The midday sun beat overhead. Birds chirped and a light wind whispered through the air. Limestone cliffs loomed above them, and cobblestone streets lay before them. As their eyes adjusted to the light, they saw a faint red stencil that read Hotel Le Belvedere over a sun bleached orange stucco. The terracotta roofs, pastel walls, and vibrant shutters told them this was a place removed from the progress of civilization, an antiquated French commune cut into the hills of Provence, frozen in time half a millenia ago.

Admiral Reyes used her tricorder to orient. Across most of Earth, tricorders and PADDs were the norm, but here, the townsfolk lounged lazily in the early afternoon sun, enjoying fresh patisseries, sipping rich espressos, and reading paperbound books. The trio of Starfleet officers looked completely out of place with their equipment, uniforms and determined gait.

“This way,” Reyes said. Walking up the road, they were greeted by the stunning view of Ravin de Notre-Dam, a narrow canyon cut by waters collected in the limestone range above. A single-arch stone bridge lay ahead, framing a gorgeous waterfall behind it. There was not a mechanical sound in earshot, just the crashing of water and the chirping of the birds.

They came upon a street sign that read Rue de la Bourgade. In the era of precise automated shuttles and point-to-point transporters, it was strange to see such a sign, but here in the commune of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, people still actually walked from place to place. They turned up the narrow road.

Continuing to walk, they could see the steeple of Église Notre-Dame de l’Assomption across the ravine, rising above the town, three sets of double arches leading to a pointy steeple. Just beyond lay Faïence Bondil, a shop selling handcrafted tin-glazed earthenware shaped in a manner unchanged for hundreds of years.

“What a strange place for a thirty year combat veteran to settle,” Commander Lewis observed. Rear Admiral Aria Edir had cut her teeth as a tactical officer during the Federation-Cardassian War, honed her craft as a battlefield commander during the Dominion War, and ascended into the admiralty as a leader within Starfleet Tactical. She’d participated in almost every borderland skirmish from the late fifties until her retirement at the end of the eighties, and this archaic commune was not where Commander Lewis would have expected such a person to live out the remainder of her days.

“Where do you think you’ll settle when you retire?” Admiral Reyes asked pointedly. Commander Lewis was getting up there in age. He was in his fifties now. At some point, the scarred and weathered spook would have to hang up his boots.

“Six feet under?” Lewis laughed. “I dunno. Never gave it much thought.”

Up ahead, the road split, and they followed an even narrower street that wound up the hillside. On the edge of the town, one side was now just a steep grassy embankment leading up to the base of massive limestone cliffs that cradled the sleepy little village. If they had some time later, Commander Lewis thought to himself, he’d love to take a shot at flashing a few of those brilliant limestone walls.

“What about you Doctor Hall?” Admiral Reyes asked.

“I’m with the Commander on this one,” Dr. Hall replied flatly. 

“I worry about you two,” the admiral said, shaking her head. “There’s got to be something more to life than just duty.” It was but a platitude. She was no better, two years older than Commander Lewis and having given no more thought to retirement than him. Maybe she could settle in a place like this? No, she reminded herself. She’d go crazy in a downtempo place like this. Wherever she retired, it would need to be somewhere she could keep herself busy.

They turned to their right and descended some stairs into a small courtyard.

“Ah, here we are,” Reyes said as she approached a pastel green door with a couple potted plants on an adjacent windowsill. She knocked twice and waited.

A few moments later, an elderly gentleman opened the door. Although Admiral Reyes had told him she was coming to Earth days ago, Aria Edir’s husband still looked shocked to see her and her two colleagues standing there. 

“Allison, forgive me. I didn’t realize you’d be here today.” Mark had lost any sense of time since Aria Edir had gone missing. “Please, please, come in,” he offered as he gestured for them to step inside.

The three officers stepped into the small flat that Mark Ellis and Aria Edir had made their home. Sunlight and a light breeze blew through the open windows, and they could smell the scents of something in the oven.

“Mark,” Admiral Reyes said as she embraced him in a hug. “I am so terribly sorry.” In her own head, she held herself responsible for what had happened to his wife.

“Allison, please tell me what is going on,” he begged, looking at the Fleet Admiral helplessly. He had dark bags under his eyes, exhausted from the uncertainty of waiting, hoping and praying that Aria would return. He longed for some answers. “You didn’t say anything on our call, but your presence here says everything.” 

“We’re not exactly sure,” Reyes admitted as she truly didn’t know. “But we’re here to find out.”

“You’re telling me you flew back from wherever you were simply to help me look for my wife?” Mark frowned. “There’s got to be more to the story than that.”

