

Hernandez takes her first officer Veronica Fletcher along to Quorum Hall which they must walk to due to the energy-saving measures.

Although it had been some time since they saw any of the Caeliar, Inyx eventually approached Captain Erika Hernandez and informed her that the Quorum wished to speak to her in regards to the actions of their mutinous MACOs. On the city-ship of Axion, the four remaining Columbia officers wait out their days as they hide in the blackness of space. Captain Jean-Luc Picard finds it curious that a tunnel's terminus is at the suspected site of the Borg Collective's continued incursions, and orders a mission to search, obstruct, and then destroy any other potential tunnels which the Borg could be using. As the two crews work to repair their ships and heal themselves, the two command crews discuss how the Aventine came to be inside the nebula, reporting on the subspace tunnel that linked their position to the crashed planet of the Columbia. Miraculously, the USS Aventine answers their beacon, and acts as the targeting system for the torpedoes, allowing them to finish the engagement. As their targeting sensors are knocked offline, they send out a general distress call.

The Enterprise-E engages several Borg cubes inside the Azure Nebula, taking heavy damage despite the effectiveness of their transphasic torpedoes. But even gods may come to understand that they underestimate humans at their peril. … For the small, finite lives of mere mortals carry little weight in the calculations of gods. Now the supremely advanced Caeliar will brook no further intrusion upon their isolation, or against the sanctity of their Great Work. Half a galaxy away, Captain William Riker and the crew of the starship Titan have made contact with the reclusive Caeliar - survivors of a stellar cataclysm that, two hundred years ago, drove fissures through the structure of space and time, creating a loop of inevitability and consigning another captain and crew to a purgatory from which they could never escape.

In deep space, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Ezri Dax join together to cut off the the Collective's route to the Alpha Quadrant. Description From the back cover On Earth, Federation President Nanietta Bacco gathers allies and adversaries to form a desperate last line of defense against an impending Borg invasion.
