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For those who dare to do what others say can’t be done

Historian’s Note

The events of this story take place in late 2269, a few months after the events of Star Trek: Seekers #2, Point of Divergence, and five months after the Enterprise’s mission to Camus II (Star Trek: The Original Series, “Turnabout Intruder”).

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

—Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future

1

The universe was about to give up one of its most closely held secrets, and Doctor Pren Kavalas swore by his cranial fins he wouldn’t miss a moment of this historic breakthrough. He kept his left eye on the bank of status gauges for the quantum variance field, his middle eye on the monitors for the remotely located quantum fluctuation generator, and his right eye on his colleagues, to make sure they were giving this moment as much of their attention as he was. He had labored too long to leave even the smallest details to chance. Not when he was so close.

For their parts, Doctor Nobixu Guentheri and Professor Zehgos Poal seemed as engrossed in their assigned tasks as Kavalas was in his. Like Kavalas, Guentheri was a specialist in dark energy research, though her achievements in the field to that point had been more theoretical than practical. Her insights had been vital to the conception of the QFG, even if she had proved less than instrumental in the hands-on aspects of the project. That, after all, was why they had enlisted the aid of the renowned Professor Poal. Unlike many members of academia, he excelled at putting ideas into action and extracting concrete results from fanciful inventions.

Tonight, the three of them would rewrite the rules of science.

Kavalas tried to affect a neutral tone, but despite his efforts, his voice trembled with excitement. “Doctor Guentheri? Are the flux levels within the expected range?”

“So far.” She adjusted the settings on her console. “But the amplitude is increasing.”

Troubled by her report, Kavalas checked his master gauges. Just as Guentheri had said, the highs and lows of the quantum field fluctuations were becoming more pronounced.

“Professor, reduce the power to the QFG. We need to stabilize the variance field.”

“Reducing power.” Poal worked quickly. His hands’ slender digits were stiff, slow, and wrinkled, robbed of their supple grace by time’s relentless march but still capable of coaxing precision results from all manner of machines. He stopped and looked at Kavalas. “The system isn’t responding. Power output from the QFG is continuing to increase.”

Not a malfunction, not now. Like most Austarans, Pren Kavalas wasn’t superstitious; he took pride in his rationality, his logic, and his intellect. But fear drove him to pray to the mythical Sea Mother his people had worshiped eons ago. Please, not now.

Setbacks were a part of science. He knew that. But he and his partners were in a race to set the future for their people. Their rivals at the Gemakis Foundation were working on a system for magnetically harnessing the energy released from the mutual annihilation of deuterium and antideuterium. It had shown promise, though Kavalas had been vocal in his criticism of its need for a constant supply of antimatter, a limitation that called into question its practicality as a power source. By contrast, his research into dark energy had suggested the possibility of tapping into an effectively unlimited, ubiquitous supply of free cosmic power. If he could make the quantum fluctuation generator work, not only would it revolutionize the mass production of energy for everyone on Anura, it would transform the Austarans into a starfaring civilization in less than decade. After that, the entire galaxy would be open to them.

Assuming he and his collaborators could rein in their runaway generator.

“Cut the mains,” Kavalas said. “Bring the disruptor coils online.”

Poal reacted first. “Shutting off main power.”

Guentheri scrambled to throw emergency switches. “Activating disruptor coils.”

If everything worked as designed, the sudden loss of main power would leave only a residual quantum variance field around the QFG, and a quick pulse from the disruptor coils would disperse the effect and restore the system to its neutral state. Kavalas watched the digital readouts on the master console stutter with gibberish and machine-language symbols for a few seconds. When the displays stabilized, the story they told was not one he wanted to see.

“Why is the variance field still intact?”

His peers pressed in close to his back and watched over his shoulders, their jaws agape, as the data on his screens trended in the wrong direction. The professor pointed at the gauges. “The bigger question is: Why is it increasing?”

It shouldn’t have been possible, but Kavalas watched it happen. The quantum fluctuation generator was cut off from its power inputs, and its output was being blocked by the coils—yet the quantum variance field was increasing in strength and size, as if neither precaution had been put into effect. In defiance of the system’s safeguards and all the known laws of physics, the generator had become not just self-sustaining but self-expanding.

A warbling croak of horror resonated inside Guentheri’s delicate vocal sac, which trembled beneath her tapered jaw. “I was afraid of this, Pren. The threshold for critical stability in the quantum membrane must have been lower than we calculated.”

Kavalas clutched anxiously at the pale silver fabric of his work tunic. “That can’t be right, Nobi. We ran all those simulations, checked all the equations—”

“There were always variables we couldn’t guarantee,” she cut in. “I told you that.”

Dread and regret mingled in Kavalas’s stomach. “Nobi, please tell me we’re not looking at a worst-case scenario.”

She rolled her narrow shoulders. “We won’t know until . . .” Her voice trailed off as her three eyes bulged in alarm. Kavalas and Poal pivoted toward the master control panel. All its readouts had gone dark. Fear took hold of Kavalas as he leapt to the console and started keying commands into every interface, in the hope that one of them would respond.

Poal was nervous as he sidled up to him. “We lost contact with the QFG, didn’t we?”

“Yes.” Kavalas ceased his efforts. With both hands flat on his console, he hunched forward in exhaustion. After taking a moment to compose himself, he straightened and pulled his personal comm from a pocket on the inside of his tunic. “Keep trying to shut it down, any way you can.” He tapped commands into his comm’s touchscreen. “I need to call the tribune and tell her we might have just unleashed a global catastrophe that will kill us all.”

2

Eyes fixed on his target, Captain Clark Terrell swung the club with grave precision. Its bulbous head struck the dimpled white ball and, with a satisfying thwack, launched it into a lazy arc that carried it more than two hundred meters across the verdant plains.

“Now, that’s what I call a drive! Wouldn’t you say, Crewman?”

