The Shackleton Expanse. New frontiers. Truly new frontiers. This must have been what it felt like for the greats, captains like Archer and Kirk, back before every sector was charted and every nebula was catalogued, in those glorious days when you had no idea what was waiting around the corner.

Fleet Captain Gérard Devreux couldn’t have been more elated than when the orders came in. They were taking the squadron through the Vadia transwarp conduit. Over his career, he’d done his fair share of exploration – more than most who’d served in the later third of the twenty fourth century – but the Shackleton Expanse was something special, an unexplored region teeming with new life and filled with unseen marvels just waiting to be discovered.

“Captain Avery just checked in. Vesta has arrived over at Elidra Prime,” Lieutenant Commander Elena Mattson reported. “Sounds like they’re gearing up to make contact.”

“Telepathic cetaceans,” Fleet Captain Devreux smiled just thinking about it. “McKenna and Sofia are in for a treat.” Passing contact had been made by one of the first scouts in the expanse, but it’d been just a brief exchange over the link. Now, Captain McKenna Avery and her diplomatic officer, Commander Sofia Windemere, were embarking on a formal exchange in the hopes of establishing stronger ties with the Elidrans. Telepathic cetaceans. Just brilliant.

“I was surprised you let them have that one, captain,” Lieutenant Commander Mattson smiled lightly. She’d never seen her boss as full of life as he was now. The moment they emerged from the conduit, it was as if a weight had lifted from his shoulders, a shadow that’d hung over him as long as she’d known him.

“We can’t be stealing all the fun,” Fleet Captain Devreux chuckled. “We just got walking, talking beanstalks, after all! It was only fair to give Vesta a crack at the next one.” The thistlekin of Jedik V had been a treat to behold, towering phytozoans that spoke in aeolian tones, the wind singing through their vascular flutes.

Listening to the exchange, Captain Titus Bishop couldn’t help himself. “Not everyone’s having as fantastical a time as us,” he cautioned. As the squadron’s strategic operations officer, he’d been keeping up on the reports coming out of the Fourth Fleet’s various assets that’d rushed into the newfound expanse. “Reports aplenty of fractious xenophobes rebuffing our presence.”

“A natural response, if you think about it,” Fleet Captain Devreux observed. “All any of them out here have ever known, up until a meager six months ago, was warp 2 and below, restrained to interacting only with those very local to them. Now, suddenly, the galaxy is open to them, and on top of all their neighbors they’re now dealing with at a new level, they’ve also got these strange, unknown foreign powers – us, the Klingons, and the Romulans – gallivanting around.” Frontier exploration always came with challenges, but he wasn’t going to let that mute his excitement.

“I’m not judging their perspective,” Captain Bishop offered. “Just noting the tactical reality. There are many unknowns out here, even the origins of this place itself.”

“That’s why this mission is so important, Titus,” Fleet Captain Devreux countered. “Reduce the unknowns, make connections with the people of this place, and develop a better understanding of how it came to be.” He looked over at the commodore standing bent over at a terminal in the back. “Speaking of which, Olivia, how’s topology mapping coming along?”

“Diligent, Ingenuity and Juno, along with the RRW Decius on secondment to us, continue to report back telemetry as they branch out across the expanse,” Commodore Olivia Larsen replied. “The picture developing so far, it’s curious, all these tiny little imperfections in subspace, residual folds left from where the Shroud once suppressed superluminal velocity above warp 2. Dr. Brooks thinks there’s something there, that if we can understand these distortions, phase slips, and causal echoes, it might give us a better understanding of the Shroud itself.”

“Brilliant,” Fleet Captain Devreux smiled, his grin irrepressible. “A grand adventure and a cosmic mystery, all rolled into one. What more could you ask for?”

Right then, an alarm began to sound at the operations station.