"Ah, Mr Touchard, have a seat," Rila greeted when the door to the dimly lit room she was waiting in opened.

Touchard glared at her and then glanced at his escorting officer. "To what do I owe this pleasure?" He asked, knowing it was in his best interests to cooperate. Though even S-Core would allow him to call time on this conversation whenever he wanted.

"I'm sure you're sick of answering S-Core's questions by now," Rila replied with a click of her tongue. "So I'm gonna ask you some different questions."

"You don't care who hired me or why we did it?"

"Of course I do, but I also know that better interrogators than me will have already tried and failed with those questions," she said. "So let's skip straight to the endgame."

"This ought to be good."

"How did you know you'd have the opportunity to strike against USEP on Yerta the second time?"

Touchard laughed at that, but she had sensed the fear behind the shock. He didn't want her to know that. "My dear, it was a strike of opportunity. Your USEP ships always forget to protect themselves properly on diplomatic missions."

Rila had considered tossing paper copies of all the logs they'd tracked down, but she had a better plan. Instead she simply rested one foot against his shin as she said, "we've looked into the records. We know you moved the ordinance in before the order from USEP HQ came through requesting either the Endeavour or Faraday to aid the yertans in the aftermath of your first bomb. I also know that nothing large enough to do the job came in between the order and the explosion, and the entirety of the cache we had discovered earlier was still in tact." He winced as her foot pressed painfully against the bone, though her face was one of sweetness. "So, my dear, what did you know?"

"I have friends in high places," he replied cryptically. A flick of Rila's ankle had him grunting in pain. "What?"

"We're playing a new game, you answer my questions honestly, and I don't rustle up some of my old contacts to land you in some very serious hot water."

Touchard scoffed. "You think your friends will have anything on the people who hired us?"

"They scare you that much?" It was less a question more of a realisation.

"They have friends at the heart of governments, and part of our deal involved us sending them people who'd fallen afoul of Peshtar's big players. The ones who were supposed to disappear," Touchard explained. Rila hardly found that surprising. "They came back wrong. Some could barely remember how to dress themselves, others had the wrong memories, some just straight up shot themselves once they arrived back on our streets. No one willingly gets on the wrong side of these guys."

"Who are they?" Rila asked. "Surely that much isn't privileged."

Touchard scowled at her for a moment. "I'm not sure, I only ever did business with one intermediary, and I am not giving you them."

"Give me something," Rila demanded, her heel digging in again.

"Only one guy ever came back partially sane, and even he ain't all there anymore," Touchard warned. Rila rolled her ankle. "An isharate named Mraawn."

"Thank you," Rila said graciously as she stood up.

"He's as likely to kill you as talk to you."

~-x-~

Ali had been unable to get back to sleep after that voice, and she had instead got up to attempt to grab hold of that fleeting strand of recognisable consciousness. Even though this time she knew was she was looking for, what she was doing, she wasn't able to get anything more than fleeting impressions and half-knowledge.

That was how Narla found her when she returned for the start of her shift, sitting at the end of her bunk and concentrating on something just out of her reach. "Ali?"

Ali's head tilted at recognition of the outside world calling for her attention, slowly withdrawing from what she was doing and blinking as she got her bearings again. "Narla..? What time is it?"

"Morning," Narla said in a voice as soft as a lullaby. Ali sagged as if an exhaustion had finally realised itself. "You were supposed to be resting."

Ali bit her lip for a moment as she considered what, exactly, she should divulge. She stood and pulled the privacy curtains shut around her bed. Not exactly the most soundproof option, but it was all they had. "I… I think I've formed a new tetnar," she admitted.

If Narla was surprised she didn't show it outwardly, but simply led Ali to sit back down on her bunk. "You think?" Narla asked as she sank into a chair to start gently examining Ali's mind again.

Ali swallowed and fidgeted for a moment as she considered her options. She knew that the tetnar process has begun between Ben and herself, but it hadn't been fully formed when he disappeared. She also knew that if she admitted there was a romance building between them, Grey might feel obliged to remove her from any missions involving him because she might not be able to remain objective. Then there was the simple fact that her track record with relationships was not great and she was still re-learning that she could trust her friends after two years living as a loner. "Last night, I heard Ben telling me that they were still alive," she said all in a quiet rush, barely pausing between words. "I thought it was starting to form before Yerta but… well, I couldn't reach him."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Narla didn't say a word, and Ali wasn't sure if the woman was surprised or not, she did have a very good poker-face after all. She just continued with her examination until she was satisfied there was nothing left for her to check. "Well, that tallies with the way you've untangled the cause of your headaches," she said instead.

"So I'm not crazy and imagining voices because denial is easier than grief?"

"No," Narla assured her, but Ali could sense the amusement. "Is that why you've been up half the night?"

"I was trying to use it to find them. When I finally embraced my telepathic abilities I did learn some tricks, and there is a way to use it to find the other person. I wasn't having much success," Ali admitted. "I think I've narrowed it down to a few systems, but I know I can do better."

"Maybe we need to get a bit closer?" Narla suggested. Ali nodded absentmindedly. Narla reached a hand to the other woman's shoulder. "This isn't something I have specific experience in, but I'll help how I can."

