"That is enough!" Grey shouted, finally letting go from where he had been pinching his nose to stave off the headache. The other two meeting attendants finally fell silent. "We all knew that infiltrating the facility was risky, and we reviewed the decisions during the debriefs, no one is at fault."

"Yes, sir," Ben agreed, but never actually turned to look at his commanding officer. Rila held his gaze from the vid-screen, both of them frowning at each other.

When there was no answer forthcoming from Rila, Grey coughed pointedly. "Yes, sir," she agreed as well.

"Then I expect you to have a plan by the time we drop out of light speeds," Grey reminded them. "The pair of you have the most experience running these type of missions, and I damn well expect to get our people back. If you cannot work together… I'm going to have to restrict said mission to one crew only."

"Let me guess, that'll be the Endeavour?" Rila asked. "Despite the fact that Ali is our captain."

"I'll listen to your arguments, but you have to remember that I know my crew better," Grey replied with the same tone. Rila couldn't deny that. "If you want a guarantee that you'll be involved, you better stop shouting at each other," he said. Both commanders agreed and Rila closed the connection.

"Sir, would you really let the Faraday run the mission instead of us?" Ben asked unsurely.

"If I thought they had the better plan, yes," Grey said, his tone perfectly even and serious. Ben nodded once and turned to leave, considering himself dismissed. "I know you and Ali are close, and that you're angry she got captured, but we all know it's not Rila's fault. If Ali had given her even an inch we both know Rila'd have gone back to try and get her, and probably have just got kidnapped too. We both know Ali made the right call ordering them out."

Ben had paused as Grey spoke, but didn't turn back to face him. Finally the younger man said, "doesn't make it easier though, does it?" He didn't wait for an answer and just left the ready room. Grey suspected that the next time he saw his second in command he'd have raw knuckles after hitting the punching bags in the gym.

~-x-~

Grey arrived in the med bay just as Narla was in the middle of a discussion with Claire. "I can come back later," Grey offered as they both looked up at him.

"It's okay, I think we were done?" Claire checked, glancing at Narla.

Narla placed a soothing hand on Claire's shoulder, as her tentacles bobbed to indicate her agreement. "We were, but you're always welcome," the medic assured the younger woman. Claire nodded to herself as much as Narla.

"How are you doing, Claire?" Grey checked as the lieutenant made to leave.

"Getting there, sir," she said with a weak smile, then left them alone in Narla's office.

Grey turned to where Narla was just finishing updating records on a tablet. She could sense his curiosity and the look he was giving her. "You know better than to ask, Robert," she said, her voice soft and relaxed as she teased him.

"Indeed," he said as he helped himself to a chair, rubbing at this temples as if it were the first time he'd dared let his guard down.

Narla returned the tablet to her desk and turned to face Grey, appraising both his expression, body language and emotions. "How can I help?"

Grey actually chuckled at that. Of course Narla wouldn't offer empty platitudes or beat around the bush, she would get straight to the point and then find the most tactful way of dealing with it. "I was trying to formulate a plan for when the ship we're tracking stops long enough for us to launch a rescue mission, instead I just watched Ben and Rila shout at each other for an hour."

"And your diplomacy failed you?"

"I don't think I helped when I threatened to disable the Faraday if Rila did an Ali and went rogue," Grey admitted tiredly.

"Then let everyone sleep on it, you're all blaming yourselves and each other. It's barely been twenty four hours, none of us have had time to truly process what happened."

"We don't really have time to spare."

"No, but you're more likely to pull off the rescue if you're not at each other's throats."

Grey sighed, as usual Narla was right, and made it seem so perfectly obvious and reasonable. "You're gonna tell me not to ask this -"

"Then don't."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Grey gave a single rueful chuckle at that, as if he would ask something he knew he shouldn't if the answer weren't important. "You refused to tell me just how Ali was able to track down our missing crew members," he started, watching Narla's expression carefully. She might have an excellent poker-face, but he had known her for a couple of decades now, he knew some of the subtleties to infer information from. "Am I going to have an unstable element on any rescue mission?"

Grey wasn't surprised, but was frustrated, that Narla didn't give anything away. "More or less than if you kept them back?"

"If Ali's formed another tetnar -"

"It's irrelevant," Narla interrupted firmly, her tentacles tensing slightly before relaxing again. "Robert, I know you're worried - for Ali, for your crew, for her crew - but her forming a tetnar isn't any different than any close friendship forming. The rest would still exist despite her physiology."

"That's what I'm worried about," Grey admitted. "But any tetnar let's me know who, and maybe how much, to judge the safety of everyone involved."

For a moment neither of them said anything further, as Narla observed him with her usual - and sometimes unnerving - calm. "I will tell you the same thing now as I did then. It's Ali's business, not mine."

