The following morning Ali was escorted back into Grey's ready room. "Well, you look like you slept as well as I did," she quipped.

Grey chuckled and offered her a coffee. "I've been up half the night trying to get to the bottom of whatever it was Nikud was up to," he admitted, taking another sip from his own cup. "Put this off in the hope that I'd be able to get some shuteye… should've known better."

Ali giggled into her own drink. She'd tossed and turned the whole night after Nikud's attempt to kill her, she'd have probably been awake regardless, but she also didn't really want to admit that. Besides, it wasn't like it was the first time anyone had tried to kill her, or attack one of their own. It always felt worse when it was on home ground, as it were. "Did you get anywhere?"

Grey shook his head. "No. Ben's tried, kept making tiny bits of progress only for Nikud to realise and circle back each time. I sent him to get some sleep for now." Grey paused to sip at his drink, and if he had been hoping to get a reaction from Ali he was disappointed as she just sat there with her hands wrapped around her mug. "We're not totally comm silent, but because we're off grid Lartyne has been pretty strict with traffic in and out. Nikud hasn't had any communication off-ship."

"So he's either acting alone or using his kentarian abilities to communicate," Ali summarised.

"Precisely," Grey agreed. Ali rubbed at her head. "Given that he's started calling you a traitor I'm assuming he's somehow involved with either Tuktutav or Pikaya."

"I mean most people probably think I've just betrayed The Forum too," Ali said with a tired shrug.

"But why would Nikud care enough to talk to someone outside of the chain of command about that?" Grey asked.

"Because I've possibly just sanctioned a war between a Forum species and the taurrans?" Ali shrugged. "His species to boot."

Grey took a breath as he realised she had a point. Though as he raised his cup again he studied her expression, and he knew she shared his suspicions that it was something to do with Tuktutav.

They drank the remainder of their coffee in silence, both of them knowledgeable on protocol to know what was coming and wanting to be as awake as possible for it. Despite the circumstances.

"Okay, make your case, why isn't this a betrayal and what is your plan?" Grey said, placing the mug down and starting up a recording to make this official record.

"Everything we discovered on Antke contravenes The Forum's laws, and it needs to be addressed. As it stands we had no way of knowing whether or not anyone would take it seriously due to the nature of the experiments performed, people's minds might not be their own anymore. So I gave the information to an outside agent. Maybe that was a mistake, but I believe it a necessary step to ensure that this isn't covered up," Ali explained firmly. "If what I did makes me a traitor, it is only against the kentarian people not USEP and not The Forum, and given that I am bringing evidence of egregious criminal activity to light… I'm not sure that that really applies."

"That would be true if it weren't for the looming possibility of war," Grey reminded her. "One that your actions have made more likely."

Ali nodded to herself. "The taurrans don't want war anymore than we do, but they view this as a threat, as we all should. If I can make any of the governments accept that, then we can avert it."

"So that's your plan?"

"Yes," Ali said. "Someone needs to ensure this reaches The Forum hierarchy, and someone needs to go to Kentar to try and make them see reason. Is it risky? Yes, but I have to try."

"You have to try?"

"I clean up my messes, you know that."

"Indeed, and for the record until this is brought to the attention of the USEP admiralty, I'm placing you under supervision but not arrest," Grey decided and Ali pulled a face. He stopped the recording.

"Really? I need a minder?"

"Right now letting you go off on your own will only make things worse. It's bureaucratic protection as much as personal."

Ali raised her hands in a sarcastic cheer. "So are you on board with my plan?"

"I think there's some details we need to work out first, and some people to brief."

~-x-~

To say the senior crews were surprised by the explanation of why Ali had been in the brig overnight and that Nikud had tried to kill her was an understatement.

"You did what!?" Spud demanded.

"This actually explains why you refused to say anything since we returned from Antke," Rila observed rather more calmly.

Ali had the decency to look a little guilty at that as she offered Ben an apologetic look. Narla, however, was rather more practical above the surprised murmurs as she asked, "if you plan on going to the kentarian government to reveal this, you will need to ensure you can withstand whatever telepathic intrusions they will inflict upon you."

"That sounds so wrong," Claire muttered with a shudder.

"It might - might - be possible to use some of their own failures as defensive measures," Ali suggested, bringing up the information she had found when searching through Antke's files. "It's not a guarantee, but right now it's all we've got."

"It's better than nothing," Narla agreed as she scrutinised the data.

