Commander Sonya Gomez leaned against the washbasin in her quarters and sighed heavily. Today is nothing, she thought.

She had been silently observing the milestones of time’s passage since “that day.” The day that a routine salvage mission had become a gruesome tragedy. The day that more than half of the da Vinci’s crew had died in the line of duty. The day that Kieran Duffy, the man she’d loved, had gone to his death.

She didn’t speak of her habit with the other survivors of the Galvan VI mission, and she hadn’t discussed it during her Starfleet-mandated counseling sessions. She had simply noted the passing of the days and at regular intervals reminded herself:

He’s two months gone. Three months gone. Four months gone.

Today marked no such milestone. Today was just another day like any other. Another day aboard the da Vinci. Another day in Starfleet. Another day alone with her empty, shattered heart.

Today is nothing.

She had been woken only minutes ago by a com chirp in the middle of her sleep cycle.

“Bridge to Gomez,” the voice had said, rousing her from a fitful slumber. After a moment of foggy-headedness, she had realized that the voice was that of Vance Hawkins, the ship’s deputy chief of security.

“Gomez here,” she had said, her voice halfway between a croak and a groan.

“Captain Gold needs you in the briefing room, Commander,” Hawkins had said. “He said it was urgent.”

“On my way, Chief,” Gomez had said, then half-rolled out of bed and slouched into her bathroom.

She sighed again and let her weight rest on the washbasin. Looking up at her hollow-eyed reflection in the mirror, she wondered whether she had time to step into the sonic shower or perhaps just work some cleanser and conditioner into her dark, curly hair, which spilled in unkempt coils over her shoulders.

Chief Petty Officer Hawkins’s voice echoed in her thoughts: “He said it was urgent.”

She tied her hair back in a utilitarian ponytail, opened her closet, and grabbed a clean uniform. No point getting all dolled up just to get my hands dirty.

Fabian Stevens looked like something the sehlat dragged in. His hair was slightly disheveled. He could swear his eyes were filled with sand. His eyelids drooped and threatened to drag him back to sleep. His head lolled forward, and he caught a whiff of his replicated Colombian coffee.

He jerked awake, his eyes now stuck at wide-open. He took another much-needed sip of coffee and tried not to let himself become hypnotized by the sixty-cycles-per-second hum of the briefing room’s overhead EPS conduits.

Captain David Gold sat at the head of the briefing room table, hands folded in front of him. Seated to Stevens’s left was revoltingly wide-awake cultural specialist Carol Abramowitz, who casually scrolled through screen after screen of data on her padd.

Bleary-eyed, Stevens fixated on the steam rising from his coffee mug. Sitting opposite him was Hawkins, who leaned back in his chair and pensively stroked his dark, bearded chin.

Past the far end of the table from the captain was the main viewscreen, on which heavy-jowled and white-haired Captain Montgomery Scott, the officer who gave the Starfleet Corps of Engineers its marching orders, rolled his eyes impatiently.

“I apologize for the delay, Captain Scott,” Gold said. Scott smiled and waved his hand, brushing aside the apology.

“No need, lad,” Scott said. “I remember what it’s like living on ship’s time. It’s always midnight somewhere.”

Abramowitz put down her padd as the door slid open. Gomez entered and blushed as she saw the group was waiting for her. She took her seat at Gold’s left. “Sorry to keep you wait—”

“It’s all right,” Gold said, cutting her off. “Captain Scott, the floor is yours.”

Scott keyed some switches on his companel. The screen split to show two images: Scott on the left, and a schematic of a Starfleet Class VII Remote Culture Study Probe on the right. “About a year ago, Starfleet lost contact with Probe Delta-7941 after it encountered an uncharted astrophysical hazard,” he said. “We thought it was destroyed. We were wrong.”

The image on the right side of the screen changed to a detailed schematic of one of the probe’s internal systems.

“Four-point-six hours ago, Starfleet received a subspace signal from the probe indicating that it’s crashed—and that its self-destruct failsafes have…well, failed.”

The image on the right side of the viewscreen changed again, to a solar-system diagram. “The probe went off course and landed intact on this system’s third planet,” Scott said. “Teneb is an M-class world, humanoid population, uneven levels of technological development between its many nation-states. A lot like Earth before the Third World War.”

“And no doubt protected by the Prime Directive,” Gomez said.

