Admiral Vance sends the Discovery to stop Tarka and Book because it is the only ship fast enough to catch up with them. But he assigns another officer to the mission, who is authorized to carry out his orders in case Captain Burnham's judgment was compromised. This officer turns out to be Commander Nhan. Tarka and Book are hiding inside a rogue planet to assemble the isolytic weapon. They don't notice that a cloaked shuttle with Rhys, Bryce, Saru and Culber is approaching until a new autonomous defense system that Tarka has installed sounds an alarm and encases the shuttle in programmable matter that begins to break it apart. Owosekun manages to beam the crew out in the nick of time. Tarka and Booker find the tracker that gave away their position, disable it and jump away. Burnham orders to follow them, assuming they are heading for the DMA. Nhan reveals that, in case the attempt to apprehend Book and Tarka should fail, her orders are to target a weak spot on Book's ship that would lead to a chain reaction in the spore drive. Burnham, however, argues that there has to be a middle ground, and they agree that it is only a final resort. Tarka finishes the weapon, whereas Owosekun finds the subspace rift inside the DMA where the controller is located. The two ships keep jumping around the device and exchange warning shots until Tarka fires a full torpedo spread on the Discovery. Burnham is expected to give the order to destroy the other vessel when Stamets reports that it will still take 154 hours until the boronite in this sector is depleted, meaning that there is still time left until inhabited worlds are threatened again. Burnham takes a shuttle to convince Book to stand down. He agrees, but Tarka beams the isolytic weapon directly into the controller and detonates it. Both ships jump away to escape from the blast. The DMA collapses. Tarka desperately searches for the energy source of the DMA, but it has to be out of reach, at the far end of the wormhole. Not much later, a new DMA appears in the place of the old one.

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