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What was one more act of murder? Especially an arguably necessary one—even if that meant slaying a sitting praetor in order to preserve countless other lives that would otherwise be cast into the jaws of death in the pursuit of a useless and foolish cause.

As he contemplated his slate of options—a list that grew steadily shorter with each passing day that Praetor D’deridex continued to draw breath—Admiral Valdore came to realize that it wasn’t the act of murder that made him feel so unsettled.

He closed his eyes, and immediately noticed that the dimly glowing red surface of the burning sea of Coridan was rhythmically rising and falling before his mind’s eye. I have already become an instrument of murder, he thought, unable to banish the image for which he was responsible. Must I become an instrument of treason as well?

FORTY

Monday, March 8, 2156

Enterprise, near the Sol system

TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS TO GET HERE from Vulcan, Archer thought, grateful to note that his unofficial stopover at his exec’s homeworld hadn’t put a crimp in the ship’s itinerary. Pedal to the metal across sixteen light-years and change, and without letting the engines blow us into a half-parseclong streamer of superheated plasma.

He made a mental note to put Chief Engineer Burch in for a commendation once Enterprise reached Earth.

Ensign Leydon turned toward him from the helm. “We’ll reach the periphery of the Sol system’s sensor grid in two minutes at this speed, Captain.”

Archer nodded. “Acknowledged. Drop out of warp in ninety seconds. We don’t want to set off any alarms. I want everything to go by the numbers.”

Like the rest of Earth’s small NX-class fleet— Columbia and the recently completed, just-launched Atlantis—Enterprise was tasked with trying to determine just how the Romulans managed to fool the Vulcan warp-field detection grids. The most expeditious way to do that was to attempt to pierce the grids using Starfleet ships, flying them into each system at random, unannounced approach angles, while employing every imaginable stealth protocol, in the hopes of exposing whatever vulnerabilities the Romulans had learned to exploit.

Both Columbia and Atlantis had already tried this method, under the utmost secrecy, in several Coalition systems and their outsystem colonies over the past several weeks. So far, the defense grids at Tau Ceti, Procyon, 61 Cygni, Alpha Centauri, and even Sol herself had passed with flying colors.

Archer didn’t find that very encouraging.

In fact, he agreed completely with Starfleet Command’s official opinion that these test results constituted very bad news indeed. He sincerely hoped, as Enterprise prepared to undertake her first concerted attempt to “break” the defense grid, that today’s test would yield the opposite result. You have to find the leak before you can patch the space suit, he thought.

He turned his command chair toward the comm station where Ensign Sato sat, apparently listening to the local subspace bands with rapt attention. “Any sign that Starfleet has detected our presence yet, Hoshi?”

“None, Captain,” said the comm officer with a shake of her head. “I’m picking up nothing but normal traffic throughout the Kuiper belt outposts, and all is calm everywhere else, from Jupiter Station all the way down to the solar monitoring outposts on Mercury.”

“Good. Keep listening, but maintain communications silence.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Dropping out of warp now, Captain,” Leydon reported as she entered a course correction into the helm console.

“Very good, Ensign. Keep station here. Silent running.” He punched a button on the arm of his chair. “Archer to Shuttlepod One.”

A familiar British-accented voice responded crisply from deep in the belly of E deck. “Shuttlepod One here, Captain. I’ve completed the prelaunch checklist. The boat is ready for launch whenever you give the word.”

With a grin, Archer rose from his chair. “I’ll give you the word in about two minutes, Malcolm—in person.”

“I’ll keep