It’d been two weeks since they stole away from the Polaris in the dead of night, and two days since anyone said a word. For the three tucked aboard the runabout Calvera, the silence was comfortable. It was normal. It was the thing that filled the moments in-between, whether racing the vastness of space or surveilling a safehouse on a stakeout.

Dr. Tom Brooks sat at the helm, not because he was the best pilot, but simply because someone had to. It didn’t matter that he was the oldest at fifty five, nor that he was the slowest as a result. To those who saw them on their scopes, they were just another unremarkable runabout making an unimpressive flight through an uninteresting sector on the periphery of Federation territory, and there wasn’t even a notable planet or outpost within a light year in any direction. He was just babysitting the ship as it did its work.

At present, the Calvera was holding steady at warp 8, bearing 215.54, angled rimward and towards the trailing edge of Federation space. Archanis Station was two weeks behind them, and Montana Station lay two weeks ahead. There, on the Presidium class starbase in the Rital system, the unknown awaited. Unknown even to him.

Captain Lewis’ old accomplice, the Vulcan sharpshooter T’Aer, had said very little when she called, but the fact she’d said so little said a lot. It meant she didn’t trust a Starfleet encrypted channel, and that meant this wouldn’t be a casual house call. But when had it ever been a casual house call when Captain Lewis was involved?

When Chief Ayala Shafir had come to him in the lab, he saw it in her eyes immediately. After all Captain Lewis had done for her, if there was any hope of finding answers as to what had happened to him, she had to go. She owed that to him. Dr. Lisa Hall, too, seemed similarly motivated, though such a sense of indebtedness seemed strange coming from a woman so typically detached. That was just the impact Captain Lewis could have on you, Dr. Brooks knew from personal experience, when he stood beside you on the line. These folks, both the Polaris’ hazard team members aboard Calvera and the Sebold operators meeting them on Montana, they’d been through a lot together.

However, while Dr. Brooks had certainly put in his time with Captain Lewis, it wasn’t loyalty, nor a debt unpaid, that had compelled him to join in on this adventure. No, he knew what the others did not. Instead, he agreed to go simple because he knew that an unknowing version of himself would have gone. Truthfully, foresight was not a gift. Really, it was a mindfuck.

Amidship, Dr. Hall sat in the runabout’s small kitchen, nibbling on a bowl of quinoa while reading an article from the Tri-Planetary Journal of Counseling on the trauma caused by recent events. While she found the premise frustrating, namely the sociopsychological forgetfulness of peoples towards threats of the past, she couldn’t disagree with its findings relating to how Starfleet officers were – or were not – coping with the reemergence of the Dominion and Borg in recent months.

For the psychologist, her mind was far from the mission before them. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the plight of the Serenity and the Ingenuity, for she did, nor that she had any illusions about what was to come, for she did not. Rather, it was just that, at this particular moment, those thoughts were irrelevant. They’d matter in two weeks, when they arrived at Montana, but why waste neural load on them in the interim?

In the rear hold of the Calvera, the same could not be said for Chief Shafir. She had neither the prescience of Dr. Brooks, nor the poise of Dr. Hall, and lying in one of the crew cots, she was restless, turning things over in her mind.

It wasn’t that the chief feared what awaited them on Montana Station. Whatever T’Aer and Grok were scheming, and whomever their target was, they’d do what needed to be done, and they’d get their answers – just as Captain Lewis had taught them. Instead though, what she feared was the answers they’d find.

Captain Lewis’ last transmission had put the Serenity and the Ingenuity about 6,000 light years from Federation space. At those distances, how did someone have knowledge of what had happened to them? And if someone did, why were they here, while Captain Lewis wasn’t? She could come up with many possible explanations, but none were good.