“We are not what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
~Kurt Vonnegut

The USS Adroit, under Commander Aric Thorne, intercepts Consortium chatter implicating Cinder in a smuggling network linked to falsified manifests and Romulan cooperation. As Thorne follows the thread, he confronts a shadow from his past and a traitor buried within their ranks.