As abruptly as it had come, it ceased.

Echoes of the thought-pulse rocked the Lattice, like the aftershocks that followed quakes in the volcanic Underrock beneath Tholia’s three principal continents. Normally, the Ruling Conclave withheld alarming knowledge from the lower echelons of the Lattice-at-large, in the interest of preventing reckless actions by individuals that could bring harm to the rest of the Assembly.

Such discretion had just become impossible.

The Lattice was ringing with terror and incandescent with fury. An ancient and terrible force had seized the Tholians by usurping their most inviolate form of communion. They knew not this power’s name, its purpose, or why it had called to them. About it, they knew only two things:

Where it was—and that it must be annihilated, at any cost.

5

Commodore Diego Reyes exited his office and strode across the top level of the operations center of Starbase 47. Even at its least frenetic moments, the nerve center of the enormous facility buzzed with signal chatter and pulsed with foot traffic—yeomen bearing reports and work orders, department chiefs going to or returning from one meeting or another. This morning, service personnel dodged out of Reyes’s unswerving path. Technicians tore their eyes from the huge display screens, which wrapped around the top third of the high perimeter wall, to watch the lanky flag officer pass in a swift blur.

Elevated slightly above the chaos was the supervisors’ deck, which was situated in the center of the cavernous circular compartment and bounded only by a simple gunmetal-gray railing. The anchoring feature of the platform was an octagonal conference table, into which were set eight situation monitors, each with its own set of controls. Known to the operations staff as “the hub,” it was from this compact block of workspace that the bulk of the station’s business was managed each day.

Gathered around the hub at 0823, and already deep into the morning staff meeting, were the station’s department heads, minus the chief medical officer, who was notorious for shunning such briefings. Commander Jon Cooper, the station’s executive officer, ran the meeting with his trademark low-key aplomb. Lieutenant Judy Dunbar, the senior communications officer, sat with her eyes closed and twirled a curl of her light brown hair around one index finger as she listened and committed the minutes of the meeting to her photographic memory. No one took any notice as Reyes quietly climbed the steps toward the hub.

“Ray,” Cooper said to the fleet operations manager, Lieutenant Commander Raymond Cannella, “what’s this I’m hearing about a six-hour delay in docking clearance for the Chichén Itzá?”

“It’s their own fault,” said Cannella, a hefty man with a thick, nasal New Jersey accent. “They left Cait two days early but never updated their flight plan. They’re lucky we found them a berth at all.”

Cooper tilted his head in a half-nod. “Fair enough.”

Reyes reached the top of the stairs, and everyone turned at the sound of his approach. Despite his best efforts not to tread with such a heavy step, he found it difficult to muffle his footfalls. The commodore was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered, and his ex-wife had been fond of telling him that his “aura” frequently preceded him, even through a closed door. Serves me right for marrying a telepath, he brooded. Lifting his chin in a friendly but curt greeting, he said, “Morning, folks.” Overlapping variations of Good morning, sir were volleyed back at him. “Mr. Cooper,” he continued, “do you mind if I butt in for just a nanosecond?”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Thank you.” Reyes looked at Vanguard’s senior engineering officer, Lieutenant Isaiah Farber. “Mr. Farber, what’s topping your priority list these days?”

The heavily muscled Starfleet weight-lifting champion mulled his answer for a moment, then said, “Mostly space-dock systems, sir. We’re still fine-tuning the—”

“Because I think that in a claustrophobic environment like ours, it’s the little things that raise or lower the bar on our quality of life. Don’t you agree?”

A sheepish glance worked its way around the hub, from one officer to another, starting and ending with Farber. He looked up at last and said, “Your food slot’s on the fritz again, sir?”

Reyes feigned astonishment. “Amazing, Farber. You must be psychic. Exercise truly broadens the mind, after all.”

“I’ll have your food slot fixed by 1300.”

“Excellent,” Reyes said, patting Farber firmly on one beefy shoulder. “God is in the details, Mr. Farber.”

“Aye, sir.”

Turning his dark gray gaze toward Cooper, Reyes said, “When does the Bombay make port?”

“Nine-twenty hours.”

“Notify me as soon as they enter spacedock.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Carry on. My best to Jen and your boy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Reyes nodded quickly to the rest of the group, then turned and walked back down the steps. He looked around the ops center, which was packed with computers, communication devices, and gadgets capable of myriad technological marvels—with the notable exception of being able to produce a cup of coffee. As frontier hardships go, this is kind of petty, he admitted to himself. But if forty years in the service, flag rank, and sector command aren’t worth a cup of java, what the hell is?

He walked into his sparsely furnished office and sat down at his desk. The morning reports and pending orders were all waiting in neatly arranged stacks, courtesy of his alpha-shift yeoman, Toby Greenfield. Although he had expected, upon first meeting her, that her perpetually sunny disposition would grate on his nerves, he had found the opposite to be true. Truth be told, he had to admit that the longer he served with her, the more he grew to appreciate her joie de vivre.

The buzzing of his intercom drew his attention. Recognizing Greenfield’s ID code, he opened the channel with a push of his thumb. “Go ahead.”

“Captain Desai to see you, sir.”

“Give me a moment, then—”

His office door swished open and Captain Rana Desai strode in. The petite, late-thirtyish Indian woman carried a sealed legal folder under her arm. Like many of her contemporaries, Desai wore her raven hair in a stylish but simple bob cut.

Behind her, Yeoman Greenfield stood, looking flustered, in the doorway. She signaled her silent apology to Reyes, then stepped away and let the door close.

Reyes leveled his stare at Desai and said, with monotonal sarcasm, “No, I’m not busy, please come in.”

Desai took the folder from under her arm and handed it to Reyes. In a voice that was no less steely for its gentle London accent, she said, “On behalf of the Starfleet Judge Advocate General, your attempted exercise of eminent domain on Kessik IV is hereby deemed improper, and your petition is rejected.”

“Excuse me,” Reyes said, his ire rising swiftly. “We laid claim to Kessik IV by the book.”

“Maybe you need to read that book again, Commodore,” Desai said. “You can’t steal a colony from its residents just because you want its dilithium mine.”

“First of all,” Reyes said, slowly rising from his chair to tower over her, “we’re not stealing it, we’re buying it. Second, we don’t want its dilithium mine, we need its dilithium mine—it’s a matter of military necessity.”

She flashed an insincere smirk that bordered on a sneer. “How unfortunate for you that the law wasn’t written solely to service your needs.”

“Actually,” he said, “that’s exactly what eminent domain is for. Ambassador Jetanien signed off on this personally.”

“Too bad he had no more authority to do this than you did,” Desai said. “Eminent-domain law, as written in the Federation Charter, applies strictly to member-worlds of the Federation and unoccupied planets within sovereign UFP territory.”

“We planted our flag. That makes Kessik IV our territory.”