The Road Behind Us

Posted on Sat Sep 5th, 2026 @ 7:16pm by Commodore Phoenix Lalor-Richardson

Mission: Season 6 - Episode 8- The Price of Home
Location: Various
Timeline: June 2398-August 2398
6465 words - 12.9 OF Standard Post Measure

4 June 2398

THILIA SYSTEM — NIEA IV

The USS Elysium left Niea IV under fire. There was no farewell ceremony. No final exchange of diplomatic courtesies. No gathering of representatives beneath banners of friendship. No formal acknowledgement that the first visit by people of the Federation to a Lonian world had come to an end. There was only a wounded starship climbing away from the planet while alarms sounded through damaged compartments and medical teams dealt with the consequences of what had happened below. Seventeen people had been taken from Elysium. All seventeen had been recovered. For the moment, that was the fact that mattered most. There were others. Two Romulans had died during Operation Sunrise. Members of Elysium's crew had been tortured in Lonian custody. Kerilia Dosivi had been treated not as a child, but as evidence of something Lonian society considered abhorrent. And during Elysium's escape, a Lonian frigate had been destroyed.

Two hundred and forty-eight people had been aboard.

That number entered the ship's records alongside all the others Circinus had accumulated. Nobody aboard yet knew what the destruction of that ship would mean. Nobody knew what version of events would be told across Lonian space. Perhaps Elysium would be remembered as the vessel that had rescued seventeen people from unlawful imprisonment. Perhaps as the foreign warship that had violated Lonian sovereignty.Perhaps both. History rarely bothered to be simple. What was certain was that whatever relationship might once have developed between Elysium and the Lonians had been fundamentally changed. Possibly beyond repair. Lady Emeyr's final information had at least given them somewhere to go.

Seelak Station.

It lay outside Lonian territory and, perhaps more importantly, approximately along the route they had already been attempting to follow toward the impossibly distant Milky Way. It wasn't home. But it was away from Niea IV. For the moment, that was enough.

---

11 June 2398

SEELAK STATION

Seelak was not beautiful. After Niea IV, that almost worked in its favour. The station had grown rather than been designed. Habitation modules, commercial sections, docking arms, engineering compartments and warehouses had been added across generations until whatever shape the original station had possessed was almost impossible to identify. Old hull plating sat beside newer construction. Alien lettering competed for space across illuminated advertisements. Cargo craft moved between docking structures while small merchant vessels came and went with little ceremony. Nobody seemed particularly interested in who controlled the galaxy. They were interested in fuel. Cargo. Information. Money. And whether the enormous battered starship requesting anchorage was likely to cause trouble. Unfortunately, the answer to that final question increasingly depended upon whom one asked. News from Niea IV had travelled faster than Elysium. The versions varied. A foreign warship had attacked a Lonian government facility. Outsiders had freed political prisoners. Federation soldiers had abducted Lonian citizens. A child had been condemned because of her ancestry. A Lonian military vessel had been destroyed. Two hundred and forty-eight servicemen were dead. All of those stories contained pieces of the truth.
None contained all of it. For twelve days, Elysium remained at Seelak. Repairs continued. Supplies were purchased, bartered for or exchanged wherever possible. Information became nearly as valuable as food and engineering components. Navigational databases were compared. Trade routes were mapped. Political boundaries were added to charts that, only months earlier, had contained little more than stars and educated guesses.

And names began appearing. Rin'thar. Varn. Ael'ven. Zyphera. At first, they were simply that. Names.

Cultures encountered by traders. Powers marked on territorial maps. Places merchants recommended. Places merchants warned against. Stories contradicted one another. The Rin'thar were supposedly warmongers. Or honourable. Or both.
The Varn could supposedly build anything, provided someone could afford the price. The Ael'ven were scholars, mystics, isolationists or all three depending upon who was speaking. The Zypherans were neutral. That statement usually resulted in laughter. There were other names as well. Dozens of them. Circinus was no longer an empty galaxy. That might have been the most important lesson Seelak gave them. For so long, Elysium had travelled through Circinus as though navigating islands scattered across an endless ocean. Now the crew were beginning to see the currents between them. Trade.
Old wars. Alliances. Rivalries. Borders. History. Civilisations connected to one another long before a Federation starship had fallen into their galaxy. And somewhere among all that information were pieces of something else. A way home.

---

24 June 2398

THE RIN'THAR APPROACH

The first indication that Elysium had crossed into territory claimed by the Rin'thar was not a warning buoy. It was three warships. They appeared on long-range sensors almost simultaneously, emerging from positions suggesting they had been tracking the Odyssey-class vessel for considerably longer than they had chosen to reveal themselves.