Torvin stood a few meters behind him, his expression blank, his shoulders drooped under the burden of Terrell’s bag of golf clubs. He answered in a low monotone, “Nice shot, sir.”

“Thank you.” He lobbed the driver back to the slight-of-frame young Tiburonian, who caught it and tucked it back into the bag with the other clubs.

Terrell took a deep breath. The air on this as-yet-unnamed planet smelled crisp and clean, and its daytime sky was just a few shades more violet than Earth’s but just as lovely when dotted with ragged clouds. Light from its yellow star beat down, warm and almost familiar. Invigorated, he set off through the field of ankle-tall grass in pursuit of his ball.

“I think we’ve earned this,” Terrell said. “Don’t you, Torvin?”

A muffled grunt of exertion. “If you say so, sir.”

“You sound winded, son.”

“I just wish we could’ve used one of the rovers.”

“Well, they had work to do. Besides, half the point of golf is to get some exercise.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a point to golf.”

He chalked up the enlisted man’s sour mood to fatigue and let it pass unremarked. As pleasant a world as this was, for most of the crew of the Starfleet scout ship Sagittarius, this was a working vacation from space, at best. Most of the tiny Archer-class starship’s fourteen-person crew had enjoyed the uneventful week they had spent parked on the surface. All three of their field scouts were deployed on various assignments, as was the ship’s science officer. So far, all the samples they had gathered and analyzed had suggested this world would be an ideal candidate for a future Federation-sponsored colony.

But all that Terrell cared about on this balmy afternoon was strolling over grass with the top half of his olive green jumpsuit open to catch the breeze, admiring the view of distant, snowcapped mountains, and indulging in the occasional, cathartic swatting of a golf ball.

He strode through a gully between two gentle knolls and stared at the ground until he found his ball. “Here we are. Now, where to go next?”

Every direction offered new wonders. To the north, a field speckled with bright flowers. To the west, a downhill slope that led to a meandering stream. In the east, some huge local fungi that resembled ten-meter-tall shiitake mushrooms. Instinct and a nostalgic longing for the fishing holes of his youth drew Terrell’s gaze westward. “Which club should I use, Torvin?”

Torvin parroted the choice Terrell had made the last twelve times he had asked him this rhetorical question. “The driver, sir?”

“Good choice, Crewman. The driver, please.”

A disgruntled sigh, then Torvin lugged the bag to Terrell and handed him the driver. The engineer backed away to give the captain room for his backswing.

Terrell lined up his shot and drew the club back, in a high curve above his head—

His communicator beeped twice, fouling his swing. He sliced the shot off into a stand of skinny trees with blue foliage. He grumbled for a few seconds before he lifted his communicator from his waist pocket and flipped open its golden antenna grille. “This is Terrell.”

The ship’s second officer, Lieutenant Commander Sorak, replied with arch dryness, “Do forgive the interruption, Captain. Sensors have detected energy readings I think you should see.”

“Are they from the planet’s surface?”

“Negative, sir. From a nearby star system.”

That was a surprise. “Must be quite a powerful reading.”

“Yes, sir. And it’s as intense as it is unusual. Can you return to the ship to discuss it?”

“I’ll be there shortly. Terrell out.” He closed the communicator, put it away, and tossed his driver back to Torvin. “Leave it to duty to spoil a nice walk.”

“Pretty sure the golf did that,” Torvin muttered, tucking away the club.

“Pardon me, Crewman?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Just for that, you get to go find my ball.”

•   •   •

Fragrances subtle and sweet wafted from the flowers that surrounded Lieutenant Commander Vanessa Theriault. She was lying on her belly at the crest of a small hill, her green jumpsuit blending into the grass, her dark red hair—tinted this week with streaks of purple and white—quite at home among blooms of vibrant crimson and orange.

Through a handheld holographic scope, she observed a herd of graceful, spiral-horned quadrupeds that grazed in a vale on the other side of the hill. Those that weren’t nibbling the grass gamboled and pranced. To the former science officer’s trained eye, the adult members of the herd seemed to be engaged in courting behavior, while the younglings were fiercely at play.

They’re so beautiful! I love their stripe patterns. I wonder if—

Lieutenant Faro Dastin shattered the illusion of bucolic peace by shouting up the hill from behind her, “You know I left the meter running, right?”

On the far side of the hill, the herd bolted from Dastin’s voice, leaving Theriault nothing to admire but the tufted tails on their rumps. She switched off her scope, got up, and walked back down the hill. By the time she reached Dastin, who leaned with crossed arms against the Sagittarius’s high-speed rover, Blitzen, she had shifted her mental gears from her former role of science officer to her current role as first officer.

She confronted the cocky Trill field scout, who stood a head taller than her. “Dastin, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“Sorry, did I scare your sheep?”

“They were more like gazelles, but that’s not important now. What did I tell you before I went up the hill?”

“To stay here.”

“I also told you to stay quiet.”

He scratched absentmindedly at his bearded chin. “Hm. I don’t recall that.”

The urge to throttle him welled up from some dark place deep inside her. She suppressed it and took a few seconds to collect herself before she continued. “I was hoping to put this off until we’d finished the survey and started back, but I guess now’s as good a time as any.” She looked him in the eye. “Do you know why I made you my driver today?”

An idiot’s grin. “You felt the need for speed?”

Decorum forbade her from replying, Because I wanted to bring you someplace I could dispose of your body and be sure it would never be found.

“No, Dastin. I need you to stop acting like an ass.”

He recoiled in what looked like honest surprise. “I’m sorry—what?”

“You’ve been mouthing off to me in front of the crew ever since Terrell made me the XO, and I’m sick of it. I know we play fast and loose with ranks and formalities on this boat, but we still have a chain of command. I don’t make a habit of pulling rank, but if you don’t secure your lip I’ll do it for you.”

“Really? How, exactly, would you secure my lip?”

She furrowed her brow in anger and confusion. “Are you sassing me, or hitting on me?”

“Definitely not hitting on you, sir.”

