Were here to make you a proposal, Tarrant explained. One weve already made to Mr Bashir here. It was his idea to bring you in on this, by the way. I hardly need tell you that things havent been going well for the Three Star Alliance lately.

If by not going well, said Megan, you mean the Accord bent us over and ass-fucked us with the terms of their new treaty, then Id be inclined to agree with you.

Now its my turn to embarrass you, said Tarrant. I heard all about what you did at Kappa 659. Youre halfway to being a legend yourself, after the way you bypassed that blockade.

Kjregrnnesteds First Families had made their fortune financing long-range expeditions after the ShoalEmissary war inadvertently opened the galaxy up to humankind. One of those expeditions had discovered Kjregrnnested as well as Alyeska and Al-Jahar, all three of them habitable worlds orbiting stars that were separated from each other by no more than a few light years.

Some amongst those same families had dreamed of creating a society based on their own values, one that reflected the pioneer spirit they believed necessary to the survival of the species out there in the wider galaxy. These three colonies soon signed a treaty, forming the Three Star Alliance, just a few short years after the Accord an interstellar polity comprising not only humanity but a number of neighbouring species had also come into existence.

The discovery of Meridian ruins beneath the kilometres-deep layer of ice covering much of Alyeskas surface had been rapidly followed by the further discovery of a derelict Shoal coreship out in the depths of interstellar space, no more than three light years from Al-Jahar. That abandoned, world-sized starship proved to contain an even more fabulous prize, one whose value could not be measured: a cache of dozens of undamaged nova drives, enough to allow the Alliance to build its own independent fleet of starships. In one stroke, the Alliance had thus gained the potential to challenge the growing economic and political power of the Accord.

But as the Accord grew in strength, it introduced more and more stringent regulations regarding the use of nova drives including those recovered from the said coreship.

Megan was far from unsympathetic to the Accords fear that these nova drives might be used as weapons if they fell into the wrong hands. Indeed, the conflict between the Emissaries and the Shoal had shown just how destructive the devices could be, for in just a few short years the two rival empires had laid waste to vast swathes of the Perseus Arm.

But where she and many others chose to differ was regarding the assumption that the nova drives would be automatically safer under the Accords control.