Scott nodded, his expression grave. “Aye, and that’s where the wicket gets sticky. The Tenebians are a clever lot, but not as clever as they like to think. Depending on which one of their countries gets its hands on the probe’s warp engine, they might reverse-engineer the thing…or they might blow themselves to kingdom come while tinkering with its antimatter pods.”

“There’s an even worse scenario,” Hawkins said. “They figure out how to control antimatter, and they turn it into a weapon that can destroy their planet. The probe could be used to start an apocalyptic arms race.”

“Oy vey,” Gold said.

Abramowitz looked confused. “Can’t we remote-detonate it?” she said. Stevens swallowed a sip of coffee and shook his head.

“Nope,” he said. “The remote-detonator’s part of the self-destruct failsafe—which failed.” He took another sip of coffee.

“But can’t we just beam it up?” Abramowitz said.

“Unfortunately, no,” Scott said. “The crash damaged its antimatter shielding. Trying to beam it up would cause an explosion larger than anything that world’s ever seen…. And, there’s another wrinkle to consider….”

“Of course there is,” Gomez said, and smirked ironically. Scott continued without acknowledging her gentle sarcasm.

“The planet’s dominant superpower has begun exploring space: orbital stations, lunar bases, deep-space telescopes…. Bringing a Starfleet vessel into orbit is a risk we can’t take. You four need to land on the planet without the Tenebians detecting the da Vinci. You’ll go in undercover: no weapons, and with as little Starfleet technology as possible. We can’t risk any more cultural contamination.”

Gomez furrowed her brow before tossing out another question to Scott. “Captain, may I ask why this operation isn’t being handled by Starfleet Intelligence?”

“They asked us to do it,” Scott said. “If the probe could be detonated without being fixed first, they’d handle it themselves. But they don’t have anyone who can make these kinds of repairs in the field…. That’s why I’m sending you lot.”

“Understood,” Gomez said with a curt nod.

“All right, then,” Scott said. “I’m sending over everything in the database about Teneb and all the telemetry from the probe…. Are there any more questions?” Everyone shook their heads to indicate that there weren’t.

“Then Godspeed, and good luck. Scott out.”

The viewscreen blinked to a bright blue field adorned with the white double-laurel-and-stars of the Federation emblem.

Gold turned toward Gomez. “We’ll reach the Teneb system in just over sixty-eight hours,” he said. “I’ll ask Conlon and Poynter to find you a hush-hush way to go planetside.”

Gomez nodded. “Okay, good. Carol, I need you to go over all the cultural files on Teneb. Check the probe’s crash coordinates and pay particular attention to the cultures and current situations in that region.”

“Sure thing,” Abramowitz said. “I’ll let Bart know we’ll need an alphanumeric primer for the planet’s written languages.”

“Good,” Gomez said. She turned toward Hawkins. “Vance, check the database for information about the types of vehicles we might find down there. We might need to cover a lot of ground to find the probe, and I’d rather not do it all on foot.”

“You got it,” Hawkins said. Gomez turned her attention toward Stevens, who was trying to look attentive rather than jittery and wired on caffeine. He suspected, based on her bemused expression, that he was failing.

“Fabe,” she said, “you look like I feel. Go get some rest, and I’ll see you when alpha shift starts—” She checked the ship’s chronometer on a display set into the tabletop, then let out a weary sigh. “—in about six hours.”

The landscape blurred past. Wind whipped through cracks in the fragile glass windshield in front of Hawkins. He stomped on the clutch then slammed the gearshift lever forward. He felt the vehicle lurch as a jaw-clenching grinding of metal on metal screamed from the combustion engine. The pistons seized and smoke belched from beneath the car’s dented red hood. The rapid deceleration made the two-passenger vehicle fishtail wildly, and Hawkins saw the gnarled trunk of a tree a split second before it crumpled the front end of the automobile into an accordion fold. The safety-harness strap that diagonally crossed his torso bit into his collarbone.

The simulation froze, its injury-and-mortality failsafe kicking in at the last possible moment. Hawkins’s pulse raced and sweat soaked his brow and back. There was nothing simulated about the adrenaline rush that still had him shaking in his seat. He had never understood why some of his fellow security officers felt the need to court disaster in holographic simulations. He figured there was more than enough real danger in the galaxy without bringing it into a training program.

“Computer,” he said, “load vehicle training program Hawkins Twenty-nine. Introduce random road-hazard variables and activate foul-weather subroutine.” He was enjoying this training regimen. Tenebian motor vehicles and weapons were a good example of Hodgkins’s Law of Parallel Planet Development: Many of their inventions closely paralleled those of early twenty-first-century Earth.

