Didn’t take long for the natives to get restless,Leone thought as he reviewed his final list of crew casualties. Damn, this is gonna be a long trip home for all of us.

Poking at reconstituted corned-beef hash, Stephen Klisiewicz decided, did nothing to imbue it with additional flavor.

And it was not merely the food before him that seemed drained of its essence, he thought. Looking around the Endeavour’s mess hall, every aspect of the environment seemed lifeless and dry to him. Crew members moved slowly, as though walking with leaden weights draped invisibly around their necks. Aside from the omnipresent hum of the ship’s engines, chairs scraping against deck plates and the occasional grinding of cutlery against dishes offered the only audible backdrop. What few conversations actually did take place at surrounding tables seemed muted in tone and abbreviated in conduct, as if people were exchanging only the barest information necessary to keep working.

Much more than just Captain Zhao died this morning,Klisiewicz decided, and it shows.

He had come straight to the mess hall more as a mechanical response than anything else. After the Endeavour’s departure from Erilon—and after Commander Khatami left the bridge—Klisiewicz had spent the remainder of his shift at the science station, halfheartedly running diagnostic checks of the starship’s computer core and data systems and quietly absorbing the pall that had settled on the bridge crew. Although Neelakanta had moved from his seat at the helm into the command chair, Klisiewicz felt that it was Mog who had lent more of a commanding air to the situation, calling across the bridge for updated condition reports and coordinating repair efforts from his engineering console. The burly Tellarite also found time to move from station to station and engage members of the bridge crew in personal conversation, a move Klisiewicz felt had done some good in restoring a measure of his own morale—maybe everyone’s—as Endeavourmade its fastest possible speed back to Starbase 47.

When an officer he did not recognize relieved him from his post, Klisiewicz simply left, his parting glance at Mog unreturned as the engineer focused on a computer readout. Halfway to his quarters, a growling in the pit of his stomach diverted him to the mess hall. Still, even though he had skipped breakfast, that hunger seemed to have been a miscue, as he found himself toying with his hash while the events of the past few hours unreeled in a continual loop in his mind.

Was I the right one for the job today? Did I really do enough? Could I at least have been fast—

“Ensign Klisiewicz?”

A flash of yellow in front of him snapped Klisiewicz from his reverie, and he looked up to see Lieutenant McCormack standing across the table from him and holding a meal tray. The navigator’s face was framed in strawberry-blond hair and her smile was tentative, one he had never glimpsed during their time together on the bridge. At that moment, however, even a hint of something friendly was a welcome bit of comfort.

“Lieutenant!” he said, perhaps a bit too eagerly.

“Please,” she replied in a quiet voice seemingly pitched lower than her petite frame might have suggested. “I’m Marielise. I figure at this point, we’re past just ranks.”

Happy to take her up on the offer, Klisiewicz rose from his seat. “I’m Stephen, then,” he said as he pulled a chair out for her. “Please, sit down.”

McCormack set the tray on the table and lowered herself into the proffered chair, casting a wary eye toward his tray while plucking a napkin from atop her own to reveal her selection: a cold salad of chicken, apples, and nuts on a bed of greens. He found himself a little embarrassed, somehow wanting to offer a defense for his meager meal, and a little anxious about her motives for seeking out his company in the mess. She offered no immediate answers, choosing instead to eat in the same silence as the diners around them.

“How do you find an appetite?” Klisiewicz asked, embarrassed at the question even as the words left his mouth. Frowning, he added, “I mean, you know, after everything that’s happened.”

Shrugging, McCormack moved greens and small bits of chicken around on her plate. “To be honest, I’m not really that hungry. I found myself here after my shift ended, without even realizing it.” She offered a small smile. “Habit, I guess. Besides, I figure I’m not exactly helping anyone if I don’t eat. The last thing you want is Dr. Leone chasing after you because you’re not taking care of yourself.”

Though he nodded in understanding, Klisiewicz felt less than inspired by the lieutenant’s observations. Instead, he opted to poke some more at his hash.

“So,” McCormack said after a few moments and after she had consumed half her salad, “was that really your first time in combat?”

Guess she cuts right to the heart of things,he thought as he felt his shoulders slump. “Was it that obvious?” he asked.

“Not at all,” the lieutenant replied. “I only ask because I thought I heard someone mention it. I was surprised, actually.”

He felt buoyed. “You were?”

McCormack nodded as she took another bite of her salad. Klisiewicz hung on her affirmation, and kept hanging as she chewed bite after bite, seemingly disinterested in pursuing the conversation. Still, for some reason, Klisiewicz did not find the silence awkward. Aside from the obvious fact that McCormack was very attractive, he found her presence a calming one. Oddly enough, he even felt some of his own appetite returning, and finally took the first bite of his own meal.

They carried on wordlessly for the rest of their meal until McCormack dropped her fork onto her now empty plate and wiped her mouth with her napkin. Rising from her seat, she looked at him and offered another smile, though this one was broader and more lively than when she had first arrived. “It was nice getting to know you, Stephen,” she said.

Getting toknow me?Klisiewicz almost choked on his hash. “Likewise,” he said around a tentative mouthful of food. “Maybe I’ll see you next time?”

McCormack nodded once in agreement as she picked up her tray, pausing long enough to hold his gaze. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “you’re a good guy to have on the bridge during a fight.”

And with that, Lieutenant Marielise McCormack spun on her heel and was gone, leaving a baffled Klisiewicz to watch her as she disappeared through the door leading to the corridor. It was not until several moments had passed, with him trying to assess his enigmatic dining partner, that he realized he had finished his meal and that he felt better than he had in several hours.

Wow.

Space had never felt colder for Atish Khatami than it did at this moment.

In the stillness of her quarters, she sat upright in a tall-backed seat behind her desk. The desk was unadorned except for a standard tabletop viewer, which bathed her face in a soft glow of light as she stared unwaveringly toward its screen and into the faces depicted upon it, those of Commodore Diego Reyes and Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn.

Khatami figured that if she looked straight into their faces, then maybe she could keep on blinking back any stray tears that she still could not manage to suppress. So far, through her whole report on the incident at Erilon, she had managed to do so. She believed she had held herself together on an even par with Reyes himself, which given her experience with the base commander’s reserved demeanor was saying something.

Khatami knew better than to hold her disposition up for comparison against T’Prynn’s.

“ Have you interviewed Mr. Xiong?”the Vulcan intelligence officer asked flatly from the other side of the screen.