Buffer Zone

Any future history series has an indefinite number of potential spin-off series. Star Trek has become a future history because it covers more than one generation. Years ago, in Waterstones Bookshop, I came across a paperback novel, title and author's name long forgotten, which was the opening volume of a series about a Klingon Bird of Prey Commander. Does anyone know whether this Bird of Prey still flies?

One sentence in Poul Anderson's Technic History suggests a comparable spin-off:

"Desai had worked in regions that faced Betelgeuse and, across an unclaimed and ill-explored buffer zone, the Roidhunate of Merseia."

-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 3, p. 82.

OK. A Terran Navy special forces team works in the buffer zone where it explores, establishes advance bases, covertly contacts any natives that have not yet been contacted by Merseia and spies on any that have been. The Merseians maintain a similar force, not necessarily all of their own species, although we know that they have no Chereionites to spare.

What would it be like for intelligence species to live in such a zone? Such a series could have legs.