The environment re-formed itself around him. He now was seated on a squat, two-wheeled vehicle that was parked on a high-mountain road marked by steep grades and treacherous hairpin turns. Swiftly approaching from the horizon was a bank of storm clouds. “Program ready,” the computer said, its feminine voice unchanged since the day Hawkins had joined Starfleet.

He twisted the vehicle’s handgrip throttle and was about to launch himself down the lonely, snaking road at the fastest speeds he could handle, when the door chime sounded.

“Hey, Vance,” Stevens said over the com. “It’s Fabe. Can I come in?”

Hawkins reduced the cycle’s throttle. “Sure,” he said.

The hololab door appeared to Hawkins’s right, taking shape on the rocky face of the cliff wall. The door opened and Stevens stepped inside the hololab next to Hawkins and his loudly purring machine. “Nice program,” Stevens said, looking past Hawkins at the panoramic vista. “Teneb?”

“Yeah,” Hawkins said. “Built it from database files. The vehicle specs are at least a few years old, but I don’t think the basic operating principles will have changed much since then.” Hawkins nodded toward the road. “Want to join me? Play a little follow-my-leader?”

“Nah,” Stevens said. “Took me six weeks to master flying a Work Bug, and that was based on a system I’d already been trained on.” He gestured toward Hawkins’s motorcycle. “I wouldn’t know where to start with one of these things.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Hawkins said.

“No, but I know what you’re missing,” Stevens said. “The premission briefing. It started five minutes ago. They sent me down to get you. Apparently, someone with a security clearance turned off the hololab’s main com circuit.”

Hawkins dismounted from the motorcycle. “Computer,” he said. “End program.” The road, the vista, and the cycle all vanished, revealing the compact space of the da Vinci’s hololab. Hawkins narrowed his eyes in mock irritation at Stevens. “Killjoy,” he said. Stevens shrugged as he led him out of the hololab and into the corridor.

“That’s the job,” Stevens said. “You don’t like it, quit.”

“I can’t quit,” Hawkins said as he followed Stevens. “I’m enlisted.”

“Yeah,” Stevens said stoically. “Me, too.”

Abramowitz switched the briefing room viewscreen image to one that displayed the national borders and prominent landmarks of an area within a one-thousand-kilometer radius around the crashed probe’s last known coordinates.

The rest of the away team—as well as da Vinci second officer Lieutenant Commander Mor glasch Tev, chief of security Lieutenant Commander Domenica Corsi, chief engineer Lieutenant Nancy Conlon, chief medical officer Dr. Elizabeth Lense, and Captain Gold—listened as she detailed the findings of her hastily compiled research.

“This is our biggest problem,” she said. “The entire region, which the indigenous people call X’Mar, is a war zone. The country of Veneka, Teneb’s sole military and economic superpower, recently invaded X’Mar for its uranium resources.”

She switched to the next screen of information. On one side were images of Venekan soldiers in uniform. On the other side were images of X’Mari civilians and Resistance fighters.

“The Venekans,” she said, “are an ethnically diverse population, with a level of technology roughly equivalent to the best of early twenty-first-century Earth. The only Venekans we’re likely to encounter during our mission will be soldiers. We have no hope of infiltrating their military, and we definitely won’t be equipped to fight them, so we should avoid them.”

She pointed at the various X’Mari images. All the X’Maris had skin tones of dark blue, and metallic hair colors ranging from coppery to dark bronze. “The X’Maris, on the other hand, are ethnically homogenous and highly xenophobic. Their army is composed primarily of irregular militias. Our best bet for moving through the region undetected is to pose as X’Mari civilians—and pray that we don’t run into the Venekan Army.”

Gomez nodded. “Thank you, Carol.” Abramowitz sat down as Gomez looked to Tev, her second-in-command of the S.C.E. team. Even after having served with Tev for a matter of months, Abramowitz still found the Tellarite’s omnipresent air of arrogant superiority off-putting. “Tev,” Gomez said, “have you made any progress with tamper-proofing the away team’s tricorders?”

Tev looked offended that Gomez would even entertain the possibility that he hadn’t devised something unspeakably brilliant since breakfast. “Of course I have,” he said. “I’ve outfitted them with a self-destruct circuit that you can trigger with a pre-set command phrase, on a timer, or by remote from another tricorder. Also, I designed an independent tactile sensor that recognizes whether the person touching the tricorder is human. If a non-human picks up one of your tricorders—poof! No more tricorder. I’d have brought one to the meeting except—” He held up his hands, and looked around the room. “Poof,” he said.

