‘Another?’ Vice Admiral Beckett’s face was like granite as he entered the operations centre of Fourth Fleet Intelligence.

Even though she’d expected him, Commander Lockhart jumped. ‘Several, sir. Borg signals are cropping up across the Beta Quadrant.’

Beckett advanced on the holographic display of the galactic map. The great powers shone bright, the Federation’s democratic cerulean bracketed by brash crimson, perfidious emerald, conceited gold. Those were the hues that dominated his day-to-day, the rivals, allies, and foes who commanded most of his and his department’s attention. But while his eye still fell to those borders, it was not they who had his attention, for once. ‘These aren’t ships.’

‘If they were ships, sir, we’d be on full alert,’ Lockhart said. She tapped one shining neon green light winking atop a Federation insignia. ‘Starbase 10 has been dismantling the black market in the former Neutral Zone. Two months ago, they broke up a smuggling ring whose wares included Borg technology. That trade lost its leadership in the last few years, so it’s been a lower priority, but it’s still been on our sensors. Starbase 10 retained the technology – implants from xBs, wreckage from the Artifact – for evidence and for study.’

‘That’s the source of this signal.’

‘Yes, sir. They thought they’d killed all power sources on the Borg devices, only for half of them to reveal an emergency power supply, enough to activate a homing beacon.’ Lockhart straightened. ‘Admiral, Starfleet has seen these before. They’re emergency signals lost drones and ships send out when they need retrieving. It matches the same signatures the Enterprise recorded in their encounter in 2368.’

‘Hugh,’ Beckett recalled with a curl of the lip. If he had any opinions on the xB or the Enterprise’s encounter – opinions on whether Jean-Luc Picard had been right to refuse to use the lost drone to infect the Collective over thirty years ago – he kept them to himself. Lockhart was quietly relieved; she had been at this all night, and 0400 hours was not the time to relitigate that manner of warfare. At last, he said, ‘We’re containing this information?’

‘These signals are activating either in labs which are already classified to the highest level, or on volatile frontiers like the Neutral Zone,’ said Lockhart. ‘The moment you bring Borg into a situation, people get tense, sir, but for the moment, it’s staying off the beaten track.’

‘Is there any sign of the Borg coming for these signals?’

Lockhart grimaced and brought the map’s focus closer to the Beta Quadrant coreward frontier. ‘The Susan B. Anthony continued to monitor that Borg ship on long-range sensors. It intercepted a homing signal. The signal went dark. The ship has withdrawn. The Anthony kept her distance, but other homing signals in the region have gone dark since, too.’

‘If the Borg are responding to these signals, there’s no reason to assume they’ll keep their distance.’

‘It’s worse in the Delta Quadrant, sir,’ Lockhart said, unhappy to be the bearer of bad news. This was her job, but Beckett never made it easy. ‘We have several confirmed reports of Borg ships moving from Collective space and into regions even such as the Gradin Belt. This isn’t a deployment of aggressive expansion, but something’s kicked the hive.’

‘This isn’t a coincidence, weeks after Frontier Day.’ Beckett shook his head. ‘Do you still have contacts at the Palais, Commander?’

‘Of course,’ Lockhart said without blinking. It was a mild exaggeration, but it wouldn’t do to tell Vice Admiral Beckett that she’d have to grease some wheels and be somewhat obsequious to her successor, aide to the President’s intelligence advisor, to weasel something out of him.

‘What’s the mood there?’

She hesitated, caught between not wanting to lie and not wanting to be useless. ‘Nobody wants to jump at shadows, sir. We’ve just had one disaster – two.’

‘And from one of those, you’d think they’d have learnt about sitting on problems and hoping they’d go away,’ Beckett grumbled. ‘We need to put this together in a cast-iron briefing package. No more tip-toeing about. This goes to the top.’

‘This goes,’ boomed a voice at the doorway, ‘to me, Alex.’

Lockhart stared at a point on the bulkhead and tried to turn invisible as Beckett froze. Few people in the galaxy should have been able to open those doors right now. It was rarer and more terrifying that speaker had deigned to be on first-name terms with the Director of Fourth Fleet Intelligence.

By the time Beckett turned, he was all smiles. Lizard smiles, the type everyone knew were for polite performance but might be a prelude to being swallowed whole (Lockhart had a phobia of lizards; if she tried to retain accurate knowledge of their eating habits, she wouldn’t sleep for a week). ‘Liam.’

Those who worked with Beckett had to become inured to his manner, and Admiral Liam Dahlgren, Deputy Commander, Fourth Fleet, was no exception. He marched straight-backed to the display, eyes flickering across it to absorb the essentials in mere heartbeats. ‘You’re sure.’

‘That we have a Borg problem?’ Beckett straightened. ‘I’m certain. These signatures are showing up anywhere Borg might show their faces, from Markonian to Freecloud. Several of our ships have gone silent, including the Marlowe. Why haven’t we gone to full alert?’

Dahlgren ignored him for a moment more, folding his arms across his chest as he surveyed the map. At length, he looked to Lockhart. ‘Your opinion, Commander?’