They did not open fire. They did not offer a greeting either. For eleven minutes, the vessels simply maintained formation around Elysium. Then the transmission arrived. Permission to proceed was denied. The reason followed shortly afterwards.

Niea IV.

News had travelled ahead of them. A Federation vessel from another galaxy had entered Lonian space. Its people had attacked a government facility. Prisoners had been removed. A military vessel had subsequently been destroyed. Two hundred and forty-eight Lonians were dead. The Rin'thar wanted to know exactly what sort of people had just arrived at their border. When visual communication was finally established, more than one person aboard Elysium understood immediately why traders at Seelak had invariably described the Rin'thar as warriors before describing almost anything else about them. They were imposing. Feline and reptilian characteristics existed together in a combination that initially seemed contradictory. Powerful leonine frames were crossed by lines of scale following heavy musculature like natural armour. Their hands ended in four strong fingers tipped with claws, while prominent crests rose from their heads.

Many of those crests bore scars. Some old. Some considerably newer. Later cultural exchanges would explain that such marks were not necessarily concealed. Surviving battle carried meaning among the Rin'thar. Their bodies told their histories. Their representatives did not accuse Elysium of murder. That almost made the conversation worse. They asked whether the Federation believed its morality entitled it to ignore the sovereignty of another civilisation. The explanation of Kerilia changed the tenor of the exchange. It did not erase the question. For the Rin'thar, honour apparently required considerably more than claiming one's cause had been just. It required accepting the consequences of acting upon it. That was something Elysium understood rather better now than it might once have done. Eventually suspicion became conversation. Conversation became cautious exchange. And that revealed something nobody had expected. For all their martial appearance, Rin'thar science was extraordinary. They did not map space as Starfleet did. A Federation navigational chart described where things were. The Rin'thar described how everything affected everything else.

Gravity. Mass. Subspace tension. Stellar movement. Temporal variation. Their calculations modelled relationships across distances Federation navigation normally reduced to approximation. The resulting displays were bewilderingly complex.
Stars did not simply occupy positions. They pulled at invisible geometric structures that extended across systems, while subspace distortions were treated almost as currents within a vast ocean. It was beautiful. And initially seemed completely irrelevant to getting home. Copies of the information the Rin'thar permitted Elysium to retain entered the scientific database. Eventually the three warships broke formation. The road ahead reopened. Elysium continued.

Nobody aboard realised they had just acquired the first piece of a machine that did not yet exist.

---

7 July 2398

DEEP SPACE

For thirteen days, nothing particularly dramatic happened. For Elysium, this had become unusual enough to be memorable. The ship travelled. Repairs continued. People worked. People slept. People argued. People laughed.
Birthdays happened. Meals were served. Children attended lessons. Duty rosters changed. People mourned those who would never see the Milky Way again. Others refused to accept that they wouldn't. The Romulans who had once possessed their own ship continued adapting to life aboard the Federation vessel that had become their home by necessity. And throughout Science, Engineering and Operations, information accumulated. The Thaih'ea gate. The Archeron records.
Quantum slipstream data. Borg transwarp information. Circinus navigational records. Rin'thar calculations. For months, pieces had existed without forming a whole. But a question had begun circulating quietly among the people studying them.

Not: Now do we fly thirteen million light-years?

That question remained ridiculous.

Instead: What if we didn't have to?

The Thaih'ea had already proved artificial long-distance transit possible. Elysium had seen their technology. More importantly, Elysium had scanned it. The data was incomplete. The original structure was gone. But the laws of physics did not cease to exist simply because the machine demonstrating them had been destroyed. Something had happened inside that ring. Space had been manipulated. Distance had become negotiable. The Rin'thar calculations gave the scientists a new language with which to examine what they had witnessed. Slowly, the impossible started becoming theoretical.

Then the theoretical encountered its first enormous problem. Energy. A truly obscene amount of energy. More than Elysium could safely produce. More than any conventional Federation power system available to them could provide. The calculations stalled. Until one name from Seelak's databases kept appearing in searches involving large-scale power generation. The Varn Ascendancy.

---
15 July 2398

VARN ASCENDANCY

The Varn were interested in *Elysium* before *Elysium* was interested in them. That should probably have been considered a warning. Where the Rin'thar presented themselves as warriors, the Varnians seemed almost to wear their civilisation upon their bodies. Their avian ancestry was immediately apparent, although thousands of years of evolution had left them firmly humanoid. They were generally tall and lightly built despite the breadth of their shoulders, with upright postures and sharply defined features. High cheekbones swept toward narrow faces, while the bridge of the nose terminated in a hardened, subtly projecting ridge reminiscent of the short beaks of the predatory creatures from which their species had evolved. Their eyes were large and forward-facing. Their hands possessed four long, dexterous fingers tipped with dark keratinous nails. Most striking were the crests. Fine, feather-like filaments swept backwards from the crown of the head and continued toward the neck. Colour and pattern varied considerably between individuals, and the crew soon discovered that what initially appeared decorative had once formed an important part of Varnian social communication.

