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Above the holo display a bar of text identified him as Admiral Chiangul. He looked to be of Chinese descent, but there was no way of knowing with Confederates, who were all geners from birth. Chiangul’s tangerine eyes were a dead giveaway that he was not natural-born.
     
    The wonders of socialism, Alexander thought—everyone gets to live forever and pick exotic eye colors for their children. Perfect equality. It was a tried-and-failed system made to work by tampering with human nature itself.
     
    “Admiral Flores,” Chiangul said. “The Confederacy is not on speaking terms with the Alliance, so I trust that you will make this brief.” The Confederate Admiral spoke to them in English rather than Chinese—a not-so-subtle way of proving his superiority. He’d learned his enemy’s tongue, but the same could not be said for the majority of Alliance officers.
     
    Admiral Flores smiled and inclined her head to him. “Nín hǎo, Admiral,” she replied. “I’ll keep it very brief, don’t worry. We couldn’t help but notice that your fleet’s current heading will ultimately bring it into restricted Alliance space.”
     
    Chiangul’s tangerine eyes narrowed to paper-thin slits. “We are investigating a spacial anomaly. There are no known Alliance stations along our flight path—unless you’re trying to tell me that you have an unregistered territorial claim somewhere in deep space?”
     
    “That is exactly what I am saying, Mr. Chiangul. In about one hundred million kilometers you will stumble straight into Lewis Station. It’s a deep-space research post.”
     
    “Ah, research. That is interesting. Then you must be studying the wormhole phenomenon?”
     
    Alexander heard a few of his crew gasp, and he noticed Commander Korbin glance his way. A wormhole? she mouthed to him.
     
    He gave no reply. She wasn’t authorized to know about the Looking Glass yet, although something told him operational security was about to be blown wide open.
     
    There was a distinct several-second pause on Admiral Flores’ end of the comm. It looked as though her transmission had frozen, but Alexander suspected the delay was deliberate. Flores had to be conferring with someone, and she didn’t want the Confederates to see or overhear.
     
    “Admiral Flores?” Chiangul asked, looking impatient. “If you are having technical difficulties, please do not waste our time.”
     
    The video transmission unfroze a moment later, with Flores standing a few inches to the left of where she had been before. She shook her head. “My apologies, Mr. Chiangul, we were indeed having technical difficulties. As for the wormhole phenomenon you mentioned, we created it, and that is in fact the nature of our research at Lewis Station.”
     
    More gasps rose from the Lincoln’s crew. This was all highly classified information, but the part about creating the wormhole was a lie.
     
    “You have created a stable wormhole?”
     
    “Yes, though it is not yet traversable.”
     
    “I do not believe you,” Chiangul replied. “Your technology is not sufficiently advanced to create such a thing. We know what the Alliance can and cannot do. This is one of the cannots.”
     
    “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you have been misled. Regardless, the Alliance is filing a retroactive territorial claim as we speak. That claim will be effective long before you arrive, and as per the terms of the Space and ExtraTerrestrial Colonies Treaty, section four, sub-section D, the Alliance is formally requesting that you turn your fleet around, or at least alter its trajectory to avoid passing through registered Alliance space. We will happily send you the coordinates of our claim prior to its official registry in order to facilitate your course corrections.”
     
    It was Admiral Chiangul’s turn for technical difficulties, and fully thirty seconds passed before his image unfroze. When it did, he was gone. The man who took his place was none other than the