“The final decision is not mine to make, but much to my surprise, High Prefect Rho has agreed to an audience.” 

And so Fleet Admiral Reyes found herself across a wide oak table from a Choradian bureaucrat torn between distrust and desperation. 

Dressed in ceremonial silks in stark contrast to the utilitarian attire of her people, High Prefect Rho didn’t know what to make of Fleet Admiral Reyes and her imposing starship that loomed overhead. The timing of subspace’s great change, the arrival of this woman’s Federation, and the envelopment of their moon was too much to be a coincidence, but if she didn’t fix this, she’d soon be out of a job and her people would never make it home. She’d almost accepted it as an inevitability, but could this be a way out?

“You must understand that most believe Line Chief Jax possessed,” High Prefect Rho warned.

“But you know he’s not,” Fleet Admiral Reyes insisted. She had explained their preliminary observations regarding how time had fractured on Chorad IXa. “The best explanation for your chief’s current situation is what we call temporal dissociative disorder, a result of prolonged exposure in an environment where temporal linearity is lost.” Dr. Tom Brooks had agreed with this assessment, and who knew better than the man the term was invented to describe? Their temporal wayfarer and Dr. Lisa Hall had all but written the book on the disorder.

“You call it what you want, but my people see it as a sign that the Ancient Ones have returned,” High Prefect Rho shuddered.

“But what do you think?” Fleet Admiral Reyes probed, noting that twice now, High Prefect Rho had spoken in terms of her people and not herself. That was an opening.

“I think I need a solution,” High Prefect Rho offered as she rose from her chair and strode over to the window, which offered a wide sweeping view of the Grand Plaza below. “When the Shroud fell, it didn’t just change the stars. It changed our faith. For generations, the warp speed barrier was central to our understanding of the universe, but then, in a blink, that limit vanished.”

Fleet Admiral Reyes nodded, imagining the shock to the system it must have created.

“Our priests panicked, and our scholars argued, but I sent us forth,” High Prefect Rho revealed. “Ships destined for far off places, crews who could cross those gaps, not in generations, but in weeks. I thought there was promise in the stars…” Her voice droned off as she found herself wondering once more if she had doomed her people.

“And then Chorad IXa happened?” Fleet Admiral Reyes inferred, sensing where this was going. On her way over, she had seen the signs hanging in the Grand Plaza that decried this woman and her government for hubris and violations of theological order.

High Prefect Rho nodded. “Since we first took to the stars, the mines on Chorad IXa were our only source of dilithium. The faithful say what has happened is punishment from our gods, that we reached too far, too fast, and that we were made to pay.”

“We can help you with dilithium,” Fleet Admiral Reyes offered, hoping such an olive branch might relieve the stress and help her cross the chasm. “Part of the beauty of this universe you are now a part of is the free access to so many things once thought sparse.”

“Oh, you misunderstand me,” High Prefect Rho shook her head dejectedly. “If I accept your offer, my people will say that I am going against the will of our gods, and I won’t be in this seat another week.”

“But you have a responsibility to your people,” Fleet Admiral Reyes countered. “To see a better life for them.” It seemed so simple to her.

But High Prefect Rho sighed. “Are you a woman of faith, admiral?”

“I have faith in my people and in my purpose, but as I think you mean it, no, I am not,” Fleet Admiral Reyes replied truthfully. “I am an empiricist, my understanding shaped by observations of the universe around me.” And that was what had led her here.

“Then you cannot understand what it is like,” High Prefect Rho noted softly. “To the devout, what I did was not courage. It was sacrilege. When the stars opened, they saw not opportunity, but a test… one that I failed miserably. To them, Chord IXa is proof. They say the gods have spoken.”

That’s when she realized this wasn’t really about dilithium, nor about getting her people home. Not fundamentally, at least. At its core, it was an existential crisis, one of meaning itself.

High Prefect Rho continued, “I have spent my life trying to reconcile faith with reason, and my political career trying to balance the tangible and the divine, but here, I set us adrift.”

“And yet still you want to find a solution,” Fleet Admiral Reyes noted. “You don’t believe that this was the will of your gods.” If she did, she never would have entertained this audience.

“The council has fractured,” High Prefect Rho elaborated. “Half believe me a heretic, and the other half, incompetent. The priests at their podiums, and the populists in the plazas, the one thing they agree on in their sermons and their speeches is my failure. I don’t want to believe it, but if I’m being honest, I don’t really know anymore.” She looked down at the ground.

Fleet Admiral Reyes could see the exhaustion in her eyes. But there was something more too, something she recognized from herself. A hunger to do right by her people. That was the strand to grab hold of. “Then let us help you get your answers.”

High Prefect Rho looked torn.

“Let me put it another way,” Fleet Admiral Reyes offered, now with a bit more force. “If we’re wrong, you’re no worse off than you are today. They’ll kick you out of here, and your world will close in on itself, just as it looks already fit to do. But if we’re right, your people come home, your mines reopen, and those sermons are proved wrong… and then you can get back to seizing on that opportunity you thought you were seeking for your people when you sent them to the stars.”