"What about the tech kentarians have to block these abilities?" Etsile asked. "That prison they kept Barker in was shielded."

"We'd need time to…" Ali started only to trail off as her eyes widened in surprise. "Oh, krekt."

"What?" Grey asked.

"Bert was kept in a kentarian prison," Ali repeated. "Ostensibly to shield me from him but… but if Tuktutav got to him whilst he was there. They had three years to work him over. To rewrite his mind until he was nothing but a pawn when he escaped. He would have no choice but to betray the taurrans because they'd been working his mind his whole incarceration to destroy them."

"Wouldn't that require them to know of his deal with the taurrans?" Lartyne asked.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"They'd know," Ben said firmly. "Given what they did to us, I can only imagine what they did to a known terrorist."

"This is crazy!" Claire said. "Someone tell me this is crazy, right? We're now suggesting that the guy we spent months chasing down was actually right?"

"Not entirely," Ali corrected as softly as she knew how. "My guess is that he tried to use the device on Antke but couldn't understand the information, so he got enough flashes to terrify and partial locations. Resulting in paranoia and trying to stop a conspiracy in a terrible way."

"Those logs we found would be pretty convincing evidence…" Rila said.

"Petra," Spud whispered. "You think he showed those to his followers?"

"I would," Rila admitted. "You know, if I was half mad and trying to convince people to fight with me against it."

"Tell me you're not thinking of recruiting any more of his old followers…" Grey warned as he looked at the pensive look on Ali's face.

"I'm not that mad, yet," She said, eyes never leaving the data in front of her. "Besides, any evidence we supply needs to be credible. Associating with too many of his crowd undermines that." There was a pause before she added, "heck, I probably undermine that."

There were a few wry chuckles at that, but Grey knew they couldn't afford to get sidetracked right now. "Right, you engineered this situation, Ali, and you said you planned to bring it to the authorities."

Ali nodded. "I need to do some digging to see if I can work out any potential ways of resisting the kind of telepathic abilities we will be up against with Tuktutav - Narla and Rila will probably both be helpful with that. Meanwhile we need to work out the most likely candidates to bring this to - or to avoid - which means we need to try and trace any potential links to Tuktutav or Pikaya. Or maybe seeing what dirt we can dig up and avoiding people with too many skeletons in their closets as there's a chance someone will already have approached them…" Ali trailed off as she thought. "Once we've spent some time on that, and I don't expect any of our research to be conclusive because we can't really afford to spend much more than a day on it, we'll have to split up."

"Is that a good idea?" Spud asked. "I feel like there's a safety in numbers when going up against people who can control minds."

"There is," Ali agreed. "But we don't have time to try appealing to both The Forum and Kentar separately. We also don't have time to risk one of them warning the other either."

"I don't like it, but right now I don't have a coherent argument against you," Grey admitted. "Right, assuming you, Narla and Rila are all comfortable experimenting on each other, then I'll coordinate the research efforts into the politicians to allow you to focus on that."

"Are you sure I wouldn't be more use helping track down potential blackmailers?" Rila asked.

Ali sagged and glanced at Narla, silently asking if they would be able to handle it with just the two of them. "It's not ideal, but I think we will be okay," Narla said after a moment's thought.

"Okay, then Rila you chase down leads and we'll only pull you into our efforts if we need you," Ali figured.

"And if you need a break, you can help me try and crack Nikud," Ben added to Rila.

"If I need a break can I come and punch him?" Ali asked brightly.

"No."

~-x-~

It wasn't as simple as diving straight into the research, they all had duties they needed to delegate or see to first. So Narla wasn't surprised when Ali promised to meet her down in the med bay once she'd settled some other business. Though, on reflection, Ali figured that the jetran already knew too much and so wouldn't have been surprised if she knew the real reason.

She and Ben hadn't needed words to acknowledge they needed to talk now that they finally had chance to. As the senior staff from both ships dispersed from the meeting they were able to drift away without anyone really noticing. For the simple reasons that they were on the Endeavour and wanted privacy they ended up at Ben's quarters.

Ali couldn't help but glance around the room as the door shut behind her. There were a lot more personal effects than she'd expected. Before she'd had the chance to say anything, he'd framed her face with his hands and kissed her. She instinctively responded and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

Neither of them had realised they'd been moving till her legs hit his desk and he took a step back from her. "Sorry," he whispered. "I know I could see you, that I talked to you and could feel you through the tetnar… But after Nikud…" He trailed off as he pressed his forehead to hers and she just let herself feel his emotions through their bond. "I just needed to prove to myself you were still alive."