“How much do you know about what’s been going on in Deneb Sector?” Reyes asked.

“I heard the Breen have been testing our borders a bit, but other than that, not much,” Mark replied, wondering where the admiral was going with this. What did the far away Deneb Sector have to do with his wife’s disappearance here on Earth?

“Contrary to what you’ve heard, we spent the last month fighting the Dominion in the Deneb Sector,” Reyes said flatly.

“The Dominion?” That didn’t make sense. If the Dominion was back, he’d have heard about it. 

“Yes, the Dominion,” nodded Reyes. “For reasons still not understood, the Dominion fleet that went missing during its trip through the wormhole back in 2374 reappeared last month, and they immediately went on the offensive, unknowing or unwilling to accept that the war was over.”

Mark looked shocked. “Why have we heard nothing about this?” If this was true, it should have been all over the Federation News Network, and Starfleet would’ve been responding to the threat rather than gathering over Earth for Frontier Day.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Reyes said frustratedly. “But Command failed to acknowledge it, and the FNN has said nothing. Fleet Admiral Ramar rallied the Fourth Fleet, but we stood alone with no support whatsoever from the rest of Starfleet. After we retook Nasera from…”

“Wait, Nasera? You mean that industrial center of 8 million people… they took it, and it just went unnoticed?”

“Yes, they took Nasera, Divinium, Izar, and many others in the opening days of their blitzkrieg,” Reyes explained.

The shock on Mark’s face was evident. Reyes had just named major worlds with millions of colonists a piece. It seemed crazy to think they could have been captured without any news whatsoever. “I can’t believe we haven’t heard a thing, and that Starfleet hasn’t done a thing.”

“Yeah, well that’s what Aria was helping me with,” Reyes continued. “You see, after we retook Nasera, we collected recordings from those who’d been under the yoke of the Dominion. Heart wrenching stories of suffering at the hands of the Jem’Hadar. Aria was going to find a way to get them to the public. We knew that if the public heard what we witnessed, the uproar would force Starfleet to act.”

“I assume this is why she said she was going to Milan?” Mark asked. “The FNN has a major broadcasting center in the Piazza del Duomo overlooking the old cathedral.”

Admiral Reyes nodded.

“And what’s the situation in Deneb now?”

“We managed to push the Lost Fleet out of Deneb and back into the Gamma Quadrant,” Admiral Reyes explained. “But we only prevailed through hail marys, miracles and heavy sacrifices. Would have been a very different outcome, with a lot less suffering, if we could have rallied the whole of Starfleet.”

“I mean, I guess it’s good at least that Deneb is safe,” Mark stated, but his thoughts were with his wife who remained missing. “But I still don’t understand how Aria’s disappearance factors into all of this. Like do you think someone was actively trying to stop the truth from getting out?”

“We’re not sure, but we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” Admiral Reyes said confidently. “Don’t worry Mark. I promise you we’ll do everything in our power to find her and bring her home safe.”

After a bit of small talk, Admiral Reyes and her two operators took their leave.

“That is a dangerous promise you made back there Allison,” Lewis warned as they wound their way back through the cobblestone streets of the quiet commune. “There’s no promise she’s still alive, or that we’ll ever find her.”

“I know Jake,” Reyes sighed. “But what am I going to say to a grieving man? I’m the one that put Edir in harm’s way and, as opposed to the rest of us, she is no longer a soldier.”

“Uniform or no uniform, the call of duty remains,” Commander Lewis stated firmly, and Admiral Reyes knew the commander was right. Retired or not, Rear Admiral Edir would always answer the call, even knowing the risks. It was in her DNA.

“What I find odd is why didn’t the Rear Admiral say anything to her husband?” Dr. Hall observed.

“After Aria retired, she had a hard time pulling herself away. Mark, on the other hand, felt they’d both more than fulfilled their obligations to the fleet and really should just settle into a quiet life away from it all,” Reyes explained. “It was a point of tension between them for years. If she’d told Mark what she was doing with me, he might have tried to talk her out of it.” 

“Yeah, but this wasn’t some trivial matter you needed her help with,” Commander Lewis said, doubling down on the point Dr. Hall had made. “Mark Ellis was once a captain himself. You’d think that, when it came to something like this, they’d be united in rising to the call.”

“Us three cannot pretend to know what goes on in married life,” Reyes laughed. Neither she, nor Lewis or Hall, had ever been married to anything except the work. “But what we do know is how to tear a place apart until we find some answers. Commander, take your team to the FNN broadcast center in Milan and see what you can dig up. Dr. Hall, you and I are going to take a trip to San Francisco to have a little chat with the admiralty.”