With warp drive restored and long-range sensors and communications online, Ulysses gets a better idea of iocal space. The dim, sparsely-starred night sky beyond Boyajian's Star's heliopause opens up in all directions: it is an expanse of near-black. The crew of the Ulysses names it's first galactic megastructure in this frontier: Boyajian's Desert. Estimations of its size stretch beyond long-range sensors and it appears Boyajian's Star is somewhere near the middle of the vast expanse.
Resources within the Star Desert increasingly paint a bleak, ancient picture: there is no dilithium, water is sparse and much of the free-hydrogen has been depleted. Ripples in subspace suggest a massive star must have gone supernova billions of years ago- there may be a black hole somewhere in the region. But tthe Ulysses discovers that the Night is not empty: sentient beings live within this expanse.