Deep in space, in a pocket of the galaxy that no human cartographer had ever charted, a meeting was being held.
Not on the Ark. Not by the EDF. Not by the Coalition of Planetary Defense, that body humanity had assembled with great fanfare and considerable diplomatic pressure over the past century, inviting every species within signal range to sit at a table they had built, in a station they had built, under terms they had written.
This meeting had different furniture.