“How can I be sure of that?”

An innocent shrug. “You’re not my type.”

“Smart and confident?”

His brow wrinkled, as if the next detail should have been obvious. “Female.”

“Ah. Okay.” She let that sink in. “So, am I to understand that you’re just being a pain in my ass for the entertainment value?”

He nodded jauntily. “Pretty much.”

“Then mind your step, Lieutenant. I know where you sleep.”

“Like I said, sir, I don’t swing that way.”

“You must like your grave deep, ’cause you don’t know when to stop digging.”

A rakish smirk. “Sure I do. I always stop right before I hit a court-martial.”

“Don’t be so sure.” She lifted open the rover’s passenger-side front door. “Get back in the rover. I want to finish the survey before it gets dark.”

“As you command.” He circled the front of the all-terrain vehicle, got in, and pulled the gull-wing door closed behind him. He looked at her. “This is about Starbase Twelve, isn’t it?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“That Efrosian bartender? In the officers’ club?”

“What about him?”

“You thought he was hitting on you. Then he ditched you.”

“He was totally hitting on me.”

A pained frown and a shake of his head. “I don’t think so.”

“What makes you so—” She read the hidden meaning in his look of feigned remorse. Despite her best efforts to remain stoic, she felt her face tense into a scowl.

“Stop shoveling and drive.”

•   •   •

Rough, icy wind buffeted the rocky face of the mountain and stirred dust around the feet of Lieutenant Sengar Hesh. The science officer perched at the edge of a narrow outcropping of jagged rock, holding his tricorder over the edge with one hand. Oscillating tones from the device were drowned out by the peak’s wintry gale. Hesh leaned back and reviewed his scans of the exposed cliff face below him. It contained numerous strata of vivid stone and sediment, from which he had gleaned a trove of data about the planet’s geological history.

Remarkable! Who says that stones cannot speak? They tell me all their secrets.

He pivoted to share his findings with engineer Karen Cahow, his travel companion for the day. The young human woman stood with her arms raised and rocked back and forth, from one foot to the other. A gust of cold air tousled her hay bale of hair. She met Hesh’s quizzical stare with her blue eyes wide, beaming with the thrill of discovery. “It’s just so weird!”

He wondered if this was an affectation peculiar to humans. As an Arkenite and a relative newcomer to the larger universe beyond his homeworld, Hesh often found himself at a loss to explain the behaviors of some of his shipmates on the Sagittarius. “What do you find odd?”

She became almost giddy. “Real gravity.” Her swaying became more exaggerated. “I never get used to it. It’s just so . . . consistent!” A lean too far knocked her off-balance, and she ceased her clumsy solo dance with the planet. “Don’t you notice the difference?”

“I do. Though I don’t know that I have ever reveled in it to such a degree as you do.” He ducked under his tricorder’s strap and slung it at his side, against his parka. “Is your fascination with natural gravity wells a product of your upbringing in space?”

“Probably.” She knelt down and picked up a small rock. “On a ship, you learn the quirks of its artificial gravity fields. Where they taper off, where they curve, where they intersect. Once you get a feel for them, you can find your way around blindfolded, just by feeling the shifts in the AG. But on a planet?” She hurled the rock at the mountain. It caromed off the tower of stone above them, bounced over the ledge, then plummeted into the misty abyss. “Consistent.”

Hesh watched the stone vanish into the foggy depths until vertigo compelled him to step back and adjust his anlac’ven, a slender headset that helped Arkenites, who had built their civilization on platforms in the open sea, maintain their equilibrium in other environments.

Cahow patted his back. “You okay? You look a little green in the gills.”

“My species does not possess gills.”

“It’s just a saying. It means you look queasy.”

The adjustments to his anlac’ven took effect, and he stood taller as his dizziness passed. “I am fine. But thank you for asking.”

He still found it odd, the casual familiarity that governed relationships between the ship’s commissioned officers and its enlisted personnel. However, he had come to accept it by thinking of his shipmates not in terms of their ranks or billets but as fellow members of a small but elite sia lenthar, the fundamental social bond group of Arkenite society. Within the sia lenthar, they all had their own responsibilities, but they were also kin.

A shriek of bracing wind slashed between them, fluttering his jacket and whipping her hair. Once it abated, he pointed at the mountain’s peak. “I need to collect ice samples from the summit. I will understand if you wish to return to the ship rather than continue the ascent.”

She pulled up the hood of her parka and cinched it tight around her face. “Lead on.”

“Are you sure? The higher we go, the colder it will get.”

A fervent nod of confirmation. “I know. Still beats going back to the ship.”

He trudged upward through knee-deep snow. “I thought you liked being on the ship.”

“No, I like being inside the ship.” She plodded up the slope at his side. “Threx and the Master Chief like being on the ship—and that’s what I want to avoid.”

Hesh was unable to decode the significance of Cahow’s selectively emphasized prepositions. “Forgive me, but I don’t understand what you mean.”

She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, Hesh. You’re happier not knowing.”

•   •   •

The chief engineer of the Sagittarius, Master Chief Petty Officer Mike “Mad Man” Ilucci, folded his hands behind his head. “I’m telling you, Threx. This is the life.”

“You can say that again, Master Chief.” Petty Officer First Class Salagho Threx was lying a few meters away from Ilucci, his long arms splayed at his sides with palms facing up.

The two men had a lot in common. Both were unmarried, heavyset, hirsute engineers. Both were noncommissioned officers. And at the moment, both were stark naked and lying on top of the ship’s oval primary hull, soaking up a well-earned dose of afternoon sun. If not for the dramatic, serpentine facial ridges and longitudinal cranial crevice that identified the taller, brawnier Threx as a Denobulan, a casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking the two men were brothers.

Even with his eyes closed, Ilucci knew the sun was shining down from a cloudless sky because of the intense crimson glow through his eyelids. Muscle memory guided his hand to his thermos, which was filled with a blend of iced tea, lemonade, and contraband vodka. He twisted off the cap, downed a swig of the sweet beverage, then spun the cap back into place.