Modern Varnians claimed to have evolved beyond such primitive displays. Their crests apparently disagreed. But even those biological features competed for attention with what the Varn had done to themselves. Pale ivory-grey skin possessed a faint pearlescent translucence. Beneath it ran light. Fine blue-white lines traced intricate patterns across temples, throats, hands and exposed skin, resembling circuitry closely enough that tricorders were employed more than once simply to determine what was natural biology and what was technological augmentation. The answer was not always obvious. Perhaps, to the Varn, the distinction was irrelevant. Artificial ocular implants shimmered with cascading streams of information. Some continually adjusted focus as their wearers moved, analysing people, machinery and surroundings without any visible instruction.

Even their clothing was technological. Adaptive armourweave shifted almost imperceptibly as environmental conditions changed, continually recalibrating temperature, atmospheric filtration and protection. Nothing appeared to have only one purpose. And the Varnians looked at *Elysium* much the same way Starfleet engineers looked at an unfamiliar starship.

As something fascinating that really ought to be taken apart. Metaphorically, everyone hoped. The Varn Ascendancy was a corporate-technocracy in which technological achievement, political authority and commercial influence had become so intertwined that separating one from another was almost meaningless. Knowledge had value. Technology had value.
Information had value. Introductions had value. Favour had value. Federation technology had a *great deal* of value.
Consequently, nothing came free. The individual who made that particularly clear was Ambassador Keth Varn

At sixty-three by Human comparison, Keth was already one of the Ascendancy's most influential industrial figures.
His pale feathered crest swept dramatically backwards from his head, silver-white with age, while blue-white circuitry glowed beneath the translucent skin of his face and neck. Both eyes had been replaced by sophisticated ocular implants capable of analysing information faster than most organic minds could consciously process it.

He was unfailingly polite. Immaculately dressed. Patient. Interested. And almost impossible to read. Keth could listen to an explanation of *Elysium's* predicament with an expression of such convincing sympathy that it was easy to forget his implants were simultaneously analysing the speaker's pulse, pupils, breathing, vocal stress and micro-expressions.

Whether the sympathy itself was genuine was considerably harder to determine. The relationship that developed with the Ascendancy was not an alliance. It was certainly not friendship. It was an exchange. Keth made no attempt to disguise that fact. The Federation possessed information the Varn wanted. The Varn possessed technology *Elysium* needed.
Each side therefore had something of value. That, according to Keth, was considerably more reliable than friendship.

For *Elysium*, it was enough. Eventually, the theoretical work surrounding the Thaih'ea structure was placed before Varn specialists. Not everything. Certainly not unrestricted access to the original data. But enough. One question accompanied it. Could it be powered? The Varn studied the model. Then studied it again. They requested additional measurements. Recalculated assumptions. Rejected several Federation estimates. Asked uncomfortable questions about the limits of Elysium's power systems. And disappeared into their own simulations.

The answer took several days. When it finally arrived, Keth Varn delivered it personally. One word. "Yes."

The resulting power-generation models were extraordinary. The Varn approached the problem differently from Starfleet engineers. Where Federation design philosophy emphasised redundancy, containment and maintaining safe operational margins, Varn systems seemed almost offensively willing to approach theoretical limits.

Then remain there. Then ask whether those limits were actually necessary. Some of their proposed solutions would never have passed a Starfleet safety review. Others forced Engineering to reconsider assumptions nobody aboard *Elysium* had thought to question. For the first time since the project had begun, one of *Elysium's* impossible numbers became merely an extremely difficult one. The simulation was run. Power climbed. The aperture began to form. For a fraction of a second, the model held. Then the entire theoretical structure tore itself apart. The simulation reset. Again. The aperture formed.

The structure failed. Again. Different configuration. Failure. Reinforcement. Failure. Altered field geometry. Failure.
Federation alloys buckled. Romulan materials fractured. Recovered Circinus composites disintegrated. Every structure they designed ultimately failed beneath the stresses generated by the aperture. They could power the machine.

They simply couldn't stop it from destroying itself when they switched it on. The Varn specialists appeared considerably less discouraged by this than their Federation counterparts. To them, another failure simply meant another variable had been eliminated. Keth reportedly observed several simulations without comment. Aperture. Collapse. Reset. Aperture.

