The Monitor’s sensors recorded its approach.
Lewinski waited until the last possible second to transmit the five-second subspace pulse that had drawn every last erg of energy from his ship’s warp core.
What had happened after that, there was no way to be certain. But Soren’s specialists had created a simulated engineering model of the ship. It showed how every system on the Monitor would have been burned out by the burst of power transmitted through its forward sensors.
The model showed the point-by-point destruction of the Monitor’s subsystems. It showed the warp core ejecting.
The analysts suggested that if any of the crew had survived the shock of the ejection and sudden drop out of warp, then they would have had, at best, three hours of residual heat left. Provided the air was still breathable, uncontaminated by smoke from the fires on every deck, some crew might have survived as long as ten hours. But no one would have lasted longer than a day.
To Soren, though, those estimates were pointless. The crew had survived less than five minutes.
She knew that because she had seen the analysis of the dimensional weapon that had been fired at the Monitor. The last few seconds of the Monitor’s sensor records had not been as compressed, and had arrived in better condition, more easily reconstructed.
Thus the last few seconds of the transmission being shown on the viewscreen now contained crisp images of that weapon, coming closer.
And more than impossible, that weapon was incomprehensible. Because every bit of data told the analysts on Soren’s team that they were looking through that bright blue point of light, into another universe.
The flickering stopped, telling Soren that the final frame of the transmission report was being displayed, listing the key conclusions of her team.
She knew them well. The Monitor had discovered evidence of an alien intelligence that could travel at near- instantaneous warp ten; that had engaged in galactic engineering; that could construct artifacts that existed in two different dimensional realms at the same time; that could use weapons that altered the fundamental constants of this universe; and that could open doorways into other universes.
There was nothing in Federation science that could grapple with such capabilities.
There was nothing in the lost histories of the first civilizations in this galaxy that came close to suggesting that any culture had attained what the Monitor transmission described. The Iconian gateways, the Guardian time portal, even the Q Continuum, all had some tenuous connection to the laws of multiphysics that described the rest of the universe, and governed known science.
But there was no branch of knowledge that could make sense of what the Monitor had discovered.
And what so disturbed Soren was unequivocal evidence that whatever the Monitor had discovered, it was hostile.
And it was coming this way.
The final viewscreen image faded and the reading lights glowed brightly again.
Except for the three civilians, every person at the table was involved in conversation. Soren’s sensitive ears picked up suggestions for forming task forces, for sending out more probes, for calling general meetings of the Federation Council, for holding secret meetings.
It brought her comfort to hear the explosion of ideas. Perhaps the Federation could withstand this new threat. Perhaps there was no reason to be afraid.
And then one of the civilians stood. The woman. She caught Soren’s attention. “If I may?” she asked.
Soren nodded and the woman walked from the table to join her at the viewscreen. It was impossible, but in the shifting lights and shadows of the briefing room, just for those few seconds it took for the human female to reach her, she had looked just like Soren’s Vulcan mother.
But in the pool of light by the viewscreen, Soren could see why she had made the mistake. The woman wasn’t human after all, she was Vulcan. Then the woman smiled, and Soren hid her astonishment at that display of emotion, wondering if in fact the woman might be Romulan.
“Admiral Meugniot,” the woman said, “members of the emergency board. I know that what we have just seen could be considered alarming.”
Soren’s face remained impassive, but she was startled by the woman’s choice of words. Could be?!
“But as someone who has studied this phenomenon in depth—”
Soren was even more surprised by that statement.
“—I would like to explain why it’s nothing to be frightened of.” She looked directly at Soren then, and her smile was exactly like that of Soren’s mother; the secret smile that Vulcans share only in their most private moments, with their most beloved.
“Nothing at all,” the woman said. “Indeed, what is coming is something to be welcomed.” She held out her arms as if to embrace everyone in the room. “Because it is the true reality of existence.”
Soren stared at the woman, even as her outline seemed to blur before her. Vaguely she was aware of a distant, almost explosive shudder that passed through the floor of the briefing room. She thought there might have been alarms going off, warning lights flashing, combadges chirping.
But none of that seemed important.
This woman had something compelling to say, and Soren wanted to hear it, even as the woman turned to her and reached out to her with a hand that seemed to be made of writhing particles of black powder, stretching like dust in a whirlwind to caress Soren’s face, exactly as her mother had caressed her as a child.
“No need to be afraid,” the woman whispered in flawless Vulcan.
Soren took the woman’s hand, ignored the screams that came from the people at the conference table, ignored the banging on the briefing room door, the even more violent explosion that seemed to tilt the room for a moment.
Soren was used to ignoring distractions. She held the woman’s smokelike hand, watching with fascination as her own flesh took on the writhing character of windblown sand.
“Accept…” the woman whispered soothingly. “Embrace…Be loved…”
“Be loved,” Soren said as she felt her body dissolve beneath her, the tendrils of black curling up, consuming her.
Commander Soren was not afraid. She was at peace.
Just as everyone else at her starbase was in that same moment.
As everyone else in the galaxy would be soon enough.
The Peace of the Totality had arrived.
