Ali was hardly surprised that she was woken up where she had fallen asleep in the data lab by a hand on her shoulder. She rubbed at her face as she pushed herself up off the console she'd been using. She had only planned on resting her eyes - maybe even treating herself to a power nap - whilst her latest reports ran their course. Apparently her body had had a different idea.

"Any luck?" Etsile asked.

Ali turned long enough to wake the console up. "What are you doing down here?"

"I know you, Ali, and as your doctor - and friend - it's my duty to make sure you're looking after yourself," Etsile explained as he found himself a seat.

"I'm alive, what more do you want?" Ali teased as she spared him a glance from where she was skimming over the data her algorithm had pulled out for her.

"Healthy? Boisterous? Full of joy de vivre?" Etsile said with a teasing smile on his face. "You're resilient, but that doesn't mean you don't need to take time for yourself."

"I can recuperate once we've won."

"And if it's a marathon rather than a sprint?"

Ali had no response for that and she knew Etsile knew it. She considered his advice and how to talk her way out of it, but she was saved from answering when the console beeped and they both turned to the data display. A second later - after her eyes had zapped across the screen multiple times to take it in - a wide smile broke across her face and she almost choked on her laugh. "They've finally messed up!" She declared, "it's a Cosmos' Champions' ship and they didn't double check they'd destroyed the black box. If we cross reference this with what we already know about them we might be able to establish their base of operations."

"How does this help?"

"We have their ship's signature and some flight path data," Ali started but as she turned to Etsile she realised that she'd already lost him. "Trust me, we've finally caught a break. This is the most promising lead we've had."

~-x-~

"Well, you can turn that damn thing off."

Grey gave a soft, wry chuckle as he turned off the screen as the door to his ready room shut behind Ali. "I take it you're already up to date on their latest propaganda?"

"Unfortunately," Ali agreed tiredly. The news broadcast Grey had been watching was Cosmos' Champions latest video where they - far too gleefully - took responsibility for Eskaar and reiterated their message that this was squarely USEP or Security Core's fault - possibly both. Proclaiming that they hadn't wanted to do this, but because they'd spent their energy tracking their group rather than dealing with the hybrid threat. He suspected she was looking forward to wringing some necks, especially after her outburst at Security Core after the news about Eskaar had come in.

"Well, what can I do for you?"

"Actually, I think I have good news for you," Ali reported as she held out a tablet for him.

Grey quickly scrolled through the information on it. He glanced up at her with hopeful surprise on his face. "How much of this is conjecture?"

"It's educated conjecture," Ali retorted, before sighing as she took a seat. "Honestly, it's our best guess."

Grey scrutinised her for a moment. When she was his senior scientist he'd trusted her on less. Things were different now, they'd both got years of additional experience under their belts, but he still trusted her. "Then let's check it out." He offered her the tablet and she took it with a nod. She had just stood up when Grey's comm beeped. "Yes?"

"Sir, we've received an assistance request from Yerta. Apparently their continued investigations have uncovered an additional cache they believe belongs to Cosmos' Champions. They want our assistance as we were responsible for the original discovery," Lartyne reported as she forwarded the messages to his console. "It's not an order but HQ are heavily hinting that we should go."

"Thank you, Lartyne," Grey signed off the channel as he flicked through the reports. Ali moved to read them over his shoulder. He sighed.

"It's simple then," Ali decided, "we go chase Touchard, you go and help on Yerta."

Grey turned to her. "Are you sure you shouldn't have backup?"

Ali chuckled. "You do remember who you're talking to, right?"

Grey chuckled too. "Good point. Ali -"

"I know, be extra careful, don't do anything stupid and come back alive," she summarised with her usual cheeky, innocent grin and a salute. "If we're right, and this really is their base of operations, do you really think I'm going to let Touchard get away with hurting any more of our people?"

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Well, he couldn't argue with that. "I'd still feel better if you had back up."

"I've got Rila," Ali said before pausing, "though I'm not going to say no to some supplies from your armoury."

~-x-~

Of course Grey wasn't going to deny her the chance to arm herself or her crew a bit better in preparation for an assault on Touchard's base. There weren't many things that Ali wanted that the Faraday didn't have a good supply of, but there were one or two pieces that would always come in handy.

She had made herself at home in the Endeavour's armoury and was already perusing the inventory by the time Wood joined her. "Worried I'm going to steal all the good stuff?" She asked, wishing she felt half as confident as she sounded.

"You didn't even have the courtesy to come ask before you started trespassing in my area?"

"Trespassing?" Ali teased, "have you literally marked your territory or something?"

Wood glared at her before plucking the tablet from her hand. "What do you need?"

"What? That's it? No teasing, no pretending to turf me out because I don't know what I'm doing?"

