The lodge was sixty feet tall, with a gabled ceiling made of faux-redwood boards in a rich beautiful brown. The floor matched the ceiling. In front of me, a wall built with rough square slabs of gray stone housed a massive fireplace. A fire crackled within, radiating warmth. Thick timbers, stripped of their bark but left naturally round, thrust from the wall above the fireplace, supporting a narrow second story walkway. Matching wooden columns rose to the ceiling to meet thick beams.

The wall on my left was redwood and stone. The walls on my right and behind me were floor to ceiling glass, set into a faux-redwood frame. Beyond the glass lay an alien planet. A winter wonderland stretched as fast as the eye could see.

We were high up on a mountain slope under a sky smothered with pale clouds. In the distance, on the left, a white peak rose from the forest, jagged and sharp, a sign of a young mountain range. Just beyond the windows, the ground dropped, rolling to the valley below. Alien trees blanketed the steep slope. Their branches, sheathed with long, fluffy needles and coated with snow, cast blue shadows onto pristine white powder. It was one of the most perfect winter landscapes I had ever seen. You could almost hear the crunch of the snow underfoot just by looking at it.

“Where is this?” Kosandion asked.

“I don’t know. There are no artificial signals coming from this planet. No radio waves, no energy readings. When that happens, the only way to identify the location is by taking an image of the night sky and running it through a galaxy mapping unit, but I’ve never seen the stars here. It is always like this—a long blue winter under an overcast sky.”

Theoretically, we could get a small craft through the branch’s door and fly up past the cloud cover to capture an image of the stars, but it would be dangerous and there was no need for it.

Kosandion crossed his arms and gazed out the window. He’d traded his Sovereign robe for a two-piece outfit that reminded me of the stylish Senator-wear designs from Nigeria: narrow hunter green pants and a matching shirt with an asymmetric hem that ended almost at his knees. The Senator shirts tended to be cut a little loose, while Kosandion’s tunic, embellished with the Dominion’s geometric embroidery, was perfectly tailored to accentuate the breadth of his shoulders and his narrow waist.

Kosandion’s body looked elegant, but his face looked troubled. It wasn’t his expression, it was in the eyes, a kind of weary introspective distance.

“How much trouble will Vercia’s mess cause you?” I asked.

“More than I would’ve preferred,” he said. “The Muterzen fleet is an immediate threat, but the Murder Beaks should keep them occupied. Still, contingency measures must be implemented.”

“What about her family? Will they make things difficult?”