Miko used her override code on his door which she should not have had and gave him eight minutes to be sitting in Ten-Forward, four coffees paid, and a working explanation for his continued existence, or she was filing a formal discrepancy report against someone who didn’t exist.
Farah had been living in his quarters for six days straight, coming up only for duty shifts and meals eaten standing in a corridor because sitting down meant staying, and staying meant thinking about Verik’s face when certainty had failed him.
So here he was.
Miko slid a padd across the table between them, her expression the perfect blend of engineering severity and the smile she was trying not to let win.
“I’ve been tracking your luck.”
“That’s not ominous at all.”
“It’s not luck.” She tapped the padd.
“Luck has a distribution curve.
Yours doesn’t.”
Farah picked up his coffee his second; she’d already collected on two of the four and let the warmth settle into his palms.
Across the room, Guinan was pouring something amber for a lieutenant who looked like he’d earned it.
She caught Farah’s eye for half a second, then went back to her work.
“Show me the audit,” Farah said.
Miko turned the padd around.
It was formatted like a cargo manifest, which shouldn’t have been funny and somehow made it worse.
“Item one,” she said, tapping the first line.
“The Romulan standoff, stardate 41158.4.
Estimated probability of de-escalation without loss of standing: twelve percent.
Actual outcome: treaty held, Romulan delegation withdrew complaints, you were standing near a fern.”
“I like that fern.”
“Item two.
The Andorian trade protocol revision.
You suggested one clause adjustment to Lieutenant Korus.
The Andorians signed the next day after stalling for two weeks.
Korus got a commendation.
You got” She checked the padd.
“a thank-you.”
“Korus did the work.”
“Korus told me he used your exact phrasing and didn’t know why.” Miko looked up.
The joke was still there, but under it a harder question.
“He said it was like you handed him the answer and he just had to say it out loud.”
Farah put the coffee down carefully.
“He’s being generous.”
“He’s being accurate.” She scrolled.
“Item three.
The cargo-routing error that would’ve delayed the medical shipment to Tarsus colony by four days caught by you during a manual review nobody asked you to run. New chapters come out on NovelPing first.
Item four.
The delegate who was about to walk out of a briefing until you said and I’m quoting the log here’one clarifying question’ that turned the whole room around.”
Farah watched her.
Miko’s voice was light, but her thumb was still on the padd, scrolling past line after line of wins that looked, when you wrote them down, like a pattern.
“This is a long manifest,” he said.
“Class-2 miracle cache, unaccounted for.” She grinned.
“I’m a supply officer, Farah.
When the books don’t balance, I find out why.”
“And what’s your working theory?”
The grin softened.
Miko leaned back, her padd flat on the table between them, and said it plainly.
“Nobody’s this lucky for free.
So who’s paying?”
Ten-Forward kept moving around them.
Someone laughed two tables over, and a glass clinked down on the bar.
Guinan was still pouring, and if she was listening she gave no sign.
Farah should have deflected.
He had the sentence ready something dry, something that turned the question back into the bit and let them both pretend she hadn’t just named the exact thing he’d been carrying and calling nothing.
He didn’t say it.
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
Miko studied him.
Not like Remmick, hunting the lie.
Not like Data, cataloging the improbability.
She looked at him the way a friend does when you’ve just told the truth and it cost you to say it.
“Okay,” she said.
She let it stand.
Never asked what he meant or why his voice had gone quiet or what he thought it was costing him.
She just nodded, pulled the padd back, and made a show of closing the file.
“Class-4 miracle,” she said, deadpan perfect.
“Unresolved.
I’m keeping the file open.”
Farah felt the smile before he meant to.
“Doesn’t that violate your inventory protocols?”
“I’ve got a special drawer for the ones that don’t add up.” She picked up her own coffee, which had gone cold while she’d been running her audit. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“You’re in good company.
Right between ‘why does the replicator in Section 12 only make Earl Grey’ and ‘where do all the isolinear rods go.'”
“Glad to be counted among the great mysteries of the Federation.”
Miko’s smile dimmed, just a degree, into something warmer and worse.
She put her cup down and said, quiet enough that it stayed between them, “Whatever it costs you, you don’t have to carry the invoice alone.”
For a second less than a second, the length of a breath Farah almost told her.
Almost said: I can see what people want, and I can make them do it, and the last time I was certain I understood someone they died of my mercy.
Came close to saying: I don’t know if the thing that gives me this is on my side, and I don’t know what it wants, and every time I use it I’m afraid of a reckoning I can’t see coming.
Almost.
The moment passed.
Miko just waited, and when he stayed silent she let it go like releasing a rope she still held one end of.
“You owe me two more coffees,” she said.
“Put it on my tab.”
“Your tab’s a filing hazard at this point.” She stood, gathering her padd, and shot him the grin that meant the bit was back and the door was closed and they were fine.
“Next time you save the ship, I’m charging interest.”
They walked back to quarters together, trading insults about the quality of the replicator coffee and the dubious state of Farah’s quarters, and it felt for the first time in a week like he wasn’t carrying the whole file by himself.
The joke had been love, and the warning had been true.
And Farah, walking half a step behind Miko as she narrated an elaborate fiction about requisitioning a intact dignity for him from ships stores, let himself hold both things at once without deciding which one mattered more.
At her door, Miko paused.
“You’re doing good work, Farah.
I mean it.”
“Thank you.”
“And if you ever figure out who’s paying your tab,” she said, lighter, “introduce me.
I want to meet the accountant who signed off on this.”
She disappeared inside before he could answer.
Farah stood in the corridor, alone, carrying a joke that had turned out to be the truest thing anyone had said to him since he woke up wearing someone else’s name.
He walked back to his quarters, poured a glass of water he didn’t drink, and sat at his desk with Miko’s question turning over and over, refusing to resolve.
Nobody’s this lucky for free.
So who’s paying?
No answer yet.
But the file was still open, and Miko who tracked discrepancies like other people tracked weather wasn’t going to let it close until it added up.
Farah set that beside the other warnings he was learning to carry, turned off the light, and let the question sit.