True downtime was rare during a deployment. In all of Ilucci’s nearly three decades of service in Starfleet, he could count on one hand the number of times he had been able to kick back and just relax when he wasn’t officially on leave.

Aboard a ship, there was always something to do, even when all systems seemed to be working perfectly. Routine maintenance. Filing reports. Reading other people’s reports. Reviewing new manuals and scientific literature. Cleaning. Making sure other people did their fair share of cleaning. Updating duty rosters. Revising the duty rosters when someone else’s problems inevitably fouled them. Arbitrating disputes between subordinates. Escalating the conflict resolution protocol to the next step up the chain of command when people failed to heed good advice. And, when there was nothing else that needed doing, there was always a standing order to paint a bulkhead or seal microfissures in the hull.

It was a mantra drilled into cadets and recruits alike during Starfleet basic training: If it’s broken, fix it. If it’s working, fine-tune it. If it’s tuned, clean it. If it’s clean, paint it. If everything’s painted, volunteer for hull inspection. Then file a report and do your reading.

Every centimeter of the Sagittarius was working to perfection, clean as a whistle, and freshly painted. Even its hull was pristine, thanks to a recent repair and refit at Starbase 12. No matter where or how hard Ilucci had looked for busywork, he hadn’t found any.

So it was that he had ordered Threx to keep him company while he worked on his long-neglected tan. By fortunate happenstance, the ship had landed with the front of its saucer facing south, affording them the best possible angle for solar exposure.

Ilucci had just started to slip away into a daydream of basking seaside in Capri when Threx broke the spell with his rumbling baritone of a voice. “You know what’s missing?”

He was almost afraid to ask. “No. What?”

“A pool.”

“Are you serious?”

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could dive off the bow into a deep, clear pool?”

“That would be great, Threx. You volunteering to dig one?”

The fire of Threx’s enthusiasm dwindled. “Forget I said anything.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Warm breezes caressed Ilucci back toward a waking dream. A stunning Deltan woman brings him a cold margarita and a plate of hot steak tacos in soft flour tortillas, on the private beach of a tropical isle on Risa, the pleasure planet that everyone he’s met lately can’t shut up about. The bald beauty sits down beside him, hands him his drink, and smiles—

The hydraulic gasp of the topside hatch shattered his reverie. He cracked open one eye and squinted against the sunlight to see whose footsteps were thumping across the hull. As he’d feared, it was the ship’s chief surgeon, Doctor Lisa Babitz.

Ilucci covered his groin with both hands as Babitz strode toward him. Threx looked up long enough to note the doctor’s approach, but he made no effort to conceal his genitals.

Must be nice to live without nudity taboos, Ilucci thought with mild envy.

Babitz loomed over Ilucci. The tall, svelte human woman wore her blond hair in a tight beehive, and her features, though attractive, were cast in a mask of disapproval. “I take it neither of you read my advisory report concerning ultraviolet radiation exposure from this planet’s star.”

“I read it,” Ilucci said. “Good plot, but the dialogue needs work.”

He saw her anger simmer to the surface. “I hope you’ll think it’s this funny when you end up with melanoma.”

A derisive snort from Threx. “One hour in the sun won’t give us cancer.”

“Is that what your extensive medical experience tells you?” She reached into a cargo pocket on the leg of her coveralls and pulled out two cylindrical spray dispensers. “Well, just in case you’re wrong, I want you both to apply this on all exposed areas. Right now.”

She lobbed the cylinders at them—first to Threx, then to Ilucci. He lifted his hands to catch the dispenser, then blushed as he realized he had exposed himself.

Babitz rolled her eyes at his embarrassment. “Relax, Master Chief. I’m a doctor. It’s nothing I haven’t seen a thousand times before.” Self-conscious in spite of her assurance, Ilucci returned one hand to his crotch. She smirked. “Okay, gentlemen. Spray it on. That’s an order.”

The chief engineer grimaced. I hate it when the officers pull rank.

Ilucci and Threx took their time spritzing the aerosolized sunblock over their limbs and torsos. After Ilucci had finished all the places he could reach, he tossed the canister back to Babitz. “Mind doin’ my back, Doc?”

“My pleasure, Master Chief.” She waited until he turned his back to her, then she misted it from his shoulder blades to his sacroiliac. Then she made him jump by adding a zap of cool mist in a spot where he definitely hadn’t wanted any.

“I don’t think the sun shines there, Doc.”

“You know me. I like to be thorough.”

When she looked at Threx, he was already dousing his own backside and nether regions. He waved her off. “S’okay, Doc. I’m good.”

“All right, then. That should give you men about two hours of protection. Enjoy.” With a smile that was equal parts sweet and smug, she turned away, walked back to the topside hatch, and climbed back down inside the ship.

Threx and Ilucci stood facing each other, shaking like dogs fresh from a pond, trying to force the damp patches of sunblock to dry more rapidly. The engineer’s mate sighed. “Two hours of protection. Isn’t that thoughtful of her?”

As ever, it was up to Ilucci to show Threx the upside of their situation.

“Look at it this way, Threx: She did us a favor. Instead of sunning ourselves and drinking spiked tea for two hours, now we’ll just have to do it for four hours.”

A broad grin. “Yeah. I like the way you think, Master Chief.”

They settled back on the hull, hands behind their heads, to let the sun do its work.

“This is what life in Starfleet is all about,” Ilucci said. “Living dangerously.”

•   •   •

Neck and neck, they raced through the trees and brush, swatted their way through vines, hurdled over fallen tree trunks. They ran flat out, toward the promise of daylight dead ahead.

It had been a long time since Senior Chief Petty Officer Razka had met a humanoid who could keep up with him, on the ground or in the water. The lanky Saurian had always assumed that when he met his equal, it would be another reptilian, or a field scout like himself.

