The sound of the shower woke him. Edmund Locke sat up only reluctantly in bed, trying to blink away mugginess without success. Bright light crept around the edges of the apartment’s blinds, but that meant little this time of year. He craned his neck to see the bedside display. 0730. The normal time to start the day.

By the time the shower stopped and the bathroom door slid open, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, scrubbing his face with his hands to see if that would wake him up. ‘You’re going up now? Today?’ he creaked.

His wife walked briskly across the bedroom. Even this fresh out of the shower she looked poised, elegant, and she barely spared him a look as she shed her thick, soft dressing gown and pulled a fresh uniform from the wardrobe. ‘You’re going to the Athenaeum. Aren’t you?’

It was impossible to miss the edge in her voice. His hands dropped. ‘Magnus said I need a project meeting at 1000 hours. I don’t know why. The message came in at about 0100. It wasn’t my idea.’

‘I saw.’ Now he understood. Jae wasn’t angry at him. She was angry at Magnus. ‘So I’ll head up to Brahms and get some paperwork done before the ceremony. And maybe we can take a different morning off work.’

‘The day after tomorrow?’ Locke ventured.

‘If something’s happened that’s got Magnus pulling you into the complex on Frontier Day, why are you assuming you’ll get a break this month?’ Jae drawled. She was zipping up her uniform jacket by now. ‘I’ve got to get ready; I’m not going to tell Kerien I’m doing him a favour by taking his shift and be late instead.’

‘Right. Be back by 1800? Dinner and fireworks?’ Neither of them were much for the pomp and circumstance of the day. But the light show across the bay over Sato City promised to be worth catching from their apartment balcony, high on the rise and looking over most of the town.

‘If you’re still at the Athenaeum when I get back because there was some research emergency or Magnus decided today was when he wanted team socialising, I’ll kill you both,’ she warned, but kissed him quickly before she returned to the bathroom to finish her morning routine.

He’d been up late reading, expecting to have a leisurely day and not the best in the mornings anyway. Jae was out the door by the time he was out of bed, and Locke showered and dressed without much enthusiasm. He was just necking a mug of coffee when the comm panel on the apartment wall lit up with an inbound call, and he mumbled a command through a mouthful.

‘Hey, Eddie, what’s going on?’ Corias Ashek, head of the project’s oral history team, sounded awake and bouncy already. Locke could hear the distant hiss in the background; he’d taken the boat over to the Athenaeum that morning. He was probably driving it himself. ‘Where’s the fire?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine, Ash,’ Locke admitted, ditching his coffee in the replicator. ‘Sorry if you had plans.’

‘Not if we get this done by lunchtime. I want to see the Armstrong go, buddy.’

‘Take it up with Blackwood. How far out are you?’

‘Closer than you, by how awake you sound. I’ll recon, and warn you if this shocking emergency in historical research needs an armed response. Over and out.’

Locke closed his eyes as the comm line went dead. ‘This better be worth it,’ he groaned, and just about remembered to run a comb through his hair again before he headed out the door.

The bright morning sunshine of Sato City was something of a boost. On a holiday like Frontier Day, most people hitting the streets at this time looked like they had preparations for the celebrations to get to, not the mundanities of their usual everyday. Some officers looked stressed, but most people seemed bright and happy, eager for a break or enthusiastic for the revelries to come.

But the rising of his heart did not last. Not once he entered the transporter station, requested his destination, and eventually stepped on the pad to be winked across a vast distance in the blink of an eye. It was not the work nor uncertainty that dampened his mood, however. The dampness of the Athenaeum did that for him.

It was a foreboding structure jutting out of the mists at the top of a cliff. The island itself had a designation, not a name; far from Sato City, much further north and into a gloomier, colder, wetter climate, its sole purpose was to house the Institute for the History of Starfleet Warfare and its headquarters. They just called it The Island.

The transporter station stood in a small annex at the foot of the towering Athenaeum, and as always, Locke wished he’d grabbed his uniform overcoat as he stepped out into the drizzle and wind to crunch down the gravel path from towards the shine of golden lights in the morning gloom. A towering structure several storeys high, the Athenaeum loomed as a modern gothic monument to historical research, a cenotaph for the study of all the wars and all the losses the institute scrutinised.

It was the brain-child of Magnus Blackwood, who could never leave behind the austere halls of knowledge of Earth’s ancient universities, and to Edmund Locke, it was deeply garish.

It was also very quiet this morning. Most staff had not transported across the world or from orbit on Frontier Day, and so Locke’s footsteps echoed on the marble floor of the lobby, bathed in the golden light of electric sconces sending rippling rays that could still not reach the foyer’s most shadowed corners. Normally he liked it if it was quiet; it meant his studies could be conducted in peace, that the main library would have less rush, but today it was unsettling.

More unsettling were the figures waiting for him. Corias had indeed beaten him there, but the burly Bajoran stood at the door to the main turbolift with a face like thunder. Though his red hair was slick with rain and his overcoat dripped, Locke knew it was not the weather that had dampened his old friend’s normally boundless good mood. That was the only clue he had, because next to him stood Lieutenant Commander T’Falith, and the Vulcan’s visage was as inscrutable as ever.

