“I know what this is,” Sonya Gomez said, pulling her padd out of Tev’s meaty hands. “I don’t need help.”

Having rescued her work from the Tellarite, Sonya carried it over to one of the da Vinci’s science workstations and relaxed into a chair, stretching her legs out, not caring that she blocked part of the aisle. She usually enjoyed the bridge during beta shift. On tired evenings when she wasn’t studying the latest journals released from the Daystrom Institute, she often wandered up. Ensign Joanne Piotrowski was the duty tactical officer, and the two of them got on fairly well.

Sonya should have read more into the deadpan face Jo gave her when the turbolift doors whisked open, and never gotten off.

“I only commented that it looked familiar.”

Mor glasch Tev had followed her. Hands clasped behind his back, with his monk’s fringe of dark hair and frosted beard, he looked like one of her old Starfleet instructors about to deliver a lecture. The da Vinci’s second officer certainly never showed reluctance in offering his opinion. The fact that Sonya outranked him as ship’s first officer and head of the onboard S.C.E. team did little to dissuade the Tellarite.

“Fascinating quantum degradation.”

“I don’t appreciate people reading over my shoulder either.” She glanced up at him. “What I’m trying to say, in the nicest possible manner, Tev, is that I’d like to work on this solo.”

If the Tellarite was capable of showing chagrin, she had yet to see it in his first two months aboard ship. His porcine features were perfect for smugness, though. Or well trained for it.

The maddening thing was that, in general, she approved of Tev trying to be more of a team player. He’d started nicely on that road during the salvage of the Dancing Star. Now, though, he was going too far in the other direction, trying to be part of the team when she just wanted to be left on her own.

“All right. Let me know when you catch up.” He snuffled. “But I’m guessing that signal has been bouncing around in subspace for close to one hundred years.” He shuffled off with the air of a disappointed instructor who had just seen a promising student fail her first lesson.

Hah! This was actually a continuous signal being broadcast from only eighteen light-years distance. By subspace standards, that was barely next door. She considered pointing that out, but Tev was already back at another station working on whatever personal project he’d been on when Sonya arrived. Interpersonal Skills Assessment, maybe? She wondered what his face would show after receiving a big, fat “fail.” The way Tev acted, you would swear he had never failed at anything his entire life. Well, maybe he hadn’t.

Until now.

She wanted to point out Tev’s mistake to someone. Not just for the petty pleasure it would give her, but it might go a long way to begin making him more tolerable to the crew. Little mistakes might help ease everyone into that transition.

Except that most of the second-shift crew were stringently watching their own consoles. No one had wanted to draw the Tellarite’s attention, apparently, content to let their first officer act as the lightning rod. Only Rennan Konya from security met her gaze, and the Betazoid would already know her surface thoughts, wouldn’t he?

Konya nodded, then waggled his head from side to side as if unsure whether or not to agree with her previous line of thought.

So much for that. She climbed out of her chair for a quick trip by the replicator, tucked her padd under one arm while making her selection. “Hot tea, Earl Grey.”

With a light hum, the replicator materialized a bone china mug filled to the brim with her steaming beverage. She picked it up, warming both hands around the mug, blew steam from the top and sipped carefully. Perfect.

The Betazoid glanced over at her. “That’s not hot chocolate, is it?”

From the other side of the security, Tev snuffled. “You are two meters closer than I. You must have heard her order. It is Earl Grey tea.”

Sonya groaned. Her run-in with Captain Picard—quite literally—had taken on all the hallmarks of Starfleet legend. Yes, she had spilled hot chocolate all over the captain of Starfleet’s flagship while serving aboard the Enterprise. Yes, she had taken to drinking Earl Grey—Picard’s favorite—as penance, and then discovered how much she liked it. Some days it had seemed the entire galaxy was bent on making her remember that awkward encounter, but the ribbing finally ran its course.

Then Galvan VI happened.

Two dozen crew replacements and months of grieving later, Sonya now wasn’t certain what was worse: that the hot chocolate incident had resurfaced as a running joke among the crew, or that Tev couldn’t even appreciate the humor.

She walked back to her station via security. “For a Betazoid,” she told Konya, “you’re pretty insensitive at times.”

“Why do you think I opted for security?”

Of course, Sonya knew that wasn’t really the truth. Rennan made a great security officer precisely because he was sensitive, in every sense of the definition.

Sipping her tea, letting the light brew slide down her throat, Sonya fell back to task, analyzing the signal the da Vinci had pulled out of subspace. She double- and triple-checked her results, chewed on her bottom lip for several minutes, and then kicked herself back out of the chair to find Tev.

The Tellarite was comparing the technical specifications of Romulan and Klingon cloaking shields. A little light reading, no doubt.

“Ninety-three years,” she told him without preamble.

“Ah. Well, I only had a glance at the data, after all.”

Sonya shrugged her apology. “The data is in the computer. You could have pulled a copy for yourself.”

Tev turned away from his viewer, looking at her with his deep-set black eyes for a very long moment. “You are my superior officer. You made it clear—doubly so—that you did not desire my help.”

“Right.” She turned back for her chair, caught herself. No, dammit. She’d build a bridge over this river if it killed her. “Except we both see ninety-three years of degradation, according to the quantum shift, and the signal originates only eighteen light-years distant.”

She had Tev’s attention. He scowled. Another expression for which his heavy-jowled face was tailor-made. “The data does not make sense.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Tapping commands into the touch-sensitive console, Tev brought up the communications logs and a variety of sensor readings. “Let us see if we can find your mistake,” he said.

Sonya gritted her teeth.

But Tev could not find a way to reconcile the data either. A minor victory, and one that did not appear to sit well with the overachieving Tellarite. “Can we reconstruct the original signal?” he asked, a touch of wounded pride to his voice.

“I’ve been trying to do that,” Sonya said. “At five hundred percent compression the signal approaches something that might be an audio waveform, though it’s too far gone for the universal translator to match up with any known language files.” She dumped her padd work back to the main computer and pulled up audio at Tev’s station. It sounded like a lot of hissing, broken apart by a lot of static.

She supposed it could have been the other way around just as easily.

“Computer,” Tev said. “Return to original signal. Repair using the Telek System and then recompress five hundred percent. Search language files and translate.”

“Telek?”

“Romulan,” Tev told her, and managed to do it in a way that suggested she should already know. “He made contact with Voyager several years ago. Through a wormhole. I told you the signal looked familiar.”

“Ready,” the computer answered.

“Begin playback,” Sonya snapped, annoyed at Tev all over again.

A wash of static burst from the station, followed by a raspy, metallic tone. “…ellllf…aussz…”

Sonya leaned in. If she had heard right…“Computer, compress another twenty-five percent. Begin playback.”

Close enough. The static was a sharper, more painful burst, but the voice clearer. “…help uz…”

They had the attention of the entire beta-shift bridge crew. “Help us,” Tev repeated, loudly.

Sonya nodded. “We have a distress call,” she said, then tapped a lighted square on her console to summon Captain Gold.