Instead, it was the ship’s nurse, Lieutenant Nguyen Tan Bao, who was pushing him to his limits and beyond. The human was lean and compact, but what he lacked in length of stride he made up for with stamina and agility. He dared to take riskier paths through the jungle than Razka did, because he was small enough to slip through narrower gaps.

They had left their jumpsuits, boots, and equipment inside Vixen, the ship’s amphibious rover vehicle. Barefoot in their underwear, they braved the uncertain terrain of the jungle. Razka had thought their lack of footwear would hamper Tan Bao’s mobility, since he lacked the wide, leathery feet that Saurians took for granted. Half an hour and ten kilometers through untracked wilderness later, the scout realized he had been sorely mistaken.

He can pace me on foot. Let’s see if he has the nerve to follow me over the top.

Together they burst through the jungle’s green curtain to find themselves at the top of a cliff. Without missing a step, Razka launched himself from the edge, into open air, arms wide, legs together, in perfect form for a swan dive to the deep azure lagoon thirty meters below.

His widely set eyes caught the blur of motion in the air to his left—Tan Bao had matched his daring. To Razka’s surprise, the human looked almost serene; he tumbled with languid grace in free fall. Razka saluted him with a corkscrew turn before pulling himself into a dartlike pose.

They plunged into the warm water, only a fraction of a second apart. Razka searched for Tan Bao and found the human looking back at him, grinning as he exhaled, wreathing his head in bubbles. They kicked their way back to the surface. Tan Bao swept his long black hair from his face and laughed. “That’s what I call a race, Chief!”

“Well run, sir.”

They treaded water and admired their surroundings. The ruddy cliffs that ringed the lagoon on three sides were overgrown with vines and moss; the shore on the open side was choked with flowers whose blooms seemed to comprise every hue of the visible spectrum.

Razka paddled toward the beach. “We should head back, sir.”

The pair swam to the shallows, then waded ashore. Water beaded off of Razka’s scaly hide, but it seemed to cling to Tan Bao’s bare skin. They stood and enjoyed a moment of sunlight on their shoulders and soft white sand under their feet.

The human used his hands to push the excess water off his limbs and torso. He gazed into the jungle, which was alive with the rasping music of insects, the shrieks and chattering of birds, and a symphony of croaks, hisses, and distant roars. “It really is a beautiful planet.”

A roll of clicking noises signaled Razka’s agreement. “Indeed.”

“A shame we have to let colonists come and make a mess of it.”

“Perhaps we could persuade the captain to omit this world from the log.”

A low, cynical chortle. “Wouldn’t that be nice? Our own little private retreat.”

“Maybe you should plant a flag now. Stake a claim for your retirement.”

Tan Bao grinned. “Maybe we both should.”

Razka led the lieutenant back into the jungle. “I don’t plan on retiring, sir.”

“Really? You see yourself as a lifer?”

An indifferent tilt of his head. “I’ve seen how civilians live. It’s not for me.”

“What about a home? A family?”

“I have both.” He snapped vines as he pushed ahead, blazing the trail for Tan Bao. “Sauria will always be my home. And I took a mate about ten years ago.”

The human sounded surprised. “Really?”

“Really. I have four sprogs, and a fifth hatchling incubating now.”

“Quite a brood you’ve got there.”

“Believe me, I know.” He shot a toothy grin at Tan Bao. “Why do you think I’m here?”

•   •   •

Alone. Just the idea of being on her own had filled Ensign Taryl with nervous excitement. Roaming solo through the verdant depths of an alien rainforest, she felt on the verge of bliss.

She had long since accepted the necessity of living among other people. True independence was difficult to achieve. Few people had the fortitude to grow their own food, build their own shelter, make their own tools and clothing, tend their own illnesses, and stand fast against nature’s cruel indifference without anyone else to call upon for aid. The concept of living as an island was a romantic fantasy, one for which Taryl knew she wasn’t suited.

It hadn’t stopped her from trying to isolate herself.

Given her predilection for isolation, applying to Starfleet Academy had seemed a counterintuitive choice. Her decision had been swayed by a recruiter, who had regaled her with tales of the brave Starfleet scouts who ventured into unknown space, trod the surfaces of virgin worlds, and acted autonomously for weeks at a time, far beyond the bounds of explored space. It had sounded too good to be true, but she had reasoned any career that could get her off the Orion homeworld as a free woman was worth pursuing.

The reality of her service as a Starfleet scout hadn’t proved quite so glamorous as her recruiter had promised, but it was far better than the life she had left behind. Taryl had been born without the ability to generate the pheromone that enabled an elite caste of Orion women to calm and control the brutish males of their species. Without that biochemical advantage, she had found herself relegated to the bottom rung of the social ladder, perpetually deprived of options and freedom. As one of the common folk, all she could have looked forward to on Orion was a lifetime of menial service at best, and horrific enslavement and a degrading early death at worst.

Swearing an oath of allegiance to the Federation in exchange for freedom? She’d jumped at the chance and boarded the transport to Earth without wasting time on farewells no one had cared enough to hear. She doubted anyone on Orion missed her; she knew she didn’t miss them.

Now, after months cooped up in the sterile confines of the Sagittarius, it was a delight to be back out in a wholly organic environment. The air itself felt alive. It resounded with whistles and whoops, cacklings and snaps, the bright laughter of a gurgling creek, the white noise of a waterfall. She had brought a phaser and a tricorder but hadn’t touched either in the four days since she had made her way into the primeval wilderness. Her tricorder had been set to make silent, automatic scans of all flora and fauna it sensed, leaving her hands free so she could climb over gnarled tree trunks twice her height and push through damp curtains of hanging moss.

Drawn by the sound of water, she kept to an easterly heading. She stopped just shy of venturing past the tree line into a small clearing on the edge of a deep grotto. The place looked to her like paradise. On the far side of the rippling pool, a high waterfall spilled over a black cliff and turned to mist where it met a stand of jagged rocks that stabbed up from beneath the water. An elaborate damask of flowering vines covered the rock walls.

