“Three… two… one… happy new year!”

Horns blew, confetti fluttered, and cheers echoed as friends and colleagues came together on the promenade of Archanis Station to celebrate the new year.

Perched atop a catwalk overhead, Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes watched on pensively. This night was for those who could, whether through ignorance or naiveté, see it as a turn of the page, but for her, it was nothing more than another number on that page. Yesterday’s problems would still be their problems tomorrow, and right now, they had far too many of them.

“Not in the mood for a party?” came a voice from her left. She turned to see Rear Admiral Alex Grayson standing at the far end of the catwalk, his expression no more celebratory than hers.

“How can I be after the year we’ve had?” Fleet Admiral Reyes sighed. “Nine hundred and thirty eight at Nasera, and another hundred and eleven in the Ciatar Nebula.” Their crucible had begun in the Deneb Sector, but it certainly hadn’t ended there. “And then came Frontier Day, a tragedy we were too late to stop.” If only they’d been faster or figured it out sooner, maybe tens of thousands could have been saved. “And that was by May.” She didn’t even bother to list the rest, the officers she’d watched the Borg worshipers execute, the young man who’s suicide she’d been blind to prevent, and the two ships she’d lost to the Underspace. All said, there were fifteen hundred, her direct responsibility, lost to the deep this year, and an order of magnitude more, whether rightly or wrongly, for which she felt at least partially responsible.

“At least you were there for it,” Rear Admiral Grayson grumbled. “We were a hundred parsecs beyond Kzinti space when the Lost Fleet reappeared.” Even though he’d turned for home at once, they’d been powerless to do anything but listen over subspace as the casualty reports poured in. “After that, I swore never again. It’s why I gave up the pursuit of high adventures in the great beyond and appealed to Command to give me a more impactful posting.” For a while, that had come in the form of the Fourth Fleet’s Task Force 47, and now it was overseeing operations along this wide swath of the Klingon borderlands.

“Well, we are better for your choice, I assure you of that,” Fleet Admiral Reyes smiled. Her situation this year had been not all that different. She was the head of the Advanced Science, Technology, and Research Activity, but this year, instead of sciencing it up, they’d been fighting tooth and nail for the soul of the Federation.

“I dunno,” Rear Admiral Grayson shook his head. “Not after the last month.” To say it had been a bad month would be an understatement.

“No, seriously, Alex, we were lucky to have you here,” Fleet Admiral Reyes insisted. She’d read the after-action reports. “The contagion pushed you to the brink, but you didn’t blink.” Quick, decisive action had spared them from far greater losses.

“A thousand was far too many,” Rear Admiral Grayson sighed.

“To have stopped it as you did at a thousand is commendable,” Fleet Admiral Reyes countered. “Your actions saw the lowest fatality rate ever achieved in the face of that bioweapon.” Doctor Henderson had shared harrowing stories of the places the Dominion had struck during the war with that merciless vector, planets they’d come upon where, by the time the contagion had run its course, there was not a single man, woman, or child left alive. To have seen a mere five percent fatality rate, that was something the rear admiral could be quite proud of.

“Well, we did have some help,” Rear Admiral Grayson acknowledged. Their actions might have slowed the spread, but it wasn’t them who had stopped it. They’d made no real progress on the vaccine at all. Not until that mysterious former spook had shown up.

“Indeed you did,” Fleet Admiral Reyes smiled deviously. Although the record reflected that the vaccine had come from her biological sciences unit within the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, she’d been let in on the truth. They’d only managed to manufacture a cure because Frank Negrescu, a supposedly-retired former intelligence operator, had surfaced on the station with the keys to a vaccine in his blood. “But still, it counts for something that you all pulled together and saw it through to the end.” To design a vaccine was only one part of the equation. Then you had to manufacture it and administer it.

“I still don’t understand why he did it,” Rear Admiral Grayson said in reference to Mr. Negrescu. “Or, for that matter, who he even really was.”

