Sonya’s job description rarely included such tasks as first contact procedures. That was left to ships of exploration, like her first posting on the Enterprise. They came through, initiated protocols or not, made a tangle of things or not, and then moved on to the next mission while the diplomatic corps or S.C.E. (or both!) moved in to clean up after them.

She felt fairly certain, however, that most of those protocols did not involve staring at each other over drawn weapons. Wars could begin that way. And had.

Fortunately, this S’eth did not appear to harbor a grudge. Just the opposite.

“Once again, I wish to apologize, Commander, for your reception.” S’eth had greenish black scales from the leading edge of his blunt-nosed face to his coral-tipped tail. His chest scales were smaller and lighter, almost an emerald green. He rested back on a thick coil, his legs propping himself up on either side. It made him look smaller than he actually was, nearly a head and a half shorter than Sonya. “Your matter transference beam caught us by surprise.”

The Resaurian certainly sounded apologetic. A discreet glance at Rennan Konya, who shrugged and then nodded, confirmed that the Betazoid at least felt comfortable with the alien’s contrite attitude. Rennan went back to intently studying some scorch markings on a nearby wall.

For her part, Sonya was simply relieved to be out of the bulky environmental suits now that they had ascertained that the Resaurians breathed Class-M atmosphere. She glanced around the operations center where Tev had inserted her team. Panels with actual keystroke pads lay open with jury-rigged components bleeding out onto the metal decking everywhere. Lights flashed on monitors here and there. Most screens had large dark spaces that again told of age and neglect—or maybe just of an inability to repair. More than a few bulkheads and workstation hatches had carbon score marks that might have been from ruptured systems, and sloppy welds could be counted by the dozen, as if the Resaurians had been learning repair procedures as they went.

Only the main viewer seemed to work perfectly, looking out of the photon sphere. High above, the universe was compacted into a small circle of stars surrounded by bands of blue-shifted light that marked each progressive Einstein Ring.

The rest of the “sky” was dark. Nothingness.

Checking on her team, Sonya saw Corsi and Vinx standing together, talking, shoulder to shoulder and facing opposite directions so that one of them had full view of half the bridge at all times. Fabian crawled halfway into a large, darkened workstation, and Pattie inspected a welded door that looked as if it once fronted the opening for a lift of some type. Lense ran intense scans of one of the Resaurians, pausing every few seconds to recalibrate her tricorder. Of the thousand survivors who S’eth assured them still remained on the station, they had so far seen perhaps twenty. In singles and small groups they wandered in, offering a hand and answering any questions put to them.

Caught by surprise or not, the Resaurians cooperated with great eagerness now.

“Your shields were designed for transporters to penetrate easily,” she noted. “I would have thought that our arrival method would be quite common.”

“It was. It was. Once upon a time. But we haven’t had such an occurrence, well, in decades.”

Decades! “How long have you been trapped here?” she asked.

“A lifetime, it seems.” S’eth scratched behind his right shoulder, picking loose a scrap of dried skin that had been wedged in between some of his scales. He tasted the air, black eyes gazing about the bridge. “How long depends greatly on the time dilation, of course.”

Of course. Decades to the Resaurians trapped within this station could, objectively, translate to centuries outside of the black hole’s influence. How much time was her team losing, right now, separated from the da Vinci? “I don’t suppose a Federation star-date would help?”

“Not unless you can translate it into the time it takes Resaurus to orbit its sun,” S’eth rasped.

“Without the da Vinci’s computers, I’m afraid not. Fabian,” she called over to her tactical systems specialist, “any luck?”

“Nothing,” Fabian told her, head still stuck inside the cavernous workstation. He pulled back out, squatted against the station’s corner, and laid his head back against a nonfunctioning keypad. “This is all local station comms. I can’t find a subspace transmitter here. I’m not even certain how they sent their distress call.”

Sonya looked to S’eth. “Much of this station was automated,” he explained. “We have retaken manual control over as much as we dare.”

“And your subspace communications?” she asked.

“On a lower deck, I imagine. It was never a part of the main operating systems.”

Sonya couldn’t put her finger on why she thought the Resaurian had just hedged on the truth. It simply felt not quite right. Either way, it was damn strange.

“Can we triangulate on the transmission?”

Fabian kicked his tricorder, sitting on the deck, all but forgotten. “Useless. Or damn close. The shields around this station have a dampening effect on this side. It limits the range and effectiveness of our best equipment. Which is likely why we lost communications.” Fabian exhaled sharply. “And transporter lock.”

With no comms and no emergency beam-out after two minutes, Sonya and the rest of her team had already come to that conclusion. “Pattern enhancers?” she asked.

“Still need a basic site-to-site signal.” He nodded toward where Pattie had already set up the pattern enhancers around a clear section of deck. Vinx’s combadge, donated to the cause, rested in the exact center. “On the off chance that Tev somehow manages to work around that shortcoming, we’ve recorded a status update that will help us coordinate a rescue.” There was no talk of if a rescue would be made. Only when.

Sonya had good people under her. They took quite a bit on faith, which was unusual for by-the-math engineers.

“Can we drop the shields?” she asked as Rennan and Lense walked up to join the small gathering. “That would give Tev his chance. We can easily absorb the radiation, can’t we?”

“For a time,” Lense said, nodding, but S’eth disagreed.

“Cannot be done. Our shields work in conjunction with our gravitational anchor. We drop our shields, and the Demon swallows us.”

Which Sonya translated as a complete loss of integrity as the black hole’s tidal forces ripped the station apart. “Poor engineering design,” she stated bluntly.

“Or a very good fail-safe,” Rennan said, not the least bit surprised, apparently, to hear about the integrated systems. “If you never want the station, or its inhabitants, to see the light of day again.”

“What are you saying?” Sonya inhaled sharply, turned on S’eth. “This station, and all aboard her, were sunk into the gravity well intentionally? With no way out?”

S’eth hesitated, then nodded. “That would be the case, Commander.”

“Why?”

S’eth did not appear to want to say. Embarrassed or disgruntled, Sonya wasn’t sure. But Rennan Konya had the answer. The Betazoid had waved over Corsi and Vinx, who gathered in cautiously, alerted by some signal. He nodded at the Resaurian, and then let his gaze take in the half-wrecked operations center around them. “It makes perfect sense,” he told his commander, “if you are designing a prison.”