Gathered at the water’s edge just a few meters from Taryl was a group of seven small, golden-furred creatures. Based on their sizes, she guessed the two largest ones were the parents, and the rest were their kits. She could see they had small teeth, long ears, and large round eyes biased toward the sides of their heads—classic hallmarks of prey animals.

She retrieved her holographic scope from a pocket on the leg of her coverall, which, like her backpack, boasted a special camouflage pattern made for nature surveys. Her green skin and wild thatch of pixie-cut black hair had been a perfect match for the ensemble.

It’s almost as if I was born for this job.

The troop of fuzzy creatures hopped away from the water to graze on a patch of small green weeds growing nearby. Taryl focused the holographic scope on the nearest one, the largest of the bunch, and started recording a vid to add to her field report. The animal nibbled on one weed, then another, before clutching several at once in its forepaws and sitting up on its rounded haunches to survey the area.

It looked directly at her and froze in mid-chew.

As slowly as she could, Taryl put away the scope. She didn’t want to spook the nervous critter. It tilted its head, and she mimicked the gesture. Behind it, the other adult was munching on some orange flowers. There was a cluster of the blossoms at Taryl’s side. With glacial slowness, she plucked a few and let them tumble into her palm. Then she knelt, extended her open hand toward the animal, and rested the back of her hand on the mossy ground.

The animal stood a bit taller and sniffed with a twitching nose.

Taryl remained still. In her mind, she became as a plant, rooted in place, devoid of will, a harmless feature of the landscape. She slowed her breathing and ceased blinking.

One wary hop, then another, brought the creature to within a meter of her hand.

Her mind was clear and without pretense. She existed in that moment alone, bereft of a past, without thought of a future, just a peaceful presence dwelling in the eternal now.

It took another hop and sniffed again, its eyes fixed on the flower petals in her hand.

Another hop. If only she could lean forward without scaring it, she could touch its fur, perhaps even feel the beating of its heart through its fragile form.

Her communicator let out two shrill beeps.

The animal sprang upward, twisted about-face in midair, and landed at a full run. It and its brood scampered off in a panic and disappeared into the impenetrable rainforest.

This, Taryl remembered, was just one of the many reasons she preferred the company of animals to that of most sentient beings. She flipped open her communicator.

“Taryl here. This better be good.”

“I hope you’re grading on a curve, Ensign, because this is the captain.”

She winced with embarrassment. “Sorry, sir. Go ahead.”

“I’m having you beamed back to the ship, on the double.”

As much as she wanted to protest, she could tell from the captain’s tone that he wasn’t in a mood to grant her field survey an extension. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain once everybody’s back aboard. Stand by for transport.”

“Aye, sir.” She moved clear of the trees and took a final, wistful look at the grotto.

This would have been a nice place to camp for the night.

She sighed, and then the rainforest melted away in a shimmer of champagne-colored light and a semi-musical wash of noise.

So much for paradise.

•   •   •

One perquisite of being in command that Terrell never tired of was the luxury of being the last person to arrive for any meeting. He entered the Sagittarius’s mess hall to find the rest of his crew assembled. Their low murmur of conversation tapered off as they noted his arrival. They had grouped themselves in their usual fashion, around the three curved dining tables against the outer bulkhead. Seated at the table farthest from the door were the four engineers; at the middle table were the three field scouts. Closest to the entrance were the ship’s two medical officers, its XO, the science officer, and its Kaferian helmsman-navigator, Ensign Nizsk.

They all faced the interior bulkhead, before which stood the ship’s second officer, Lieutenant Commander Sorak. The white-haired, centenarian Vulcan greeted Terrell with a nod, then activated the bulkhead display screen behind him, signaling the start of the briefing.

“Three hours and eleven minutes ago, Ensign Nizsk logged an unusual reading on the ship’s sensors.” He looked at the navigator. “Ensign, please elaborate on your findings.”

Sorak stepped aside. Nizsk stood and stepped forward, her four upper limbs held close to her thorax, her mandibles clicking rapidly.

Even after months of shared service on the bridge of the Sagittarius, Terrell still found it difficult to gauge the insectoid flight officer’s emotions. Her compound eyes had no pupils to dilate, and her carapace made her visage inscrutable. His only cues to Nizsk’s state of mind came from the specialized universal translator module she wore around her neck.

Nizsk opened a graphic on the screen, an image of an energy wave form. “During my shift as watch officer, long-range sensors detected a high-level dark energy fluctuation, originating from bearing two three three mark nine.”

Dastin raised his hand. “Excuse me—a what?”

“A dark energy fluctuation. It is a rare phenomenon, often associated with intersections between our universe and parallel dimensions. Dark energy events have been known to produce unpredictable, faster-than-light shock fronts that propagate through subspace. Their effects also have been shown to provoke spontaneous temporal inversions, resulting in the detection of events prior to their occurrence.”

“Hope you’re takin’ notes,” Ilucci said to Dastin. “There’s gonna be a test later.”

Terrell cut in, to prevent the briefing from spiraling into a verbal free-for-all. “Hold the jokes for a few minutes.” To Nizsk he added, “Ensign, please continue.”

She switched the image to an animated map of the star system. “After I ruled out the possibility of the signal originating on this planet’s surface, I broadened my search for its source. However, I found no possible origin point along that heading within the bounds of this system.” A tap on the control panel with one of her claws called up a star map of the surrounding sector. “Though it can be difficult to pinpoint the origin of a dark energy event, readings I have collected from sensor buoys deployed by the Endeavour during its pass through this sector two months ago give me reason to believe the epicenter of the fluctuation is in the Cavino system, approximately three point six light-years away, on the heading I detected.”

This time Razka lifted his hand. “What do we know about the Cavino system?”