"I get it," Ali promised. She'd gone through the same thing with him and Spud after the second attack on Yerta. She let go of him to lean back on the desk slightly. "But I'm guessing I shouldn't derail this conversation by hopping onto your desk?"

Ben frowned at her, and her teasing smirk. "I didn't bring you here for that."

"C'mon, at least a little part of you was thinking about it," she teased, her smirk threatening to break into a fully lopsided smile.

"Little?"

Ali wiggled her eyebrows at his faux indignation. "I'll find out one day."

He shook his head at her but she could see his smile. She felt his amusement drain away to resignation just before he rubbed at his face, knowing what came next. "Why'd you do it?" He finally asked.

"Let Klandra go, or not tell you what I'd talked to her about?"

"Either? Both?" He replied, clearly unsure.

"I didn't tell you and Rila because I was trying to protect you," Ali shrugged. "I know you'll tell me that I don't need to protect you and all the rest of the arguments I'd come out with if our roles were reversed. But… this is potentially treason, I couldn't share that responsibility. Even if it would make me feel better about the decision."

"Feel better how?"

"I didn't know if I should let Klandra go or try to stop her," Ali admitted with a sigh. "It guaranteed bringing this out into the open, but it's an incredibly dangerous way to do so. We need to stop the kentarians from continuing with these kinds of techniques, tortures and experiments, and I don't trust them not to make all the correct platitudes in public and continue as they were. Antke is proof this is a long standing practice, being a relic from the wars with the taurrans. In the end it felt like the kind of conciliation the taurrans were never afforded when the ceasefires were negotiated."

Ben nodded to himself as he absorbed what she said. "So you believe war is a calculated risk?"

"If Klandra's maths is right, we have five days, five days to avert it."

"Seems like a tall order."

"We've pulled off taller."

He couldn't even argue with that. She'd twice taken down Barker then helped take down a terrorist organisation before finally evading capture to root out corruption in the organisation she kept trying to save despite the fact they only ever repaid her loyalty with betrayal.

Finally she broke the silence by quietly asking, "what would you have done?"

His eyes snapped back up to hers in surprise, before rubbing a hand over his face as he considered her question. They didn't have the required trust to pull off any kind of proper alliance to get Klandra to wait for them to try things their way. He was under no illusions about how an attempt to subdue Klandra and Shkarn would have turned out, even if they won in the end it would end any possibility of appealing to the taurran hierarchy. If they didn't win then the chances of Klandra giving Grey a heads up on her plan were zero and there was no reason for the taurrans to play nice with any potential USEP olive branch. So the question boiled down to whether or not he was okay risking permanent alienation of the taurrans just to avoid an offensive that could be considered defensively justified by the taurrans given the historical transgressions they had just uncovered evidence of. Assuming he'd still be alive to see it.

He sighed. "Probably gotten myself shot," he admitted.

"You're a better diplomat than that," Ali teased with a wry smile. "Besides, you've survived a lot worse than two angry taurrans."

"My luck's gotta run out eventually."

Ali made a point of rolling her eyes at him. "You're a better fighter than that, Ben," she said with the kind of level voice that only sincerity mixed with determination could manage.

"You sound like you're trying to undermine your own argument about keeping us safe from a firefight."

"As captain it was my job to avoid putting my crew in unnecessary danger regardless if I think they'll survive."

Ben suddenly couldn't resist laughing, prompting a baffled expression to flit across her face. "Sorry, sometimes you come out with such blatant yet inarguable BS that I wonder why you aren't a diplomat, before remembering that you do also have a habit of straight up punching people you can't be bothered to deal with."

Ali giggled from where she was still propped against the desk. "Yeah, guess my dad taught me something…" Her smile faltered for a moment and he felt the conflicted emotion pass through her.

"Hey, you're allowed to take time if you still need it, there's no time limit on grief," he said as he pressed a hand to her arm.

Ali looked back up at him and managed a weak smile. "I know," she whispered. "But I'm okay, mostly."

He scrutinised her for a moment, even tried testing their connection by brushing against her own mind. She didn't resist, but didn't exactly invite him in either. So he let it drop, hoping it proved that she had somewhere safe to come if she needed it.