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…and the Milky Way appeared to Subcommander Torath. Standing deep within a cave on a planet considered remote by the Romulan Star Empire, she was just following directions with no clarification from the Praetor’s staff. Torath shielded her eyes from the brightness for a moment and then studied her universe as a single entity, no imaginary lines dividing it into quadrants, no lines marking territory, just a swirl of stars thickly clustered here and there…

…purple lights began to appear, one after another, dotting all over the galaxy, and Soleta nodded in appreciation for the precision. She knew little of the Iconians, but understood them to be a technologically proficient people and this device, hidden deep within a mountain range, proved the assumption correct. She matched the purple images against her tricorder reading, arched an eyebrow, and saw that her planet was the ninth to be lit. She idly wondered if there was significance to the pattern….

…Bractor fingered the Resonator as it quietly hummed and continued to show highlights of key gateway locations. He wondered what would become of the items when the mission was complete and who might be interested in bidding to own one. Good as he was captaining a ship, the financial reforms on his homeworld required him to change his retirement strategy and he needed one major windfall. This could be what he needed….

…Solok contemplated a people that could design such a device. With the T’Kumbra crisscrossing the Alpha Quadrant, they had mapped only a small portion of the gateway connections and there was an elegance to the patterns. His crew had contemplated the possibilities during their off-duty shifts and it led to much discussion, which pleased the captain. It was a fruitless task, but a vital one to help shed light on the work. But here, as he stood before the gateway on Titan, Jupiter’s largest moon, he felt as if he was participating in something in concert with the rest of the quadrant and that brought a satisfaction he rarely felt as a captain….

…the captain thought, Damn you, Conklin. He was running late and was certain the entire galaxy was waiting for him. But it couldn’t be helped: the Magellan had blown out one dilithium-crystal relay, which resulted in cascading problems that not even his entire engineering team could solve in under an hour. Then he had pushed the engines past the redline to make the schedule, which would mean a week at the nearest starbase, but it would be worth it. He rushed into the chamber, past four cloaked monks, and snapped his Resonator into place and was stopped in place by the light show that immediately began….

…Command had its privileges, Captain Klag thought, as he watched the gateway on Ufandi III, a home to pirates and black-marketers. When the I.K.S. Gorkon arrived, he laughed mirthlessly as two scores of oneman craft broke orbit and scattered in all directions. Having a reputation to be feared could come in handy now and then this was exactly one of those moments. When Worf had asked for his help, he was only too glad to once more provide a service to the ambassador and his people. He had bloodied his bat’leth in maintaining order along the border and was ready to do something of consequence….

…Kila Vet, Trill captain of the Repulse, watched frost form on his environmental suit while a meter before him, the console seemed thoroughly unaffected by Tethys III’s hydrogen-helium atmosphere. It functioned normally, as did the gateway just beyond the control panel. He watched in fascination as he saw a Romulan bridge, a smoldering volcano, and a trading outpost he did not recognize. The thirteen purple lights finished forming and the amber button continued to blink. He figured that meant all the pieces were not yet in position…

…Every first officer he’d had, from Will Riker to the late Dina Voyskunsky to his current one, Mikhail Buonfiglio, would never have wanted him to beam down. But Robert DeSoto managed to convince Commander Bounfiglio to let him go down alone. There was nothing dangerous