‘Fascinating.’ Captain Takahashi’s reaction was positively Vulcanesque, his expression shifting no more than an eyebrow-raise as he read the report Cassidy had put before him. ‘Excellent work, Commander.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Cassidy’s voice was clipped, hands clasped behind his back as he stood before Takahashi’s desk. Rosewood didn’t think he’d ever seen the big man quite so professionally composed.

‘What happens now?’ said Rosewood, more guarded, gaze flickering between them. ‘This was just a sit-down conversation. There’s no formal confession. That’ll need JAG present.’ Cassidy had insisted they just make it ‘a conversation,’ before they went in to see Vaughn. After what he’d learnt, the thought was now making the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

‘Mn.’ Takahashi set the PADD down. ‘I’ll take it from here. JAG will be involved, of course.’

‘Because she’s got quite the sob story,’ Rosewood pressed on, ‘about a Starfleet cover-up of collaboration which, if it went to a highly public trial…’

‘She has her beliefs,’ Takahashi said simply. ‘Those include the belief that raising those accusations publicly would expose her comrades from the resistance to scrutiny and scapegoating. A truly paranoid mind, no doubt broken by the occupation.’

The chill sank down Rosewood’s spine. ‘Oh,’ he said after a beat. ‘We’re taking the “she’s crazy so she just gets silenced” angle, huh?’

‘Do you think a healthy mind murders three people and calls it justice, Commander Rosewood?’

‘I’m not sure a healthy system hides the deeds of collaborators with an occupying force -’

‘What about Alpha Centauri being conquered for two months,’ growled Cassidy, ‘is healthy, kid?’

Takahashi opened his hands. ‘You have to admit, Commander Rosewood. This situation doesn’t arise without something being horribly broken. From my analysis, I’d venture that it’s Lieutenant Vaughn that’s broken.’

There can be more than one broken thing. Rosewood shifted his weight. ‘What about this list? That this officer – Ingram? – put together.’

‘There have been all manner of analyses and after action reports assembled by all manner of officers,’ Takahashi mused. ‘I don’t recall this specific one, or this specific officer.’ He stood. ‘As I said, this has been excellent work. You and your team are to be commended, Commander Cassidy. I hope this makes you think twice.’

Rosewood couldn’t help but frown at that, especially as Cassidy merely gave a gruff nod. ‘Think twice?’

‘It would be such a loss,’ Takahashi continued, ‘if you allowed Commodore Rourke to better integrate your unit with standard Starfleet operations. This assignment has demonstrated how well your non-traditional methods work, even in domestic environments.’

Cassidy didn’t look at Rosewood, but he shifted as if he could feel his eyes on him. ‘The decision hasn’t been made yet, sir.’

‘You have time.’ Takahashi nodded to the door. ‘Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I had best speak with JAG.’

They were not just out in the corridor, but in one of the lifts humming through the spine of the Liaison Office before Rosewood talked. ‘This isn’t over,’ he said.

‘You heard Takahashi -’

‘Either we had an official interview with Vaughn without counsel present,’ Rosewood said, voice clipped as he picked up pace, ‘or we just had a conversation, and she’ll need properly interviewing with counsel. One of those kneecaps criminal charges. The other means they gotta get her to confess while a JAG officer tells her we got nothing.’

‘That’s JAG’s problem,’ Cassidy grunted.

‘Or is it not a problem at all? Because if they move forward with charges, no way this doesn’t go public. This is a murder trial of a Starfleet officer for killing local government officials. And if this goes public, this gets messy. Collaborators behind every corner. Witch hunts. Starfleet accused of a cover-up.’

‘The only evidence for that is the rantings of an officer who snapped and killed people.’

‘Wow, you really are a door-kicker sometimes.’ Rosewood tossed his hands in the air. ‘You think the press needs evidence? You think the public need evidence to react?’

Cassidy was silent for a moment. ‘We’ll be gone before this kicks off.’

It’s still my home. Rosewood swallowed. ‘What about this list?’

‘What about it?’

‘You said we were going to ask Takahashi -’

‘I did -’

‘And got the mother of all brush-offs. I don’t see you back down like that often.’ Rosewood looked him up and down, and knew that accusation was only going to bring bristling defensiveness. He forced his voice to soften. ‘What does he have on you?’

‘Have…’ Cassidy gawped for a moment, and the fact his eyes then flashed with anger spoke of just how astounded he was that there’d been a delay to this fury. ‘This is a man who kept the Federation safe, John. For years, while everyone was crawling inside themselves worried the nasty synths and outsiders were gonna get us in our beds, he was out there, keeping those bad guys away.’

Rosewood frowned. ‘The anti-synth movement and legislation were blatant moral panics that turned out to be spurious -’

‘Yeah, ‘cos the Romulans did it instead. We just got the bad guy wrong!’

‘He recruited you,’ Rosewood surmised. ‘You had, what, ten good years of normal Starfleet service, then Takahashi comes along and says that if you come with him, take a walk on the dark side, you can save the galaxy?’

‘Sure,’ grunted Cassidy, fury subsiding for the more familiar, simmering resentment. ‘If you count the Dominion War as “good years.” We didn’t all break our teeth on boldly going and negotiating at dinner parties.’

‘Hazard Teams fighting the Sovereignty, actually,’ Rosewood said drily, ‘though I don’t think it’s quite the same. You’re letting your loyalty blind you.’

‘I’m following orders.’ Cassidy squinted at him. ‘What’re you suggesting? What do you think we even do? We had to investigate. We investigated. JAG will ask us for paperwork and follow-ups if needed.’

The lift slowed, and before Rosewood could summon an answer, the doors slid open to eject them on the floor where the Rooks had set themselves up. He stepped out, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know. This just stinks, that’s all.’