Collapse. Reset. Then he finally spoke. "If you insist upon constructing something that refuses to remain constructed, Commodore, I would suggest you stop asking engineers." The recommendation that followed introduced another civilisation to *Elysium's* rapidly expanding map of Circinus. The Ael'ven

The Varn had solved the power problem. Someone else would have to teach the machine how to survive it. And so another name entered the ship's navigational plans.

---

23 July 2398

THE AEL'VEN ENCLAVE

The Ael'ven did not answer Elysium's first transmission. Nor the second. The third received a response. It requested that the Federation vessel alter course and leave. Considering Elysium's growing reputation, perhaps that was understandable.
Eventually, however, isolation gave way to curiosity. The first Ael'ven to appear on a Starfleet viewscreen looked almost unreal. Humanoid. Tall. Slender. Yet faint light shimmered beneath their skin. Teal luminescence moved through their bodies beneath layers of translucent clothing, giving the impression that someone had somehow wrapped living starlight in fabric.

Their eyes were stranger still. Silver-white. No visible pupils. Then, during one of the increasingly complicated conversations, the mood changed. And so did the light. Sensors registered a subtle reduction in ambient illumination surrounding one of the Ael'ven representatives. At first it was assumed to be environmental. It wasn't. The Ael'ven were empathic. Their relationship with emotion was not identical to the telepathic species known to the Federation. They described emotion as resonance. Harmonics. Patterns produced by living minds. Lies created discord. Grief carried weight. Fear disturbed the emotional environment around it. Their philosophy shaped their science. Starfleet divided disciplines. Materials science. Subspace physics. Biology. Psychology. Engineering. The Ael'ven seemed far less interested in such boundaries. To them, structures had harmonics. Energy had resonance. Materials responded to stress. A badly designed structure did not simply break. It failed to distribute the forces imposed upon it. Their composites were extraordinary.

The theoretical aperture was rebuilt. Ael'ven material models replaced Federation assumptions. The simulation began.
The structure survived. For 0.7 seconds. Then it collapsed. Again. 4.3 seconds. Again. 11.8. Again. Twenty-six. Again. Forty-one. Nobody celebrated. Not yet. But somewhere during those simulations, the question changed. It was no longer:
Can this exist? Now it was: How do we keep it open?

---

31 July 2398

ZYPHERAN SYSTEM

Elysium's first impression of the Zypherans was light. Their civilisation seemed almost determined to build with it.
The Zypherans themselves were tall and willowy humanoids whose skin possessed a silken metallic quality. It subtly reflected the colours around them. Blue illumination introduced hints of sapphire. Passing holographic displays rippled across exposed skin in momentary washes of colour. Their eyes were naturally luminous. Their clothing continued the theme. Pale crystalline armour-robes caught and refracted surrounding illumination, appearing ceremonial until scans revealed that the garments incorporated sophisticated personal shielding. Beauty and engineering were apparently not separate concepts to the Zypherans. Their technology reflected the same philosophy. Different systems.

Different power sources. Different operating principles. One harmonious network. And that was precisely the problem Elysium had been unable to solve. Rin'thar mathematics could define the aperture. Varn technology could power it.
Ael'ven materials could survive it. Federation and Romulan science could provide the subspace principles needed to manipulate it. But the moment those incompatible systems attempted to operate together, fluctuations tore the model apart. Zypheran field-regulation technology changed that. The first simulation remained stable for twenty seconds.

The second lasted forty-three. The third passed one minute. Another reached five. Then ten. The scientists changed parameters. They deliberately introduced instability. The system compensated. They increased power. It compensated again. Eventually someone terminated the simulation manually. Nobody spoke. The model was still there. A theoretical aperture. Stable. A road through space that shouldn't have been possible. For the first time since Elysium had been thrown into Circinus, its computers contained something extraordinary. Not a hope. Not a rumour. Not an alien promising that somewhere, somehow, there might be a way to cross the impossible distance. A model. One that worked.

There was only one problem. Nobody could build it. The Zypherans could not. The Ael'ven could not. The Varn could not.
The Rin'thar could not. And neither could Elysium. Not alone.

---

7 August 2398

USS ELYSIUM - READY ROOM

Circinus had become familiar. Phoenix hated that. There had been a time when every star beyond the windows had looked wrong. Not visually. Stars were stars. But she had known none of them. No childhood constellation existed beyond that glass. No star carried the name of a Federation colony. No navigational marker pointed toward Vulcan. Or Earth.
Or Andoria. Or even Erisia. There had been nothing familiar anywhere. Now there was. Phoenix knew names. Systems.
Borders. Species. She knew places that were safe. Places that weren't. Governments that could be reasoned with.
Governments that could be bought. Governments best avoided altogether. There were places where Elysium was welcomed. Others where its arrival caused weapons to come online. Somewhere along the way, Circinus had stopped being simply the galaxy in which they were stranded. It had become somewhere they lived.

