"Supporting Zedd and Tiraa in command side dealings. Following up with client representatives, verifying technical details on routes and cargo and token requirements, relaying terms back before anything is committed. I do not negotiate or accept anything independently." She turned her glass in her hands. "It suits what I know. I have been reading what brokers and clients are actually saying versus what they are presenting for fifteen years."

"It does suit you," Mei-Lin said, and meant it without qualification. "It is also a significant thing to be offered eleven days in."

"Ten when he offered it," Lindsy said.

Mei-Lin looked at her for a moment with the expression she used when she was filing something accurately. "He moves fast when he has decided something," she said, and there was something in her voice that was wry and warm simultaneously and entirely without bitterness and Lindsy registered it and was grateful for it.

"He does," Lindsy agreed.

They sat at the bar for a while after that and the conversation found easier ground, the new quarters and the layout of deck two and what the bar looked like at different hours and whether the replicator up here was better than the one on deck four which Mei-Lin had opinions about. Lindsy mentioned the king sized bed and Mei-Lin raised an eyebrow in the way that required no commentary and Lindsy laughed and the laugh was genuine and the bar was warm around them and the ship hummed in its new frequency and it was the right kind of evening for the kind of day it had been.

"Are we okay," Lindsy said eventually, because she needed to hear it said out loud.

Mei-Lin looked at her steadily. "Yes," she said. "We are okay." She held the look long enough to make it clear she meant it completely and then picked up her glass. "I want to say one thing though."

"Say it," Lindsy said.

"What we have built between us," Mei-Lin said, "I do not want it to change because of what happened or what keeps happening. If it starts to feel complicated in a way that costs either of us something I need you to tell me. I would rather have the honest version than the managed one."

Lindsy looked at her. "That is why I came to find you tonight instead of waiting for you to hear it some other way."

Mei-Lin nodded slowly. "Okay," she said. "Then we are okay."

She refilled both their glasses from the replicator without asking and Lindsy accepted hers and they sat at the bar on deck two with the ship moving quietly around them and talked for another hour about things that had nothing to do with Zedd or quarters or roles or any of the things that had made the last twenty four hours what they had been. They talked about Rigel IV and Mars and the particular quality of light on a planet you grew up on versus the light on every planet after that and whether the Gamma Quadrant felt different from the Alpha in ways that were difficult to articulate and Mei-Lin said it felt farther which was not a navigational observation and Lindsy said she understood exactly what she meant.

When Mei-Lin finally stood to go back to deck four she looked at Lindsy for a moment with the direct expression she used when she was saying something she meant completely.

"I am glad you are on this ship," she said. "That has not changed."

Lindsy looked at her. "Neither has that," she said.

Mei-Lin nodded and went and Lindsy sat at the bar for a while after she was gone and finished her drink and looked at the warm light of the space and thought that she had navigated some genuinely difficult terrain in the last twenty four hours and that the most important thing she had confirmed was not in the captain's quarters or the ready room but right here at a bar three doors from her new quarters on deck two.

She ordered one more drink and sat with it and the ship hummed around her and New Ferenginar kept its slow orbit below and it was a good first evening on deck two.

She was going to like it here.