~-x-~

Ben winced as he finished getting dressed after his shower, his whole body ached, and one of the half formed scabs on his knuckles had already split open again. He sighed and checked it to see if it needed more than just time to heal. After the argument with Rila earlier that day he'd gone to vent his frustrations in the gym. Whilst boxing was always a full body workout when done properly, it hadn't knocked him down quite like this for a long time. He could imagine Narla reminding him that it was normal after the ordeal he'd been through. It would take time for him to be back to his full fitness. That was why he hadn't been groundside on the facility.

And he'd taken that out on Rila.

He rubbed at his face, a new tinge of shame mixing in with the worry and guilt he had already been feeling since they'd known Ali and Pixie had been taken. He owed Rila an apology, Grey was right, they'd known the risks and they'd done everything that they could right.

But he put off that call a little while longer as he tried to find that strange feeling that Ali had started to teach him the meaning of. He'd been able to seek her mind with his own before, but never in this way. When he had been imprisoned during the first bomb killed her father, the comfort he'd provided had been entirely subconscious. When he'd managed to reach her when he'd been captured, it had been desperation that had finally worked. Now he wanted to do something that was somewhere in-between. He wasn't desperate yet, they were following the ship that Ali and PIxie had been taken to - Mishri had been able to track them - and he hadn't felt any pain from her yet, which either meant she was blocking him, or she was being treated relatively okay.

Just as he thought he'd managed to brush against the almost familiar sensation of her mind, his concentration was broken by the computer in his cabin beeping. He muttered a curse to himself before standing to go and answer it.

He was greeted by a turquoise face with big coral eyes. "Rila," he greeted.

"Wood," she replied in kind. "I don't know about you, but I don't plan on being left behind, so if dealing with whatever shit you want to throw my way is what I have to deal with to ensure we get them back… then I'll deal with it."

Ben really had to work to hold face in that, mainly because he wanted to laugh at Rila's refreshingly forthright attitude, and yet he wanted her to know that the apology he was about to offer was sincere. "About that… I think I owe you an apology."

"Sure, but maybe wait till I think you mean it?"

"That means I'm buying all your drinks at the party Spud inevitably throws when all this is done and dusted?"

"Oh, yeah," Rila agreed. "And Ali's."

Ben vaguely shook his head at her, but didn't disagree. "Okay, how much planning have you already done?"

"Enough to know that it's not a one ship job," Rila admitted. "We need a way to ensure that they don't take off again, that means both ships staying close enough to prevent them plotting a course and initiating it."

"Claire and Ed are good pilots, so that shouldn't be a problem," Ben said, and Rila's tentacles bobbed in agreement as he pulled up the scans Mishri and Olkant had been able to take. "This ship's much bigger than the one we were taken to, so I don't think the tactics you used then will work."

"No, even if the merc to crew ratio is about the same, we'll need something more drastic."

"That sounds like you're planning to hijack their core…."

"Nah, to do that you need someone in engineering, and that'll be where everyone goes if you do." Rila said, "I was thinking that we could play a game of digital cat and mouse, or turn their own ship into a labyrinth by hacking their controls - elevators, doors, that kind of thing."

Ben considered it as he looked over the vague schematics they had - unfortunately a detailed picture would require more time out of light speeds. "When you say digital cat and mouse? Do you mean making their internal sensors give false readings?"

"That's one way, the other is that we repurpose decoy holograms to make them think there's more of us than there are…"

"Holograms wouldn't show up on the sensors,"

"Good point, but they can still make a group of dumb ass mercs follow them," Rila said, and he couldn't argue with that one. "Only problem is that a ship this high tech, will have serious counter measures enabled to prevent us pulling off something like that."

"That eliminates the beamer, even if we get their shields down, I'm pretty certain they'll have anti-beamer tech."

"They've lined their hull with alloys designed just for that," Rila said. "Most ships don't bother because it's expensive and you can do the same job with jamming tech. I'd say that gives us a clue of what we can expect to be up against."

Ben agreed as he continued analysing the scans they had, before finally tapping on one to bring it up on Rila's screen too, and highlighted a pair of entry points. "These are relatively easy for a shuttle to get to, and not too far away from where Mishri got readings for their biometrics."

"Two teams makes sense, flank the enemy and maybe cover for each other depending on what we run into," Rila agreed. "Actually, this team could do some damage, you see this power junction?" She tapped to highlight a section of the ship's systems and the cables lit up the whole way down the length of the ship. "If we get an engineer aboard they can do some serious damage there, not enough to destroy the ship, but enough to scramble their ability to respond and certainly focus on holding engineering rather than worrying too much about any prisoners."

"Then I guess we better talk shop with an engineer."