Sorak switched the screen to a map of the distant star system. “Cavino is a main-sequence star, Class F. It has eleven planets. The five inner worlds are terrestrial, but only the fourth is capable of supporting organic life. The six outer worlds are all gas giants.”

Theriault caught Sorak’s eye. “Do we have reason to think the fluctuations are coming from the fourth planet?”

“Unknown,” Sorak said. “Given the infrastructure needed to produce a dark energy event, a surface-based generator is the most probable source. However, it is theoretically possible that a sufficiently advanced starship or starbase could create such an effect.”

Nizsk interjected, “It also is possible that the origin of these readings lies beyond the Cavino system, and that it merely happens to intersect that heading.”

Doctor Babitz leaned forward to join the discussion. “Do we know if the fourth planet is inhabited? And, if so, would the presence of this kind of technology countermand our obligations with regard to the Prime Directive?”

Sorak’s almost British-sounding accent was as cold and dry as his Vulcan logic. “At this time, Doctor, we have no advance intelligence about the fourth planet, or about any civilization that might reside there. Consequently, I would advise we proceed with all due caution.” He directed the rest of his statement to Terrell. “Furthermore, I suggest we assume the Prime Directive applies until we have incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.”

From the middle table came Taryl’s heated protest. “Hang on! We’ve barely started our survey here. Now we get one weird sensor reading and we just drop everything to chase it?” She withered beneath the combined weight of the other officers’ stares of reproach. “What?”

“I understand your frustration, Ensign,” Terrell said. “But everything we’ve seen so far suggests this world is safe for colonization. All that’s left to do here are routine analyses and mapping runs. A civilian advance team can do that without us.” He got up and stood beside the bulkhead display. “These dark energy fluctuations, on the other hand, are near the top of Starfleet’s list of rare phenomena whose investigation we’ve been ordered to prioritize. I don’t know what makes them so important, either, but I know that some admiral at Starfleet Command wants us to track them down before the Klingons do. Do you understand that?”

Abashed, Taryl averted her eyes. “Aye, sir.”

That would do for the moment, Terrell decided. He turned to Nizsk. “Plot a course for the Cavino system, maximum warp. Use stealth-approach protocols once we reach its Oort cloud.” He pivoted toward the engineers. “Master Chief, make the boat ready for space. We go as soon as you give the green light.” A turn toward the rest of the crew. “Chief Razka, you and your scouts get down to the hold. Lock down the rovers and the cargo. Doctor, I want you and Mister Tan Bao to help Hesh secure his samples in the lab.” A deep breath. “Get a move on, people. Time to hit the road. Dismissed.”

The crew dispersed in a hurry to their duty stations. Just outside the mess hall, the engineers climbed the ladder to the engineering deck, while Theriault, Nizsk, and Sorak headed forward through the curving passage, to the bridge, and Hesh led Doctor Babitz and Nurse Tan Bao in the opposite direction, toward his lab. As soon as the ladderway was clear, Razka slid down it to the cargo hold, followed by Dastin. Taryl stopped at the ladder and heaved an angry sigh. Terrell sidled over to her and lowered his voice. “Everything all right?”

“Sorry, sir. I’m just annoyed, is all. I became a field scout so I could explore new worlds ahead of everyone else. Instead, I spend most of my time on the ship, filling in on the bridge.”

“What do you want me to say? It’s not as if you weren’t briefed about the way an Archer-class starship runs. We all do what it takes three people to complete on other ships. It’s just the way things work on a boat this small.”

She pushed a hand through her spiky black hair. “I know. It’s just . . . we finally got to spend some time exploring a real planet, a beautiful planet—and now we’re walking away from it to chase some funny particles, or waves, or whatever.”

“Taryl, I know the last few weeks were pleasant, but they were also kind of ordinary. Civilians can handle the mundane. But confronting the weird?” He gave her shoulder a reassuring clasp. “That’s why they have us.”

3

“Doctor? We’ve got another one.”

The nervous young paramedic’s shouted notice was the last thing Doctor Jeniven Vatrachos wanted to hear—and the last thing he wanted his patients to hear. The waiting room outside the emergency center was already full, and he had patients doubled up in the exam rooms. None of which was unusual for a major metropolitan trauma center such as Valto General Hospital. In all the years Vatrachos had worked there, he had never seen a shift that was anything less than hectic. After all, life was unpredictable, and accidents were going to occur.

But this was unlike anything he’d ever seen.

Not prepared to take the paramedic’s word, Vatrachos left the admissions desk and strode down the corridor to the triage room. Lurking beneath the astringent bite of antiseptic was the reek of dermal toxins secreted in response to pain, a vestigial biological trait shared by all Austarans. Once, the oily discharge from their pores was meant to discourage aquatic predators from making meals of them; in the modern age, it posed an additional hazard to medical practitioners working to ease wounded Austarans’ pains and save their lives.

Vatrachos used the foot-activated dispenser near the triage room door to squirt some disinfectant gel on his hands, and then he held his slicked extremities upright with his fingers apart, to make it easier for a physician’s assistant to pull protective latex gloves over them. The tight elastic closed around his wrists with a loud snap. “All right. Let’s have a look.” He stepped over to the exam table and stood beside the paramedic, who tended the ward’s latest admission, a mottled yellow-and-red female pogling. “Who do we have here?”

Her three eyes shimmered and her wide mouth trembled. “Loludi.”

“Are your parents here, Loludi?”

She pointed back toward the waiting room. “My mother is talking to the nurse.”

He tried to reassure the scared child with a soft tone of voice and a restrained smile. “Don’t worry. She’ll be here soon. Now, can you show me where it hurts?”

Loludi held out her left hand. Its smallest digit was bent at an oblique angle that was painful just to look at. Vatrachos steadied her wrist with a gingerly two-fingered grip while he examined her broken finger. There was no mistaking the nature or precise location of the injury: a full break of the fifth metacarpal, approximately one-third of the way up the bone from the carpometacarpal joint. He traded a look of unease and suspicion with the paramedic, then put his attention back on the patient. “How did this happen?” The youngling recoiled guiltily, so Vatrachos made an effort to calm her. “No one’s saying you did anything wrong. Knowing how the break happened might help us do a better job of fixing it.”

