“Welcome to the Rital system, runabout Calvera,” came the voice of a busy controller from the flight deck of Montana Station. He had a dozen small craft on his scopes, but this one was new. He pulled up its arrival paperwork. “I see we have you out of the Archanis Sector…” He did a doubletake. Ships from as far as the Beta Quadrant borderlands weren’t unheard of out this way – they’d just had an Olympic class passenger liner from Midgard last week – but it was a long trip, and an Arrow class runabout lacked the amenities to make the month’s long journey comfortable. “What brings you all this way?”

“We got bored of our Canopus so we thought we’d check out yours,” Dr. Lisa Hall replied in a deadpan tone. The cold counselor from the USS Polaris was not one for small talk. Especially not today. Today, they had work to do. “Clear us for arrival. We’re coming in.”

“Affirm, Calvera,” the controller replied without another thought. Not everyone came off friendly over the link, and the runabout’s occupants, three Starfleet officers per the manifest, were likely more than a bit surly after such a long trip aboard such a cramped ship. “You’re cleared three three zero through to the main doors, and then two seven five to bay echo-four, pad seven.”

Dr. Hall hung up without another word as she keyed in the vectors.

“You know you could at least pretend to like the locals,” Dr. Tom Brooks, the enigmatic physicist from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, suggested from beside her. “Never hurts to have some friends.”

“Only if they’re in the right places,” Dr. Hall countered. She didn’t need friends. Not unless they were to be used in the furtherance of her purposes. “But I was nice. I said please.”

“That you did,” smiled Dr. Brooks.

“I’m gonna flash Polaris and let Reyes know we’ve arrived,” Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir, the digital sleuth, announced from behind them. Typically, one would not involve an admiral in such activities, but Captain Lewis was gone, and who else did they have? Besides, even if her position did not allow her to join them on this little adventure, Allison Reyes was still one of them at heart.

“Keep it short and uninteresting,” Dr. Hall warned. She had no interest in having her time wasted yet again by a trial.

“No, I was going to detail every possible crime of ours – past, present and future – so that Commander Drake has got a proper paper trail this time,” Chief Shafir teased, eliciting a cold stare from Dr. Hall and an amused grin from Dr. Brooks. They’d slithered out of the avaricious JAG’s grasp after Nasera – all except Lieutenant Morgan, who’d taken his own life because of what the JAG put him through – but none of them had any doubts he was still watching. And so she kept the message short:

We’ve arrived at Montana.
Thanks for the time off.

~ CPO A. Shafir

Innocuous, but it said enough for the admiral to intone the rest. Now that they were here, this was when things might get complicated. They always did when Lewis’ associates were concerned.

The chief hit send and looked back up just as they passed through the station’s main doors into its cavernous interior. The place was packed with frigates, passenger liners, and cargo freighters, crammed far tighter than the regulations probably recommended. But that’s just how it was out here. Montana was both the last major stopover on the way to Tholian space and one of few good layovers between the rimward colonies and the Federation core, so it had been like this ever since the station came online.

Dr. Hall guided the runabout to port, veering away from the tangle of ships at its center as she found her way to shuttlebay E-4. The forcefield shimmered as they passed through it, and then gently she settled the ship onto the deck.

The trio had barely stepped out of the runabout when they heard a voice.

“If it isn’t the Sayidda and the Doc.”

They turned to see Grok, the gregarious Ferengi logistician, coming towards them, a toothy smile emblazoned across his face. At his side was T’Aer, the calculating Vulcan sharpshooter, and unlike her jovial partner, her expression was cold as ice.

“And who do we have here?”

The Ferengi looked the old man over discerningly. As opposed to Dr. Hall, who they’d worked with on Nasera, and Chief Shafir, who they’d run with for the better part of a decade, he did not know this man.

“Oh, just an old friend of Lewis’ that we sprung out of New Zealand to help us with a little Frontier Day debacle,” chuckled Chief Shafir as she embraced the Ferengi in a big bear hug.

“Dr. Tom Brooks,” the astrophysicist offered with a nod.

“Oh, a doctor, hmm?” Grok smiled. This man hardly looked the medical variety. “I gather, like Doc Hall here, not the type that’ll heal you?” He’d been on Nasera with them when Dr. Hall tortured the Vorta. It had assured their victory, but it’d been so cold that it made even T’Aer seem merciful in comparison.

“No, most certainly not,” Dr. Brooks confirmed. He could wield a dermal regenerator in a pinch, but his specialty was far more all-encompassing.

“Well, any friend of Jake’s is a friend of ours,” Grok smiled as he extended his hand in a greeting. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your schtick? The thing that got you that doctorate of yours? And the thing they put you away for?”

“It was one and the same,” Dr. Brooks explained. “My doctorate was on probabilistically compacting non-closed subspaces resulting from inequivalent topologies of the infinite-dimensional vector space generated by the temporal waveform. And then I set off to do it for real.”

The Ferengi looked confused, but the Vulcan was not.

“Time stream manipulation,” T’Aer offered. “Utility frowned upon by the unimaginative.”

“Indeed,” Dr. Brooks smiled. “And eventually, they put me away for it.”

“Eh, happens to the best of us,” Grok shrugged. “As I always say, if you haven’t done some time, have you ever really lived?” He gestured for the door. It was probably time for them to get somewhere a bit more private. “Now come with me, and while we walk, let me tell you about this one time at Rura Penthe…”

As the others fell in line behind them, Chief Shafir rolled her eyes. She’d heard this story far too many times. Instead, she turned to T’Aer. “Thank you for doing this, T’Aer.”

“He would have done the same for any of us.”

“Yes, but all the same, it’s no small thing,” Chief Shafir acknowledged. “How’d you guys know we had arrived?”

“We’re already plumbed in.”

Of course they were. Why’d she even ask?