“Runabouts Cook and King have returned to shuttlebay one.” announced Lieutenant Tarandiz from the helm station.

Captain Zack Marshall-Bennet smiled as he looked at the image before him on Discovery’s wide main view screen. “We did it.” Sounding almost surprised at how quickly between them and the Shackleton’s crew they had assembled the Archanis Array.

An unmanned structure, the Archanis Array consisted of eighteen hexagonal subspace antennae clusters, each powered by an individual fusion reactor and all regulated from a central computer. Sat in the middle of the Haydorian system, between the colony and the fifth planet, it would now serve Starfleet in conducting deep space scans, especially in detecting any ships crossing the Federation-Klingon border.

“You sound surprised.” Commander Rider remarked to his captain. The first officer was looking at his captain as he continued talking. “Are you ready to flick the switch on sir?”

“Any sign of any D’Ghor forces nearby?” Bennet asked first, “I don’t want them crashing the party?”

Lieutenant Gailwon, Discovery’s chief science officer, spoke up from the science station. “No sign of any Klingon ships sir, however I am detecting the arrival of the Nobel, Triton and the Tereshkova. They’re at high impulse heading in our direction.”

Looking over to the Bolian scientist, who had numerous degrees in physics and mathematics, Bennet smiled at the arrival of their task group. “Finally.” He said before looking back to his first officer. “Let’s do it, bring the array online.”

Rider smirked at the order and called down to their operations officer, “Lieutenant Caitheris, power up the array and connect us straight into its central computer.”

“With pleasure sir.” The Barzan woman said as she pushed a stray curly hair back behind her ears as she carried out her orders.

The Archanis Array started to power up before their very eyes, each cluster was lighting up one at a time as the subspace antennas were coming to life and beginning their first scans.

“It’s working.” Caitheris announced. “The array is at sixty percent operational capacity and slowly rising.”

“Good.” Bennet said before looking over to his chief engineer. “Keh’lianna when can we connect it with the rest of the border detection grid?”

“I want to run a series of tests to ensure the entire array is working correctly, but as long as they go well then it will be another hour or two before the array is connected in with the other clusters of probes, listening outposts and subspace radios set up by the task force.” The Klingon-Human officer responded as she was focusing on her work. “It won’t be long until we can see everything from here all the way to Qo’nos and back sir.”

“Let’s just hope the Klingons don’t see it as too much of a provocative move.” Counsellor Rozan said to Bennet’s left side. The diplomat in her had shared her concerns with the deployment of the array in straining relations with the Empire, but as Bennet had pointed out the raids by the D’Ghor Hunters had already caused more issues for them and their allies that this would be a small issue at best.

“Well as long as no-one uses it to work out what the chancellor has for their dinner, then we’ll be fine.” Lieutenant Commander Johnson said from behind at tactical. A beep came up on his station. “Sir, I’ve just had a message come in from the Aquarius, Commander Duncan is reporting the completion of their mission objectives with the crew of the Endeavour.”

“Excellent.” Bennet said as he stood up to look at the array further. “It would seem the Haydorian system is almost secure.”

“When do you want to deploy the weapon platforms around the array sir?” Rider asked.

Bennet looked over to his engineer, “Keh’lianna, would their deployment interfere with your tests and hook up?”

The chief engineer shook her head. “Not at all sir.”

“Then get to it Number One, while I go and speak with the good governor and inform Admiral Beckett about our news.” Bennet said as he headed towards his ready room. “The bridge is yours Lucas.”