That disturbed her more than she cared to admit. Two months had passed since Niea IV. Two months since Operation Sunrise. Two months since seventeen people had been recovered and two hundred and forty-eight others had died aboard a Lonian frigate. The consequences of that day had not disappeared. Phoenix doubted they ever would. The door chimed.

“Come.”

Lieutenant Commander Elias Venn entered carrying a PADD. Phoenix glanced at it. Then him.

“What broke?”

“Nothing.”

Her eyebrows rose. “That is unusually encouraging.”

Venn did not smile. That was less encouraging. He stepped farther into the room. “I think we know how to get home.”

Everything stopped. Phoenix's expression did not change immediately. She placed the PADD she had been reading carefully on the desk. “That,” she said at last, “is an extremely dangerous sentence to say to me, Commander.”

“There is a problem.”

“There always is.”

Venn moved toward the conference display. “We can't do it.”

Phoenix stared at him. “You've managed to make this considerably less exciting in under ten seconds. The holographic display activated. At first there were only equations. Hundreds of them. Then thousands. Phoenix recognised some.
Others belonged to systems of mathematics she had only recently learned existed. The display changed.

A structure formed. It was enormous. Six vast concentric assemblies surrounded an empty centre. Energy conduits branched through the framework while field generators occupied positions around its circumference. At its centre hung darkness. Phoenix stood. “What am I looking at?”

“The last six weeks.”

He touched the controls. One portion illuminated. RIN'THAR SPATIAL MODEL

“The Rin'thar . Their spatial geometry gave us the calculations we were missing. We were treating the Thaih'ea device like an oversized wormhole generator. It wasn't. Not exactly.” Another section illuminated.

VARN POWER ARCHITECTURE

“The Ascendancy's power-generation models provide sufficient energy to initiate the event."

"Without destroying us?”

“Assuming we aren't standing next to it.”

“Comforting.” Another section.

AEL'VEN STRUCTURAL MATRIX

“The Ael'ven material models distribute the subspace stresses across the entire structure. Federation materials simply couldn't survive long enough.” Another.

ZYPHERAN HARMONIC REGULATION

“The Zypheran systems regulate the different technologies.” Phoenix walked slowly around the display. Four civilisations.
Four technologies. And threaded between them were others. Federation warp theory. Quantum slipstream research.
Romulan power and singularity data. Thaih'ea telemetry. Borg transwarp information. Everything Elysium had accumulated since Circinus had tried to kill them for the first time.

Phoenix stopped. “And us?”

Venn looked at the model. “Integration.” He enlarged the structure. “We understand the Thaih'ea telemetry better than any of them because we were there. We have Federation subspace physics, slipstream theory, Romulan research and data from a Borg vessel that became stranded in Circinus through the collapse of its transwarp network.”

Phoenix's eyes remained fixed on the aperture. “So this works?”

“Mathematically?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

She looked at him. “Practically?”

“We can't build it.”

“Why?”

“We don't possess all of this technology.” Venn gestured toward the four illuminated sections. “And even if we reproduced some of it, there are components we simply don't have the industrial capacity to manufacture.”

Phoenix looked back at the names. RIN'THAR. VARN ASCENDANCY. AEL'VEN. ZYPHERAN CONCORD. Beneath them: USS ELYSIUM

“None of them can build it.”

“No.”

“Neither can we.”

“No.”

Phoenix stared into the dark centre of the holographic rings. “But all of us can.”

Venn hesitated. Then nodded. “All of us might.”

Phoenix shot him a look. “You really know how to ruin a moment.”

“Occupational hazard.”

She almost smiled. Almost. Instead she returned her attention to the machine. “How large?”

“Very.”

“Commander.”

“The final dimensions depend upon the construction method, power system and intended aperture stability. But large enough that we're not assembling it in Shuttlebay One.”

“That had not been my first choice.”

“Good.” Phoenix folded her arms. “What happens if it fails?”

“Which failure?”

She slowly turned her head. “How many are there?”

Venn considered the question. “Would you prefer the short answer?”

“Yes.”

“A lot.”

“And the long answer?”

“A very large lot.”

Phoenix exhaled. Of course. There was always a price. Circinus had taught them that lesson repeatedly. “How certain are you that it leads to the Milky Way?”

“It doesn't.”

Phoenix froze. Venn immediately continued. “Not directly.”

“You're doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Destroying hope immediately after creating it.”