“And you probably never will,” Fleet Admiral Reyes chuckled. “All I can say is there are people out there who, for as much as it has been convenient for us to forget them, they have not forgotten us. Frank is one of those people.”

“He asked for you by name.”

She was not surprised.

“Why?”

“Because long ago, we stood together against the darkness,” she replied cryptically, unwilling to elaborate further. “It’s unfortunate he couldn’t hang around longer.” She had questions for him about the contagion’s origin, about the people who’d brought it to the station, and about what he was doing with them. But those questions would have to wait.

“You think he’ll be back?”

“If it suits him.”

“What about your Changeling?” Rear Admiral Grayson asked as he pivoted to the creature that a shadowy team from Starfleet Security had whisked away from the station almost immediately after Fleet Admiral Reyes had brought it back from Duraxis. “Did they ever get anything from him?”

“Enough to assure us that this isn’t the end,” Fleet Admiral Reyes shared as she looked down at the promenade, where a jovial conga line had now broken out as a daring saxophone solo urged them forth. “Interrogations of the sort it went through are not an exact science, but what is clear is that the Dominion contagion here, the Borg malware on Duraxis, and many of our other recent issues have all been part of a concerted effort.”

“A concerted effort to do what?”

“To destabilize the borderlands,” Fleet Admiral Reyes replied. “Our success comes at the detriment of those who have thrived in our absence.”

“Who was the Changeling working for?”

“That, unfortunately, we still don’t know.”

“Will we ever?”

“I doubt it,” Fleet Admiral Reyes replied. She had a good many ideas of who it might be working for, but the Changeling had outlived its usefulness. “Not from the Changeling, I assure you that.”

From the finality with which she said it, the intimation was clear. Her associates had extracted from it all that they could, and when they were done, they’d seen to it that the Changeling would never harm anyone again. That thought didn’t bother Rear Admiral Grayson in the slightest. Not after all the Changelings had done, both recently and back in the seventies.  “So what comes next for us?”

“Well, for you, it’s just going to get busier and busier out here,” Fleet Admiral Reyes replied. “I’ve spoken with Command, and they tell me they’re looking to operationally reinforce this region with a few more assets, and to double down on our engineering and diplomatic missions. Commodore Agarwal will be getting another thousand engineers for his detachment, plus a second pip on his collar, and as for Ambassador Drake, well, Starfleet is taking over diplomatic operations given the complex situation with the Klingons, and Michael has agreed, in light of this, to don the uniform once more so he can continue the work he started.”

Commodore Agarwal, the head of their Corps of Engineers detachment, would now be a Rear Admiral, and Michael Drake would be putting his pips, the pips of a full Admiral, back on. “This place is going to be mighty packed with admirals…” Rear Admiral Grayson chuckled. Hardly the backwater it’d once been. “Not that I’m complaining, of course. Michael and Amit are absolutely stellar to work with, some of the best in the biz.”

“Oh yeah… about that whole admirals thing…” Fleet Admiral Reyes said with a twinkle in her eye. “There’s just one more thing.” 

She reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a small felt box. She then popped it open to reveal a pair of silver bars with three pips affixed to each. 

“Alexander Cillian Grayson,” Fleet Admiral Reyes then continued, her voice growing far more serious and official than before. “By order of the Commander-in-Chief of Starfleet and with the consent of the uniformed services committee of the Federation Council, it is my honor, on this day, January 1, 2402, to promote you to the rank of Vice Admiral.”

For a moment, Alexander Grayson just stood there, stunned. Nothing he had done in the last year seemed worthy of such recognition. Not that such recognition was even something he sought. But he could look at this as a down payment for the future? Slowly, he reached out his hand and accepted the box. “I… I am honored.” 

“Wear them proudly, Vice Admiral,” Fleet Admiral Reyes smiled as she watched him replace the pips that’d been on his collar. “You’ve more than earned them.”

Beneath them, the party continued unabated.