For Ripley,
my beloved feline companion of eighteen years:
requiescat in pace.
“. . . Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.”
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
The events of this story take place in early 2268, approximately two months after the end of the novel Star Trek Vanguard: Precipice and shortly before the events of the original-series episode “The Tholian Web.”