‘Blackwood’s gone too damn far this time,’ Corias snapped as Locke approached. ‘You gotta tell him, Eddie.’

Locke reached up to wipe rainwater from his face and fringe. ‘What’s he done? What’s this about?’ With Corias’s expression stony, he looked to the third officer. ‘T’Falith?’

‘We have a new member of the project command team,’ she said, and he was no more enlightened if she was delighted, indifferent, or incandescent. ‘Secured through a diplomatic agreement settled by Commodore Blackwood.’

‘New member…’ But Locke’s baffled expression fell as he caught up with the rest of her sentence, with Corias’s face. ‘Oh, no.’

‘He didn’t tell you?’ Corias clenched a fist.

‘Surely, Mister Corias, Commander Locke would have informed us had he known.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ said Locke, not sure he felt it. If he’d known, he might have stayed in bed. ‘Where are they?’

‘Main CW office.’ Corias jerked his thumb at the lift. ‘Peliax is up there. Pouring him tea.’

‘It does not do to be discourteous to a new member of the team,’ T’Falith said evenly.

‘If he lasts.’

Locke lifted a hand at Corias’s growl. ‘I’ll go introduce myself, then. And we can find out what Blackwood’s thinking.’ About going over my head, let alone… this. He stepped into the turbolift and hit the button to head up to the wing of offices, archives, and labs reserved for his project’s exclusive use, and braced himself for what he was about to see.

He did not wonder what it was. Because when the lift doors slid open and admitted him to the main office, with its comfortable wood-panelled walls and mahogany furniture and leather-backed chairs, its cosy atmosphere of old-world academia, he knew what he was going to see.

Because who else but this tall Cardassian man, sat in a comfortable seat with his Denobulan head of public history, would be sent as the liaison to the Cardassian Wars Project?

Lieutenant Commander Peliax stood as he arrived. She was not one for pointless joviality, and he had always found her to be measured in her social graces, careful and targeted. The precision with which she spoke meant something as she extended a hand towards him and said, ‘Good morning, Commander Locke. Might I introduce -’

‘Gul Kaled of the Third Order.’ The Cardassian man was tall and broad-shouldered and moved with military precision as he stood and advanced to meet him. There was a flicker of hesitation before he extended a hand, and Locke was quick of wit enough to brace for the crushing shake that passed for a courtesy. ‘You must be Commander Edmund Locke. You liaised with colleagues of mine at Starbase 112.’

‘I – I did at that,’ Locke stammered. A part of him had waited for some particulars – which Cardassian officers he’d worked with that Kaled knew, perhaps some recommendation of him they’d given – but there was nothing but a statement so brusque it might make T’Falith blush. ‘You’re our new liaison officer?’

‘Commodore Blackwood reached to my superiors,’ Kaled said, and worked his strong jaw a moment as if chewing on something distasteful. ‘It was agreed that worthy insights about our past antagonism might be found from current cooperation. I was dispatched.’

‘I see!’ Locke did not. He glanced at Peliax with desperation, hoping she might weigh in; over Kaled’s shoulder, the Denobulan just gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘And, ah, what’s your area of historiographic expertise, Mister Kaled?’

‘Gul,’ Kaled emphasised bluntly. ‘I am a soldier of the Union, not a scientist.’

‘I simply meant…’ Locke flapped for a moment, and couldn’t think of a polite way to ask, Why were you sent here?

‘I am a soldier of the Union,’ Kaled repeated, but his tone shifted as if he was explaining something to a very simple child, ‘and as such I am an educated man, Commander.’

‘Right.’ Locke still didn’t know what to say to that, and wilted under the tall Cardassian’s imposing, unwavering, expectant stare.

At length, Peliax said, ‘Perhaps we can offer Gul Kaled an orientation?’ and then she quickly added, ‘Though I am expected on Brahms Station in an hour.’

Traitor, Locke thought. Then he remembered some of the perks of rank. ‘An orientation would be – that would be good. Our head of archival research, Lieutenant Commander T’Falith, would be excellent at showing you what we do here. Why don’t you have a seat in her office, right over there, and I’ll call her up?’

They waited until the tall Cardassian, who gave only a brusque nod in reply, marched off to the gestured door. Then Peliax let out a whistle of a breath. ‘I think the Cardassians sent us their rudest.’

‘He’s not going to be a hit at parties, that’s for sure.’ Locke scrubbed his face. ‘Alright. We feed T’Falith to this one. Can you get her up and prep her? I need to make sure Ash doesn’t hit the roof.’

Peliax opened and closed her mouth. ‘That… alright, you’re getting the worse end of the bargain this time. Commodore Blackwood really didn’t warn you?’

‘Why would he? It’s not like it’s my project or anything.’ Locke sighed and scrubbed his face again. ‘Alright. Get them up. It’s going to be a long day.’

He was right, he knew, to cast the professional politics aside for the moment. He had his team to worry about, his friend to worry about. The institute’s director would doubtless be up on Brahms Station for the coming festivities. That suited Locke fine, at least. With a curt Cardassian and all his chaos to bring with, the last thing he wanted to reflect on was the role Commodore Blackwood had played in this new issue.

The role his father had played.