“The aperture should allow us to cross distances that would otherwise take generations. But the models suggest a direct transit of thirteen million light-years would be unstable. We would need to establish an exit point much closer to the Milky Way and continue from there.”

“How much closer?”

“We don't know yet.”

That answer should have been disappointing. It wasn't. Not really. For almost a year, home had existed as a direction.
Now, for the first time, there was the beginning of a road. Phoenix looked at the four names again.

“What do they get?”

Venn understood immediately. “Access.”

“To the technology.”

“If they help build it, keeping the underlying science solely aboard Elysium would be impossible.”

Phoenix nodded. A functioning long-distance transit system would transform Circinus. Trade routes that currently took months or years could collapse to days. Exploration would change. Colonisation would change. Politics would change.
Military strategy would certainly change. And if the system could eventually reach another galaxy... Circinus and the Milky Way would no longer be isolated from one another. Phoenix stared at the hologram.

“We're not asking them to help us get home.”

“No.”

“We're offering them something that changes their civilizations.”

“Potentially.”

“And every one of them will want control of it.”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful.” Venn wisely said nothing.

“Do they like each other?” Silence. Phoenix looked at him. “That bad?”

“The Rin'thar have several grievances involving Varn commercial activity. The Varn regard most restrictions on technological trade as economically irrational. The Ael'ven have limited formal relationships with either of them.”

“And the Zypherans?”

“They're neutral.”

Phoenix studied his expression. “You don't believe that.”

“The Zypherans believe commerce and conversation should continue even during war.”

“That wasn't my question.”

“No.”

“Neutral?”

“They permit governments, coalitions, merchants and criminal organisations to maintain representation under the Concord's protection.”

Phoenix blinked. “That's an interesting definition of neutral.”

“They have several.”

“And what do they think of us?”

Another hesitation. “Niea IV has been discussed.”

Of course it had. “Which version?”

“All of them.”

Phoenix closed her eyes briefly. “That may actually be worse.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

She turned back toward the windows. Somewhere beyond those stars were four governments that barely knew the Federation. One had already questioned Elysium's actions on Niea IV. Another seemed likely to patent the ship if someone left it unattended long enough. The Ael'ven barely wanted to speak with outsiders. And the Zypherans apparently considered neutrality something available in several convenient varieties. Those were merely the governments they needed. They were not the only governments that would care. Phoenix turned back.

“Show me the regional map.”

Venn touched the controls. The gate vanished. Circinus appeared in its place. Territorial overlays slowly spread across the stars. Phoenix studied them. “The Lonians.” Venn nodded. “They'll hear about this.”

“Eventually.”

“Sooner than eventually.” Phoenix had learned enough about the speed at which the story of Niea IV had spread. The four Houses might disagree over almost everything else, but none of them would fail to understand what a stable long-range aperture represented. Trade. Expansion. Strategic reach. The ability to move ships and resources across distances that currently protected one power from another. And after Operation Sunrise, Phoenix could hardly assume every Lonian House would accept Federation assurances that such technology would be used responsibly.

Sama certainly wouldn't. And wouldn't it do her good to face that woman again, Part of her itched to repay Sama for the stuff she had done but she pushed the Erisian blood lust back down. Perhaps she would describe Erebus as proof of everything she had claimed Elysium represented. An alien warship had interfered in Lonian affairs. Taken Lonian citizens.
Destroyed a Lonian military vessel. And now it wanted to build technology capable of changing the strategic balance of Circinus. Phoenix grimaced.

“Galatonians.” Their territory appeared. That possibility was worse. The Galatonians had already shown Elysium what they did to people they considered weaker. They hunted them. Captured them. Altered them. Turned sentient beings into hounds. A functioning Erebus system in Galatonian hands would not be a bridge between peoples. It would be a hunting corridor. The Hirogen would look like kittens. Whole regions of Circinus presently protected by distance could suddenly become accessible. Phoenix stared at their territory for a long moment. Then her gaze shifted.

“Thaih'ea.” Neither of them spoke immediately. The Thaih'ea were different. They had possessed this technology. Or something sufficiently close to it. They had moved vessels and people across impossible distances long before Elysium had arrived in Circinus. They had taken millions. Experimented upon people. Enslaved others. And they had been prepared to destroy one of their own enormous transit structures rather than surrender control of it. If the Thaih'ea discovered that a Federation starship was attempting to recreate what had been lost... Phoenix didn't need Venn to finish that calculation.

“They'll come.”

“Possibly.”

“To steal it?”

“Possibly.”

“Destroy it?”

“Possibly.”

“Take control of it?”

“Also possible.”