“Good, thank you,” Gomez said. Abramowitz wondered if she was only imagining an expression of long-suffering on Gomez’s face whenever the second officer spoke. Gomez turned her attention to Dr. Lense. “Doctor, how soon can you be ready to begin cosmetic surgery for the away team?”

“Give the word, Commander,” Lense said. “Sickbay’s ready when you are.”

Abramowitz watched Gomez fluidly shift her gaze toward Chief Engineer Conlon. “And that brings us to you,” Gomez said. “Nancy, are we any closer to formulating a plan for getting the away team onto and off of the planet?”

The petite chief engineer cocked her head at an odd angle and shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. She sounded unconvincing.

“Maybe?” Gomez said, obviously wanting more details.

“Chief Poynter and I are still running some tests,” Conlon said. “If we can iron out the bugs, we’ll have an answer for you by tomorrow at 0800.”

“I think you mean today, at 1900,” Gomez said.

Conlon hesitated, tapped her fingers on the table as she parsed the order implicit in Gomez’s remark, then nodded. “Right, that’s what I said,” Conlon quipped. “Today at 1900. No problem.”

“All right,” Gomez said. “Assuming we iron out the insertion and extraction plans by then, the away team will report to sickbay at 2100 to begin cosmetic modification. Does anyone have anything else?” A quick look around the room yielded no questions. Gomez stood up from the table. “Meeting adjourned.”

Abramowitz picked up her padd, saved her notes from the briefing, and pocketed the handheld device as she followed the others out of the room. She had long dreamed of a chance to study a new alien culture incognito and in situ. But walking unguarded into a combat zone had not been what she’d had in mind.

“Dom, wait up!” Stevens said, calling out to Corsi. She was several paces ahead of him in the corridor, which was empty except for the two of them. It was rare to be able to steal a moment’s privacy aboard a ship as small as the da Vinci, and Stevens figured he’d best take advantage of it while it lasted.

She stopped and half-turned to face him. The perfection of the blonde security chief’s tall, athletic body was outshone only by the delicate symmetry of her face in profile.

He quickened his step and came to a stop beside her.

“Hey, Fabe,” she said. “What’s up?” Her manner was warm and relaxed. It was a side of her that most da Vinci personnel didn’t get to see often, if ever.

Stevens had tried not to develop expectations when it came to Corsi. It had been roughly a year since they’d shared a one-night stand that she had made him promise to never mention again—in part because Starfleet frowned upon fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel, and because Corsi simply didn’t like having her personal life on display.

But a few months ago, when Stevens’s best friend Kieran Duffy was killed in the line of duty, it had been her shoulder that he’d cried on. At the time, he and Corsi had been on the verge of…what? Romance? It had been hard to tell. But after their visit to her family and their return to duty on the da Vinci, nothing had been the same between them. For one thing, they no longer needed to pretend that they weren’t friends. For another, much of the awkwardness that had marked the beginning of their relationship had long since passed.

Which made the awkwardness of this moment stand out.

“I’m not sure how to ask this,” he said.

“Just spit it out,” she said reassuringly.

Stevens nodded. The moment stretched out a bit longer than he’d intended. She kept her attention fixed on him while he studied the scuffs on his shoes. He looked up. “Why aren’t you going on the away mission?”

She shrugged. “It’s Vance’s turn.”

“But it’s such a high-risk mission that I just assumed you’d want to—”

“He can handle it,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning upward in a half-smile. “He’s actually better qualified than I am for this kind of thing.”

She reached out and pressed the turbolift call button.

“If you say so,” Stevens said.

“Besides, he’ll need high-profile field experience if he ever wants to become a chief of security. People in our line of work don’t get promoted for sitting around pushing buttons.”

Stevens heard the hum of the turbolift stopping a moment before the outer doors opened. Corsi stepped inside the turbolift, then turned to face him again.

“Anyway,” she said. “Good luck down there. Be careful.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I will.” The turbolift doors closed.

He stood alone in the corridor, staring at the closed door.

For months after their one-night stand, he hadn’t noticed that she had always seemed to be at his side during away missions, even when protocol would have placed her closer to someone of higher rank. Now, however, she seemed content to leave his defense to someone else.

As he walked back toward his quarters, he realized that, though he would never admit it, he was bitterly disappointed and more than a little concerned that this time out she wouldn’t be there to watch over him.