“Councilor, I assure you that we are doing everything in our power to restore your planet to what it once was,” Admiral Reyes explained. “Unfortunately, it will take time for its orbit to stabilize, and significant terraforming and remediation work to heal the damaged flora and fauna.” It was a gentle way of saying that their satellites, machinery, and replicators would be going nowhere any time soon. With the current state of the planet, for some time, they’d be necessary even for the bare essentials of life on Vespara Prime.

“Don’t take me as thankless, but none of this is what we wanted,” replied Councilor Duval, who, through his measured and pragmatic approach, had become the de facto liaison between the colony and the squadron ever since the crisis had begun. “We came to this place to escape the blight of technology, not to be dependent on it.” He was more well-mannered than some of his colleagues, but he nonetheless shared their distaste for all that Starfleet represented and all that Starfleet had brought to their world.

“Unfortunately, it’s what you need,” Admiral Reyes reminded him. “The reality is that, if we just pull out, you would all be dead within days. Your crops are gone. Your livestock are dead. Your forests have burned. You don’t even have enough shelters to even put a roof over everyone’s head.” And that wasn’t even to speak for the satellites overhead. Without the climate regulation they provided, one wouldn’t even be able to walk on the surface of the charred world as a result of its new proximity to the K-type main sequence star at the system’s center.

“I understand that, Miss Reyes. I really do. If it were not for the intervention of you and your crews, we would not be here today,” Councilor Duval acknowledged. He was no fool. He’d seen the devastation celestial movements had wrought before those from beyond stopped it. “You must understand though that I would not be doing my people right if I did not remind you of our preferences and our ways.”

“And we will do our best to honor them,” Admiral Reyes countered. “But I would not be doing right by your people if I didn’t do what we are doing now.”

“Then may we all hope this is resolved quickly,” Councilor Duval nodded before he excused himself and headed for the transporter room. He’d be glad to be off the Polaris as quickly as possible. Everything about the Starfleet vessel was more than a bit disorienting to a man who hadn’t so much as held a tricorder since the eighties.

Admiral Reyes watched him go. A curious people, these folks were. Even after their lives had almost been extinguished by interstellar forces beyond their control, and they’d only been saved by the intervention of powers with the very technology they despised, still they clung to their anti-technology philosophy.

“You didn’t tell him how long this is going to take,” came the voice of Dr. Lockwood, his arms folded across his chest as he watched bemusedly from the doorway. He hadn’t been there long, but he’d caught the gist of the exchange. “Sh’vot forecasts it will take months, or years even, before terraforming can restore a sustainable planetary equilibrium, and the satellites, they’re going to be there forever.” The elongated ellipsis of the planet’s orbit would rebound a bit, but it would never return fully to where it was before. Those satellites would be necessary indefinitely to moderate ambient surface temperatures.

“Bad news is often best in small doses,” Admiral Reyes reminded her colleague. “At times, you’d do best to remember that.” Dr. Lockwood wasn’t known for his subtlety, nor his social aptitude.

“Mathematics simply is, or it isn’t,” Dr. Lockwood noted. “So I just give it to you straight.”

“I do appreciate that about you,” Admiral Reyes smiled. Or at least she did when it was about the science. As far as running a department, he was a pain in the ass. “So what’ve you got for me this afternoon, professor?” He wasn’t one to leave the lab unless he had something important to offer.

“An answer to a question you asked me earlier,” Dr. Lockwood replied as he passed a PADD to her bearing tensors and metrics on it that were all but unintelligible to Admiral Reyes. He knew it would be that way though, and he provided a talk track to accompany the figures. “The Underspace wasn’t always here, beneath our corner of spacetime, waiting for us to find it. It expanded, just recently.”

“How do you figure?”

“The expansion – or, more accurately, the potentiation generated by new compressions of the foliations within the subspace manifold – is what caused the puncture in the usually-smooth topology of spacetime,” Dr. Lockwood explained, pointing to a series of figures on the PADD that showed exactly how new compressions would ripple out and create the subspace fissure and the amplification phenomenon they’d witnessed when they first arrived. “What Dr. Brooks thinks is that Underspace was originally birthed by an ancient power that had the ability to manipulate spacetime curvature at a fundamental level, and whatever caused this, it was a more primitive version of the same.”

