When Union and Vidyan dignitaries meet, the protocols insist on a parade of formalities, but everyone involved knows that what’s exchanged is often far more than pleasantries. Ambassador Shirin Talek, the Vidyan representative aboard a Union city-ship, had spent years cultivating an almost effortless rapport with Alden Thane - a Union synthetic whose place in the diplomatic corps was equal parts bureaucratic convenience and an ongoing experiment in cross-species amiability. Their previous meetings had always drifted toward the comfortably gossipy, the sort of informal sparring both sides tolerated and, on rare honest days, genuinely enjoyed. This time, though, Shirin’s composure carried an edge. A tautness. A silence that did not belong. And Alden, calibrated though they were, noticed immediately. They had been briefed in advance: a Union vessel in a distant octant had detected something irregular — a disturbance in the kind of data-streams no one liked to see stirred - and for the ...