For several minutes he did nothing. That was the part people rarely understood about reconnaissance. They imagined movement because movement was what they remembered afterward. Crawling through brush, crossing ridgelines, spending hours under weather that had personally decided it hated you. The useful part often came before any of it. Sitting somewhere long enough for the place to stop noticing you were there.

Ships had rhythms just like terrain did. The Rubicon's were still unfamiliar, but he could already hear some of them through the bulkhead. Foot traffic came in short waves rather than a constant flow. Someone farther down the corridor opened a compartment, exchanged a few words with another person, then closed it again. The ventilation system had a faint vibration on the lower cycle that would probably disappear from his awareness by tomorrow.

He leaned back against the bulkhead and listened. Forty-eight hours. That was generous. He'd know most of what mattered before the first twelve were gone.

The thought came easily because it usually had. He had always been good at this part, good enough that people with more rank than sense had spent years trying to convince him that meant he belonged behind a desk. Planning staffs liked people who saw patterns early. They liked reports that predicted what an enemy would do before the enemy did it. Marn had never liked giving them one.

A briefing room could tell you what somebody thought the ground looked like. Standing on it told you what they missed. That distinction had probably stalled his career more than anything else. Well, that and his mouth. He wasn't particularly bothered by either.

The duffel was still sitting where he'd dropped it near the door. He looked at it and briefly considered unpacking, then decided there was no reason to pretend he cared about shirts being in drawers instead of bags. He would deal with it later.

His thoughts went back to the walk from the airlock instead. Too many specialists. Restricted access where it shouldn't have been necessary. Personnel who noticed without appearing interested. No obvious unit identifiers. There were other explanations for each of those things individually. Marn could produce several if he wanted to. Together they narrowed the possibilities.

Black operations wasn't quite the right term. Starfleet didn't like terms like that, especially when the people using them had to answer questions later. But the Rubicon was clearly something more than the assignment description handed to personnel clerks. That explained why he'd been brought here. It also raised the more interesting question of what they expected him to see.

Marn rested his head against the bulkhead and closed his eyes. There had been a time when that question would have been enough. Give him terrain, opposing doctrine, weather, available approaches and a reasonable estimate of enemy capability, and he could usually narrow the future down until there weren't many places left for it to hide. Usually.

His jaw tightened slightly before he caught himself. The problem had never been the terrain. He had read that operation correctly. The routes, the likely contact point, the timing. Every piece had fit until a man on the other side made a choice that accomplished nothing, gained nothing and should never have happened. Marn's model hadn't allowed for it because there had been no rational reason to do it. People had still died.

He didn't dwell on that anymore. Dwelling implied there was something new to learn from replaying it, and there wasn't. He had already taken the lesson from it. Never assume the other person needs a good reason. That was enough.

Outside his compartment, another set of footsteps passed and disappeared down the corridor. Marn opened his eyes.

He still didn't know exactly what Blackwatch expected from him, or how much of what he'd noticed was intentional and how much the ship simply couldn't hide from anyone who knew what to look for. That could wait too.

Sooner or later, someone would give him a briefing, a map, a target, or a patch of ground and ask what he saw. Then they'd find out whether bringing him here had been worth the trouble.