“That’s what Dr. Brooks thinks,” Admiral Reyes pointed out, noting the shift in subject midway through his statement. It was a bold supposition, and she didn’t take Dr. Lockwood as one to chase anything not rooted in the number. In fact, it had taken a lot of pushing from Dr. Brooks to even get Dr. Lockwood to consider the Underspace as a possible underlying factor in the aberrant anomaly that had threatened Vespara Prime. “But what do you think, Luke?”

“What I think is that the math demonstrates that the expansion just happened, and that’s about it as far as the facts go at this point,” Dr. Lockwood answered assuredly. “In regards to Dr. Brooks’ theory of anthropogenic origins, there’s no factual basis behind it, but there’s also no factual basis to disprove it. I can’t say he’s wrong, but I can’t say he’s right either.”

“Don’t be too quick to doubt the hunches of a man who’s been to places and times that we can only dream of,” Admiral Reyes cautioned with a twinkle in her eye. “Tom keeps it close to the chest, maybe out of fear that by merely saying something, he might cause it to change, but he often knows more than he lets on.” And even if the aged wanderer didn’t know anything directly about the matter at hand, the universe worked in patterns, and Tom Brooks had observed a good many of them as he studied and manipulated the probabilistic waveform that underwrote the fabric of the spacetime continuum.

“Is that why you keep the convict here against my wishes?” Dr. Lockwood asked, the pieces finally starting to fit together. When Admiral Reyes had brought Tom Brooks aboard the Polaris and assigned him to the team, Dr. Lockwood had objected vociferously. He knew the sorts of problems the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity might be faced with, and he didn’t exactly want a convicted felon, especially one convicted for violations of the Temporal Prime Directive, to be party to their activities. “It’s not that he’s bad at what he does. Save for myself, he’s probably our best astrophysicist. But he’s dangerous, Allison.”

“I’m dangerous, Luke. So are Jake, and Dorian, and Lisa, and so many of the others,” Admiral Reyes replied as she cast her eyes out to space, looking at the Neg’vhar battlecruiser that sat just off their bow. It wasn’t just about the Neg’vhar though. It was about everything beyond it too. “The galaxy is a dangerous place, and it’s far more dangerous today than it was just a few days ago. You talk about entropic foliations of subspace, but what about the entropic foliations of our interstellar landscape?” The arrival of the Underspace had the potential to reshape far more than just subspace itself.

“That’s more your department than mine,” Dr. Lockwood shrugged.

“No, today it’s both our problems,” Admiral Reyes countered. “Because whatever comes through that aperture, or any of the dozens of other apertures that the fleet has now cataloged across our space, it won’t care if you’re a soldier or a scientist. It’s going to come for you either way.” The Bajoran wormhole and the Borg transwarp conduits were all the proof she needed as to what might happen if their space was made open to all who wished to do the Federation harm.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to find a way to reverse whatever caused Underspace to expand,” Admiral Reyes replied darkly. Since the aperture was no longer threatening to destroy Vespara Prime, she’d finally had time to think about the broader implications, and she’d come to the only sensible conclusion. “And if that’s not tenable, then find me a way to close the aperture. This one, and all the others across Federation space.”

“That is quite a request,” Dr. Lockwood fumbled as he processed her words. Maybe there was a way to close an aperture by expanding on what the Klingons had accomplished, but reverse the expansion of Underspace itself? Did the Admiral have any clue how complicated what she was asking would be? His team, some of the best and brightest minds across the entire Federation, had but an elementary understanding of the mechanics at play, and that was to say nothing of the technology to manipulate it at a fundamental level. To do the latter, it would probably take a Kardashev Type III civilization to even have a shot. “And, if I may, what of all that talk about exploration when you sent Captain Lewis and Commander Lee through the aperture earlier?”

“You think it was really about exploring, Dr. Brooks?” Admiral Reyes eyed him curiously. “I didn’t send Gérard, did I?” If it was really about exploring, Fleet Captain Devreux, the lifelong explorer with more deep space experience than most of the command staff put together, would have been the obvious choice. “I sent Captain Lewis, the man who stalks shadows in his free time.”

“But what of Starfleet’s orders?” Dr. Lockwood asked, somewhat astonished to hear the Admiral so blatantly contradict them. Those orders had been very clear. “You know, the ones about exploring the greatest new frontier opened to us since the advent of warp drive?”

“I didn’t say we were going to destroy the Underspace yet,” Admiral Reyes pointed out. “But I want options, Commander. Find me a way, and I will decide whether or not we use it.” Again, her mind drifted to the entropy that this new development had introduced in the interstellar fabric. It would only be a matter of time, she feared, before they might need such an ability.