"Grey told me you plan to go and take the fight to Touchard. If you're right about where their base is," Wood explained, cutting through all of her joking. She swallowed as she sobered up and nodded. "Now, I know your crew is good, but you might as well let me help you whilst you've still got me."

Ali raised an inquisitive eyebrow, he turned back to the inventory. "We're coming back," she said softly after a moment.

Wood's eyes snapped up again. "You can't promise that."

No, she supposed she couldn't. Instead she turned to her usual bravado, no matter how faked it was. "You're just worried someone's going to get the pleasure of kicking my arse before you."

Wood laughed. "If I was going to kick your ass I'd have done so already."

"Oh, really?" Ali challenged. "So those last war games we ran -"

"You literally jumped on me!"

"And? Bad guys don't play by the rules, Ben." His head jerked in surprise and that confused her. "What?"

"You called me Ben."

"I've done that before…" Or at least, she was sure she had. Hadn't she? But he was right, it wasn't common. "I thought that people used your first name now?"

"They do. You don't."

"Oh," Ali's face fell. "Sorry, I guess I just… I'll stop," she promised. It wasn't the first time she'd been asked to not use a nickname. She often abbreviated people's names and because of that Olkant had asked her politely not to call him Olk because abbreviations were signs of intimacy to his people. Though she had assured him afterwards the only reason he'd needed to give was that he didn't want her to do it. Who was she to judge what someone wanted her to address them by?

"That's not what I meant," Wood admitted. "I just… I thought you did it deliberately. To keep things… separate."

"Separate?"

He sighed as he put the tablet down on a nearby crate. "I keep getting flashes. At first I thought I was going mad, then I realised that they're from you - however unintentional they may be. I thought you were trying to keep things separate to stop it." Panic and fear consumed Ali's brain power, giving her only an incoherent series of swear words. She tried to formulate a reply but could only manage a stammer. "Sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up."

Somehow his apology cleared her mind, the pressure to justify her own emotions suddenly gone and allowing her to think. "No," she said, "I shouldn't have denied it was happening." She took a deep breath as she gathered her courage to bare a still fragile part of herself to him. "I should've explained that we were starting to form a tetnar, but I was scared about what your reaction would be." She paused again before whispering, "I was scared of what it meant. I was scared of rejection."

A silence hung between them as he processed what she was telling him. Shortly after they met, when they were working together to bring Barker down, she had explained that she'd only ever had one tetnar at the time (outside of family). A partner who had started threatening the sector. Wood knew that she and Spud had formed a platonic tetnar since then. But this was still fairly new to her too. She'd still only had one romantic tetnar. It didn't matter that she thought he was different, it was still difficult to forget a bad - if not traumatic in places - experience with something.

A dozen different thoughts were circulating in his head about his feelings, her feelings and that she might share them, what he would've done if she had told him and frankly the fact that this confirmed he wasn't losing his mind. She evidently took his hesitation as his answer and nodded to herself as she turned to pick the tablet up again. His hand snapped out with lightning fast reflexes to trap it there before she could busy herself again. Her eyes found his, and he realised he'd acted before he'd decided what to say. He swallowed and reached out to trace his other thumb over her cheek. "When this is all over, when we have time, I'd like to see where this is going," he whispered as he bent his forehead to hers.

Ali had to close her eyes to stop herself crying in relief. She'd been holding the tears back because she thought he had been about to break her heart. Her free hand came up to cover the one that was loosely resting on her cheek. "We need to decide about the tetnar, though, once it's cemented there's no -" She didn't get to finish her warning as he decided she was over thinking it and he pressed his lips to hers.

A part of Ali knew that she shouldn't encourage this, they were still stood in the middle of the armoury and even though there were no rules against fraternisation - especially not between two people in different crews - it was downright unprofessional. But another part of her didn't care for propriety, the part of her that surrendered to his soft lips and was elated at the fact that he shared her feelings.

As they parted they couldn't help but share an amused and embarrassed chuckle as if to say; yeah, that just happened. As he noticed the pink tinge on her cheeks he coughed to clear his own emotion from his throat as he turned back to their inventory. "So… do you have a plan for this?"

"You meant I'm not just supposed to saunter up and knock?" Ali teased, feigning confusion infused with cheek and sarcasm. Wood wasn't entirely sure how to react to that, so he defaulted to a frown. But God he hoped she was joking. "What?"

"You are joking, right?"

"Of course, I'm not that daft!"

Wood made a light noise of disagreement as if to say she had her moments. "It is the kind of thing you'd do and somehow turn to your advantage through sheer dumb luck."

"It's not always luck," Ali objected, "sometimes I have a backup plan." He didn't look convinced. "Well, it'll depend on what we find when we get there, but you have some stuff I was hoping to steal," she added as she claimed the tablet back and started to scroll through it to show him what particular items she was interested in whilst discussing her initial tactics.