Inez cleared his throat and leaned forward. They’d already decided the bad news was best coming from him.

‘What I’m about to tell you,’ he began, addressing Kaur and Fairhurst in particular, ‘was known to only a very select group until a few days ago. About fifteen years ago, a standard unmanned reconnaissance of the outer Kepler system stumbled across the first evidence of advanced alien intelligence.’

Fowler watched for any signs betraying that either man might know more than he should. Fairhurst simply looked stunned, but Kaur, before reacting, hesitated just a moment too long to be quite convincing.

The CTC network map was replaced by an image of an irregularly shaped lump of rock, the swirling atmosphere of a gas giant visible behind it. The only thing that suggested it was anything other than a typical fragment of stellar detritus was the gleam of burnished metal dotted about its cratered surface.

‘Specifically, we found an abandoned space station,’ Inez continued. ‘Inside was a wormhole gate connecting to a network of thousands of other wormhole gates that may have been in existence for .well, billions of years. The network also appears to extend across what might be billions of light-years. We’ve been exploring it for some time, and we’ve made some interesting discoveries.’

Understatement of the century, reckoned Fowler.

‘We’ve had research and exploration teams investigating the network ever since,’ continued Inez. ‘We call the hypothetical aliens who built the network “Founders”, for want of a better name. We don’t know what they looked like, where they came from, or whether they even constituted a single species or more than one. If they left any written records – or records of any kind – we haven’t found them yet. All we have are the wormhole gates they left behind and a few recovered artefacts.’

Fairhurst uttered a strangled sound, glancing between Inez and Fowler. ‘Captain Inez,’ he finally managed to say, ‘with all due respect, assuming any of this is true – and I’m not convinced you aren’t pulling my leg – I’m struggling to understand why something like this wasn’t already known to me.’

Inez started to reply, but Fowler cut in, instead.

‘Marcus, we both report to the same people, but not to each other. We’ve managed to keep a very tight lid on this for a long time, and we did it by not sharing information unless it was absolutely necessary. It’s not like there haven’t been rumours for years.’

Fairhurst pursed his lips, clearly unsatisfied. ‘Crackpot rumours, you mean. Are you suggesting that, with our involvement, this information would have been less secure?’ he demanded, his tone noticeably sharp.

‘That decision wasn’t made lightly,’ Fowler replied, ‘nor was it made in isolation. It was deemed strictly need-to-know, all the way to the top.’

‘You mentioned artefacts,’ said Kaur. ‘Are these samples of alien technology?’