‘An officer, rightly or wrongly, felt they had no choice but to go on a murder spree,’ said Cassidy. ‘Don’t know how that wasn’t gonna stink.’

‘I guess. Is that it, then? We start to pack?’ They hadn’t had orders to redeploy. The implication was quite clear, and Rosewood suspected that Takahashi didn’t want the Rooks anywhere near the follow-up to their investigation.

‘Archive things. Package them up. Make ready for the handover.’ Cassidy stopped at the door to his office. ‘We figure what’s next, next.’

Rosewood let him go, and sloped down the corridor before he found the box that approximated Aryn’s office, rapping only briefly on the door before sticking his head in. ‘Knock knock.’

Aryn sat at his desk, gaze fixed on his screens. He did not turn. ‘You don’t need to announce it.’

‘Making sure I’m not interrupting too badly -’

‘A little.’

Rosewood straightened at the clipped tone. ‘We’ve given our report to Captain Takahashi,’ he said, more formal now. ‘So it’s time to prep our files, evidence, everything, for a handover.’

Aryn did turn at this, his expression rather flat. There was still a faint knot in his brow. ‘JAG?’

Allegedly. ‘Yes.’

The knot tightened. ‘Any defender worth their salt will have a field day with how we gathered this evidence, you know that?’

‘It was legal,’ said Rosewood lamely.

‘Through legislation that hasn’t been turned on a citizen since Coppelius. And not on a Starfleet officer. This has got courts of appeal all over it.’

Rosewood gave a broad, hapless shrug. ‘Not our problem.’

‘It should be somebody’s!’

The life of an XO, Rosewood thought, was having an argument with your CO, only to then have to fend off the exact same arguments from subordinates and this time toe the party line. John Rosewood preferred a different tack in his personnel management than a direct debate he wasn’t sure he’d win, though, and he tilted his head, forced his expression and voice to soften. ‘What’s going on, Mac?’

‘I can’t be indignant about the way we’ve conducted -’

‘We conduct business in all sorts of ways all the time; I didn’t think you were a hypocrite who only blinked when we do it in Federation territory. Something’s on your mind. What’s up?’

Aryn hesitated. Then his expression flattened, and he spun on his chair back to his console, keying a button to bring up a new display on the screen. At the implied invitation, Rosewood stepped forward and read.

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘I think Captain El Sayed is completely sincere.’

‘This was your research! Without your work on the Blackout, we wouldn’t have outpaced the Vaadwaur at warp, wouldn’t have kept our strategic edge…’

‘And the assessment of the squadron’s foremost academic researcher is that the Journal of Subspace Physics will be more receptive to the paper if it is published in his name and I am given… minor credit as a researcher assistant.’

‘He’s scalping your research -’

‘It was rejected already once, John.’ Now Aryn snapped again, not looking up, his jaw tight as he glared at the screen. ‘It’ll be rejected again. Like…’

His voice trailed off, and Rosewood tilted his head. ‘Like?’

Aryn swallowed, his voice more taut, stressed. ‘Like everything I’ve tried to publish since my liberation from the Collective.’

Rosewood rocked back at that. Shock and shame ran through him at once; shock at the revelation, shame that this hadn’t occurred to him sooner. He ran a hand through his hair, for a long moment uncharacteristically lost for words. ‘I’d have thought… since Frontier Day…’

‘There is a difference,’ Aryn said carefully, ‘between those who were assimilated for hours, and those who were wholly consumed by the Collective for years. And if anything is slow to adapt to social norms and pressures, it’s the politics of academic research.’ He closed the screen and keyed commands to bring up the investigative material. ‘I’ll start putting this together for JAG.’

Rosewood leaned on the desk, arms folded across his chest, staring at nothing. ‘Do you have an opinion,’ he began, ‘about us continuing to operate like we always have? Or taking Rourke’s offer and integrating better with the squadron, with standard Starfleet operations?’

‘This investigation evidenced that we can do things in our current operating principles that we couldn’t -’

‘Do you have an opinion, Mac? We saved the day, big time. We can write our own assignment. Or do we slink back to the shadows?’

Aryn looked up at him. ‘You can leave any time you like, John. You always could.’ His voice was devastatingly unaccusing. ‘They’ll let you be the hero of Alpha Centauri. Maybe even Nallera. But not the rest of us. If you want that acclaim, if you want to be in the light, you just have to take it. But don’t be naïve and think you can bring the rest of us with you.’

Rosewood’s brow furrowed. ‘I’d be a dead hero of Alpha Centauri if it weren’t for you, Mac. You think I’m leaving anyone behind?’

‘Then welcome to the shadows,’ sighed Aryn, his chair turning slowly back to the desk. ‘And get used to staying here.’

The silence of Rosewood’s internal wrestling was punctuated only by the chirrups of Aryn’s console as he worked, compiling reports and data. At length, he swallowed and said, ‘There’s one more bit of info we need before we hand everything over.’

Mac Aryn might have been socially myopic, but he wasn’t stupid. His fingers hovered over the controls. ‘Go on.’

‘There’s a file. A report. Compiled sometime in the weeks since the occupation by a Starfleet Intelligence officer dispatched from Sol, and since returned to Sol, by the name of Ingram.’ Rosewood leaned forward, hand on the desk. ‘I want to see it.’

Aryn hesitated. ‘Does Cassidy?’

‘I’m the one asking for it.’

‘I’ll need Falaris. She’s… the one who knows how to wrangle through the bureaucracy of… requisitioning a document like that,’ Aryn said delicately.

‘Then bring her in.’

Aryn looked up, uncertainty at last etched onto his expression. ‘Are you sure about this, John?’

Rosewood shrugged and stepped back. ‘Like you said, Mac. We should get used to the shadows.’