Phoenix gave him a flat look. “You've become very fond of that word.”

“It remains statistically appropriate.”

“I'm beginning to dislike statistics.”

The map expanded again. There were more. Independent worlds. Smaller governments. Merchant coalitions. Criminal organisations. Pirates. Refugees. People Elysium had never met. People whose names weren't yet in the ship's database.
Some would see the gate and think of wealth. Others would see exploration. Some might see the chance to reach family, colonies or worlds previously isolated by distance. Others would see escape. Some would see conquest. And someone, somewhere, would inevitably see a weapon. Phoenix stared at the map. Four powers were necessary to build the gate.
Potentially hundreds would have an opinion about who should control it. The instant they revealed the project to the governments required to construct it, secrecy would begin dying. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not publicly.

But governments had intelligence services. Corporations had spies. Merchants talked. People could be bought. Secrets leaked. Eventually Circinus would learn what they were building. And then every government in the region would face the same question. Who controls the road between galaxies? Phoenix stared at the words that had appeared beneath the regional map. That question frightened her considerably more than the engineering. “We'll need security around the project.”

“A great deal of it.”

“Intelligence.”

“Yes.”

“Counterintelligence.”

“Yes.”

“Construction security.”

“Absolutely.”

“And some very clear agreements about ownership.”

Venn hesitated. “Assuming everyone agrees on what ownership means.”

Phoenix rubbed her forehead. “Add that to the list.” She looked at the map again. There was another consideration.
"If we build it, nobody owns it.”

Venn looked at her. “That may be difficult to guarantee.”

“I'm aware.”

“Some of these governments may only participate if they receive privileged access.”

“Then we have a problem.”

“We already have several.”

“This one's bigger.”

Phoenix stepped closer to the display. “We don't build a road between galaxies and hand the toll booth to whoever contributed the biggest generator.”

Venn remained silent. “Whatever comes out of that summit, the Gate cannot belong to the Federation.” She touched the controls. The Federation marker disappeared from the centre of the proposed gate network. “It can't belong to the Varn.” Another disappeared. “Or the Rin'thar.” Another. “Or the Ael'ven.” Another. “Or the Zypherans.” The final marker vanished.
Only the gate remained.

Venn studied it. “You're proposing independent control.”

“I'm proposing we figure out the details before someone starts a war over a machine that doesn't exist yet.”

“That may be the summit's more difficult conversation.”

Phoenix gave him a look. “I thought convincing them to build it was the difficult conversation.”

“So did I.”

“Wonderful.”

She looked again at the four names essential to the design. RIN'THAR. VARN ASCENDANCY. AEL'VEN. ZYPHERAN CONCORD. Around them sat everyone who might want the result. Lonians. Galatonians. Thaih'ea. Merchant states.
Minor powers. Criminal organisations. Governments Elysium hadn't even encountered yet. Allies. Rivals. Predators. Victims. Opportunists. “We're not just asking them to build a gate,” Phoenix said quietly. Venn waited. “We're asking them to decide who gets to own the future.” Silence settled across the Ready Room.

Then Phoenix straightened. “Invite them.”

Venn paused. “All four?”

“All four.”

“To what?”

“A summit.”

Now he stared. “Commodore, some of these governments won't sit at the same table.”

Phoenix looked at the enormous structure floating above the conference display. “Then we'll need a very large table.”

There was the slightest twitch at the corner of Venn's mouth. “Where?”

Phoenix considered the question. Elysium was not appropriate. Hosting aboard the ship would immediately place the Federation at the centre of negotiations. Rin'thar territory would alienate the Varn. Varn territory would probably result in someone trying to invoice them for the chairs. The Ael'ven were too isolationist. Which left—

“There is one possibility,” Venn said.

“I'm listening.”

“Zyphera Prime.”

Phoenix frowned. “The station?”

“Neutral territory.”

“You just spent five minutes convincing me their neutrality is negotiable.”

“Flexible.”

“That's not better.”

“No.”

Venn brought up an image. Phoenix stared. Zyphera Prime hung in orbit above the white-gold world of Zyphera IV.

Even as a hologram, the station was extraordinary. A vast orbital complex wrapped in translucent shielding and holographic structures that seemed to blur its true boundaries. Light moved across it continuously, giving the station the appearance of a city caught in perpetual twilight. “That's a station?”

“Yes.”

“How many people?”

“A great many.”

“Helpful.”

“It contains a kilometre-wide central atrium.”

Phoenix looked at him. “A kilometre?”

“The Grand Atrium. Diplomatic receptions, treaty ceremonies, commercial exhibitions—”

Phoenix held up a hand. “So they can fit the table.”