Lockhart realised she had failed to leave her body and become one with the universe. ‘I agree with Admiral Beckett,’ she said, and at the faintest flicker in Dahlgren’s eye, she drew a sharp breath. ‘This isn’t scattered or random, sir. We’ve got a good bead on some of these Neutral Zone locations, if only through long-range sensors. These were low priority situations, with nothing to indicate current, dangerous tech on the loose – and they all light up with signals at once? Hardware in some of our most secure research facilities has done the same. I have some of my own contacts on Markonian, not just the DEI’s, and they’re all saying the same thing. The Borg are moving. I don’t know if the signals came first and they’re responding, or if the Collective decided to move and activating those signals is part of it.’

Dahlgren nodded, rubbing his chin. ‘Picard thought the Borg were finally gone for good.’

‘Picard thinks only he can understand or deal with the Borg,’ Beckett scoffed. ‘But Frontier Day cannot have been the Collective’s original plan. They genetically altered Picard thirty-five years ago so they could sabotage Starfleet systems and use his future son to assume control of young officers? That was a gambit of a desperate entity, pulling together loose threads of failed schemes. They lost one ship and a Queen. They’ve lost Queens before – at least four times, to the best of our knowledge. Frontier Day doesn’t tell me they’re defeated. Frontier Day tells me they’re desperate and unpredictable.’

‘This response,’ Dahlgren said, gesturing to the map, ‘doesn’t seem unpredictable.’

‘What little we know,’ Lockhart ventured, ‘matches our oldest records on Borg activity. The Delta Quadrant inhabitants have reported individual ships being overlooked in their encounters. Captain Camarero said she thought the Cube had spotted the Anthony on several occasions, but it ignored them to prioritise these signals.’

‘That could mean anything,’ Beckett said, and rounded back on Dahlgren. ‘Put our past disagreements aside, Liam. You know I’m right.’

Dahlgren raised an eyebrow. To Lockhart, it looked like he had not given their disagreements half as much thought as Beckett. But then, Beckett was the one who had been wrong; the one who had spent weeks squatting on his suspicions of a Changeling infiltrator at the heart of Fourth Fleet Command, only to discover he’d been pointing the finger at the wrong admiral completely. By his records, Lockhart thought Liam Dahlgren was likely the sort of man to accept fog of war in a time of subterfuge and manipulation, and move on with his life. By meeting Alexander Beckett for five minutes, Lockhart thought the Director of Fourth Fleet Intelligence would go to his grave seething over being wrong.

At length, Dahlgren said, ‘What are you asking for, Alex?’

‘We take this to Ramar. We take this to the President. We raise the alert across the Federation,’ Beckett thundered.

‘And then… what? We mobilise the fleets? Where? Against what?’

Beckett hesitated. ‘We reinforce the Beta Quadrant borders. We send task forces to the Delta Quadrant.’

‘The Borg haven’t sent ships anywhere near our borders. Even if we send forces to the Delta Quadrant, what would they do when they find a Borg ship? Get blown up? This isn’t a time to overreact.’

‘I don’t think there exists such a thing as “overreaction” when it comes to the Borg, sir.’

Lockhart held her breath. Beckett hadn’t sounded sarcastic at the address. He’d sounded, if anything, desperate.

Dahlgren seemed to hear that, too, and turned to face the other admiral. ‘Starfleet is still reeling from Frontier Day. Our ships lack personnel, especially experienced personnel. People have barely managed to avoid pointing at each other and yelling “Changeling,” let alone, “Borg.” If we set one foot wrong, we’re going to turn Frontier Day into the next Mars: a soul-wound so deep we do nothing but stare at a terrifying galaxy, reinforce and hide behind our borders, and look amongst ourselves for someone to blame. I will not bring any such recommendation to Fleet Admiral Ramar.’

Beckett worked his jaw. ‘We can’t do nothing.’

‘I’ve no intention of doing nothing. I intend to do the right thing.’ Dahlgren pulled out a PADD and began tapping at it. ‘We have to remember why we’re here.’

Now Beckett rolled his eyes. ‘Liam, I don’t need a lecture on Starfleet’s role to shepherd the heart of the Federation and -’

‘I’m not being insipid, Alex. I don’t mean Starfleet.’ At last, Dahlgren sounded frustrated. He flipped the PADD and extended it. ‘I mean, we have to remember why the Fourth Fleet is here.’

When Beckett reached for the PADD, it was as if he feared it might sting. ‘Directive Four.’

Lockhart waited for an explanation; freely given or by the context cues, she didn’t care. But in the silence that followed, she found herself clearing her throat. ‘Directive Four, sirs?’

‘People think of the Fourth Fleet as forming for the Dominion War,’ said Beckett, straightening as he sobered. ‘That is incorrect. We were already formed by the war’s start.’

‘We’re not going out on a limb like in Deneb, stood alone against the darkness,’ said Dahlgren, eyes locked on Beckett. ‘We’re not acting in secrecy. The Collective is out there. But before Starfleet – the Federation – takes one wrong step, we get the true measure of this situation. That’s why we’re here, Alex. The Fourth Fleet was formed to face the Borg.’