry into his mouth. Honestly, he was enjoying making Sidda wait. And wait. Her expression slowly shifted, heading tilting to one side.

“Are you worried about the ship’s reputation, or Lieutenant Beckman’s?” he asked finally.

“Both,” Sidda answered immediately and with conviction. “But hers more so.”

“Glad to hear that,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” Sidda protested. “She’s still at the start of her career, basically. I don’t want to see her get tarnished and stuck because of stupid, narrow-minded idiots who always think of her as some crazy officer when they hear about this.”

Mac took a moment, nodding, chewing. The croissant really was good. Then he cleared his throat, took a moment more. “Trust me, migraine-induced statements will be far, far down the list of any captain’s decision-making considerations with Lieutenant Beckman in the future.”

“The whole laurel thing,” Sidda stated, waving her free hand around her own head for emphasis. “I still think this was…” she trailed off.

“Ill advised?” he asked. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But if ships started to notice oddities, it’d circle around and we’d be speaking up afterwards. Then everyone would want to know why we didn’t say something earlier.” He shrugged at her stare. “Besides, I’m more likely to wear this. The captain crying wolf after a lieutenant had a bad dream? I’m the crazy one.”

Sidda snorted. “Of course you are. You have a pirate for an XO. And a demigod at the helm.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “And if the ship gets a bad reputation, who cares? Bunch of gossipy ninnies out in the fleet, anyway. I know my chain of command and who I have to answer to.”

“Personally prefer ships with weird reputations. Means at least something has happened to them.”

“See, bright side.” Mac contemplated the last piece of the croissant. “How is the away team going?”

“They slipped into the interference bubble twenty minutes ago. We’re watching them from orbit. They should hopefully set up the laser comm soon after getting to the monolith so we’ll have basic comms at least.”

“Gabs, Commander Camargo,” Mac corrected quickly, “is going to be having a great time right now. And with Atlantis focusing on mapping the outer planets in system, that leaves Leytan III to us.”

“Is that how the separation of duties broke down?” Sidda asked.

“More or less,” Mac answered. “Let’s get a string of probes out and start doing some detailed surface mapping while we keep Republic directly overhead of our people. And…” He trailed off, the thought suddenly souring with him.

“I know that face,” Sidda challenged. “What is it?”

“Ask Beckman if she’d be willing to look out the window. See if she sees anything out of the ordinary.”

“Besides whatever else she sees normally?” Sidda shook her head as she pushed herself back to her feet. “I’ll check with Blake first, then ask her myself.”

“Sounds good.” Mac leaned back, glanced at his computer screen, then back to Sidda. “Want to split some of these reports from other ships up with me?”

“I’ll trade you reworking the duty rosters,” she countered. “And a dispute meeting with some lower deckers. Then chairing an ops meeting this afternoon.”

“Why did we become senior officers?” Mac asked.

“Snazzy uniforms, comfy chairs, fame and glory,” Sidda answered on her way out of his office. “Desire to do the right thing and a certainty we could do it better than others.”

“Oh right, was forgetting the chairs,” he confirmed, waving Sidda out of his office. As the door whisked shut, he spun side to side in his chair for a moment, thinking, then glancing back to the reports before him. “Right, who’s next?”