Venn finally smiled. “Yes, Commodore.”

“Perfect.” She looked again at Zyphera Prime. A place where diplomats, merchants, governments and criminals apparently conducted business beneath the same glittering roof. A city of light built upon bargains. Perhaps there was no better place to attempt something ridiculous. “One more thing.”

Venn waited.

“What are we calling this?”

He looked back at the enormous six-ring structure. “We haven't named it.”

Phoenix studied the darkness at its centre. A road through somewhere nobody aboard understood. A crossing between worlds. Between galaxies. Between everything they had survived and everything they still hoped waited at the other end.

“Erebus.”

Venn frowned. “Erebus?”

“The darkness between the living world and what lay beyond.” She glanced toward him. “Appropriate, don't you think?”

Venn considered the machine. “Unfortunately.”

Phoenix touched the display. The equations disappeared. The civilisation names vanished. The structure faded.
One word remained suspended above the table.

EREBUS

Then another line appeared beneath it. TRANS-GALACTIC APERTURE INITIATIVE

Phoenix stared at those words. For almost a full year the crew had asked the same question. How do we get home? Maybe that had been the wrong question. Maybe the question was: Who did they need to become to get there?

“Send the invitations.”

Venn nodded. Then Phoenix stopped him. “And Commander?”

“Yes?”

“Don't tell the crew we're going home.”

He turned. “We're not?”

“Not yet.” She looked through the windows again. Hope could be dangerous aboard a ship that had already lost so much.
“We're going to find out if going home is possible.” Then she looked back at him. “And we're going to convince four governments who barely trust each other—and in some cases don't particularly trust us—to build the impossible.”

Venn picked up his PADD. “No pressure.”

“Commander?”

“Yes?”

“Find me that table.”

The door closed behind him. Phoenix remained where she was. Several seconds passed. Then the computer chimed.
The first diplomatic packet entered the communications queue. Then the second. Then the third. Then the fourth.
Phoenix watched them leave. Across Circinus, messages began travelling toward four very different peoples.
To warriors whose scars carried their history. To technologists who measured almost everything by value. To luminous empaths who experienced emotion as harmony. To metallic-skinned diplomats who had turned neutrality into an industry.
They did not trust one another. They had no reason to trust Elysium. They did not share Federation ideals. They did not share a government. They did not even necessarily agree upon what peace meant. But they had something Elysium needed. And Elysium had something they might want. That was the beginning. Elsewhere, other ears would eventually hear the name Erebus. The Lonians would hear. The Galatonians would hear. Sooner or later, the Thaih'ea might hear. Traders would whisper about it. Intelligence services would investigate it. Governments that had never heard the words United Federation of Planets would learn that the enormous alien vessel wandering their galaxy intended to build a doorway through the darkness between galaxies. Some would see a bridge. Some would see wealth. Some would see salvation.
Some would see invasion. Some would see prey. And some would see the most valuable weapon ever conceived.

Getting home was no longer the only problem. They also had to make certain the road home did not become the road by which Circinus destroyed itself. Phoenix touched the controls. The impossible machine returned. At its centre, the simulation changed. For the first time, the computer no longer displayed:

DESTINATION UNRESOLVED

Instead, one distant label appeared beyond the aperture.

MILKY WAY GALAXY

Phoenix stared at it. Then quietly, to an empty Ready Room, she spoke. “Now we just have to survive each other.”

---

MISSION: THE PRICE OF HOME

ACT I — THE PRICE OF UNITY

ZYPHERA PRIME

The impossible road home has been designed. Now Elysium must convince Circinus to build it.

---

OOC — THE JUNE–AUGUST TIME JUMP

This post establishes the broad history of the period between the conclusion of Crossroads of Destiny and the beginning of The Price of Home. The following dates/events should be considered established:

4 June 2398 — Elysium departs Niea IV.

11–23 June 2398 — Repairs, resupply and information gathering at Seelak Station.

24 June 2398 — First contact with the Rin'thar.

15 July 2398 — Contact with the Varn Ascendancy.

23 July 2398 — Contact with the Ael'ven.

31 July 2398 — First contact with the Zypherans.

7 August 2398 — The accumulated research produces the first viable Erebus model. Phoenix authorises invitations to the four powers for a summit at Zyphera Prime.

These are deliberately broad historical anchors.

The periods between them remain open for backposts and character development. Players are welcome to place their characters into events during June and July, including the visits to Seelak and the various first contacts, provided the established outcomes above remain intact. Unless specifically established in play, this post does not determine which individual characters participated in diplomatic meetings, scientific exchanges, away missions or other events during the time jump. There are nearly two months of Elysium history here. Please feel free to help us fill it.