"I… That's not the issue," Ali mumbled. "How do I explain I can find them without revealing the tetnar?"

She waited as Narla considered that issue. "Carefully," Narla decided. As her doctor this conversation was considered privileged, and she knew Narla would reveal nothing she didn't know Ali was comfortable sharing. "We don't need to explain the details, just that it's a possibility due to your physiology."

"They'll ask questions."

"Then we ignore them," Narla said firmly, making Ali give a little chuckle.

"Sorry, I know you're a professional, but badass Narla is an unusual image," Ali said with a guilty expression on her face.

Narla let the amusement linger for a moment before standing. "I'm ready to back you up in that conversation whenever you are ready to have it," she said.

Ali nodded. "I shouldn't put it off, it'll only get harder." She glanced at her lap. "Though I guess I shouldn't have it in my pyjamas…"

"Not unless you want to worry our long-suffering commanding officer," Narla teased with a soft tone. "You don't have a reputation for bringing him good news when you're still in your sleepwear."

"I don't think we can count the time that Spud and I set off the cargo bay fire alarms in the middle of the night," Ali quipped.

"What about the time you and Flosi accidentally uncovered the underground fight club running on deck fourteen?" Narla asked, her tone still far too gentle - by human standards - for the teasing she was doing. Ali couldn't help her giggle.

Once Ali had changed back into her regular clothes they headed up the bridge and Grey agreed to their request for a meeting in his ready room. As the door closed the atmosphere almost felt oppressive as Ali realised there was no backing out now. Ali glanced at Narla for some clue as to how to start the conversation, the jetran just held her gaze and Ali nodded to herself before turning back to her former commanding officer. "Your missing crew are still alive, and we think we can find them."

Grey was regretting agreeing to hear them out before he'd had a chance to have his morning coffee. "You think?"

"One mind will be looking for another, kind of like radar," Narla explained.

"It's not an exact science," Ali added. "At the moment, we have a general area, which we can narrow down as we get nearer."

"You've formed another tetnar, haven't you?" Grey asked.

"Would my answer either way actually reassure you?" Ali countered, quirking her eyebrow.

Grey sighed. "No," he admitted. A silence fell over the small ready room as everyone waited for someone else to say something. After a moment where Grey scrutinised them both he turned to Ali with a sigh. "Are you sure about this?"

Ali nodded. "Yes." There was no waver to her voice there.

Grey glanced at Narla who clicked her tongue at him. "Well, what have we got to lose?" He asked.

~-x-~

Despite the fact that she'd been back aboard the Endeavour for a week now, it still felt odd to be running missions with them again. If she hadn't spent years serving aboard the Endeavour, it would have felt stranger still to now be under Grey's command, even if it were only temporary.

She spent a lot of their journey in the med bay working with Narla to try and hone in one the impressions she was able to get. Presently leading them to a single star system and within that a planet that they were able to confirm with the ship's scanners and sensors. Though they had other problems than simply locating their missing crew members - a total of seven - once they arrived.

"It looks like a derelict spaceship," Mishri reported in. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if that was to deceive someone into thinking they couldn't flee to better enable their escape."

"You mean from someone like us?" Ali teased, Mishri offered her a wry smile.

"What are our options?" Grey asked, knowing that his bridge staff would already be looking at their data.

"We need to get close enough to be able to disable their shields and engines without them running before we have a chance to board," Mishri summarised. "The easiest solution would be to beam our people out, but the number alone makes that risky, bordering on impractical."

"But it serves as the back up back up plan," Ali agreed as she flicked through the data feeds. "The asteroid field is our best chance of undetected approach, but that's mainly hoping for interference from any minerals in the asteroids."

"Could we push them into the asteroids?" Mishri asked. "They might be less inclined to flee if they're embedded."

"They'd still run, they'd just use the asteroids to give them cover till they have a course locked in," Lieutenant Nikud, acting head of security, hypothesised. "Or at least, it's what I'd recommend if I was on that ship."

"Then we need to take out their engines, or cause enough damage that they will settle in for repairs, preventing them from running when we try and board," Grey summarised.

"Then we need to know we can disable their shields," Ali prompted.

"I'm pretty certain we can do that, it's a fairly standard design and our sensors are reading all the main power draws in the expected areas," Nikud said, flicking through his own reports. "So long as I can get a shot on one of these junctions, I can take down their shields," he added as he highlighted three points on the schematics.

"There is another option," Mishri said. "It's an old ship, there's a chance that it won't have as sophisticated defences as we'd be used to infiltrating."

No one made the joke about how many ships the Endeavour had or had not infiltrated. Ali turned back to her screen of data. "That could work, providing of course they haven't put new tech in an old shell."

"Why would you do that?" Nikud asked.

"To make it look like it's nothing worth steal or otherwise interesting," Ali explained. "You know, it's not a large vessel, if we're going to try and get a team aboard, the simplest thing would be to secure the whole thing and tow it into the shuttle bay."

"What kind of crew compliment are we looking at?" Grey asked.

"Ship that size? I'd expect maybe ten," Nikud said.

"Add another five for extra security," Ali agreed.

"I'm reading twenty nine life-signs," Mishri reported. "Guess that's twice the security?"

"Just what we need, paranoid mercs," Ali muttered to herself. "Gonna require some smart fighting."