Reassured, she let her explanation spill out in a breathless stream. “My brother was chasing me so I tried to slam the door on him but I caught my finger in the door and it broke.”

“You’ll be more careful next time you close a door, won’t you?” She nodded and seemed more relaxed. “Good. My friend here is going to give you a shot to numb your finger. Then he’ll put that bone back where it belongs and fix you up with a nice little splint. Sound good?” Another nod, more enthusiastic this time. He patted her shoulder, then turned to the paramedic and lowered his voice. “Make sure I get a copy of her chart, and get clean X-rays of that finger before you set it. Understand?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

Vatrachos left the triage room and passed through the waiting room once more on his way back to the corridor of exam rooms. Looking back at him were dozens of new arrivals waiting to be seen—each of them cradling a left hand with its last digit broken just above the carpometacarpal joint. Just like the dozen or so patients already occupying the exam rooms.

Even more perplexing for Vatrachos was the fact that, if his patients all were telling the truth, no two of them had broken their hand the same way. One had slammed his hand in the door of his vehicle; another had gotten his pinned between slats in a shelf as he fell from a ladder. A female patient had broken the bone while trying to swat a large arachnid as it scuttled across her kitchen countertop; one young boy broke his finger trying to catch a ball thrown by his older sibling. And on and on the stories went—each cause unique, but the injuries all the same. It was either the most surreal set of coincidences Vatrachos had ever seen, or else he was the victim of one of the most elaborate and bizarre practical jokes in history.

The sliding doors at the main entrance parted. Another pair of Austarans entered, this time a couple of gray-and-white-striped young adults. A pair of uniformed peace officers walked in behind the couple and detoured around them on their way to the nurse’s desk.

Vatrachos moved to intercept them, but they were faster on their feet than he was, and they reached the nurse’s desk first. The taller officer leaned down. “Good evening. I’m Constable Ankath. We’re responding to a call from a Doctor Jeniven Vatrachos.”

“That’s me,” Vatrachos said, cutting off the nurse’s reply. “I’m Vatrachos.”

The officers turned toward him. “What can we do for you, Doctor?”

“Would you come to my office, please?”

Neither of the officers seemed enthused about the invitation, but they followed him down a narrow corridor to the administrative wing. He ushered them inside his office and shut the door. “Please, have a seat.”

The younger officer moved toward a chair. Constable Ankath stopped him with one hand. “Doctor, we’re busy tonight. Can you tell us in a few words why you called?”

“Something odd is happening. Dozens of people have come into the trauma center tonight with the exact same injury—a broken small digit on the left hand—but no two patients broke it the same way. The odds against every patient in a shift coming in with the same injury when they have no other shared factors is . . . well, to be frank, it’s incalculable.”

“That’s it?” Ankath sounded annoyed. “We’ve got alarms going off all over the city, and you called us down here because you’ve got a series of freak coincidences?”

How can I make them understand? “I think it’s more than that. I can’t explain what would cause something like this, but it’s not natural. Something is going on here.”

Ankath puffed out his vocal sac, then let it deflate with a derogatory sputter. “Tell you what, Doctor. As soon as you figure out what law’s been broken, feel free to come down to the precinct station and file a report. Until then, have a nice night.”

The two constables turned and walked out of Vatrachos’s office, and they left the door open as they departed. Standing behind his desk, Vatrachos felt foolish and angry at the same time. I know this can’t all be happening by accident—but what did I really expect them to say?

He had no idea what was going on, but he had a sinking feeling that whatever it was, it would get worse as the night wore on—and that before it was over, broken fingers would be the least of its consequences.

•   •   •

If there was one thing Sefsan Kleftis understood better than most Austarans, it was the mathematics of probability. His entire career as the general manager of the Chrimata Casino and Hotel was predicated on his keen grasp of the sacred geometry of chance.

Every game on the main floor had different odds, but most were so close to even that the average guest of the casino never noticed anything untoward. The secret to the business’s profit model, of course, was the same as that of every other gaming house on Anura: The odds had to tilt ever so slightly in the house’s favor at all times. That wasn’t to say that the house always won. What mattered was the house’s edge, which varied from one game to the next but in practice never dipped below five percent. Over time, the grind of the house’s edge against even the luckiest players’ winnings would leave them busted and the house that much richer.

If a few guests won big from time to time, that was good for business, too. It encouraged the others to keep pushing their luck, to keep thinking that they would be the ones to defy the odds rather than prove their merciless arithmetic. So it went, with flashing lights and armfuls of cash for the winners, luxurious consolations for the most lavish losers, and heartbreak and self-loathing for the masses. Was it cruel? Of course. But it was a living, and it was legal.

Kleftis strolled across the center walkway of the casino’s main room, his three-layered tunic of metallic fabrics shimmering from the flicker of electronic game displays. Wheels spun in hypnotic blurs. Cards darted across felt tabletops to waiting hands. Metal ingots clinked into betting pots—music to Kleftis’s tympanic membranes. Automated match-and-win machines teased patrons with one near miss after another, paying out minor sums to string along the stubborn for a few rounds more. Hunched backs huddled around the bar at the end of the casino, while wide-eyed newcomers streamed in from the lobby and turned the corner onto the gaming floor, where the lack of windows and clocks made time seem to fall away.

All was well. There was no sign of the usual cadre of cheaters, con artists, or hustlers who made the city’s casinos their hunting grounds. As usual, there were a few overconfident youths trying out some system or other for counting cards. As long as they kept on losing, Kleftis was happy to let them blunder along. If they should start winning? He made a mental note to check back on those tables in a few minutes’ time, just to make sure they weren’t playing dumb to mollify the dealers and the pit bosses.

He paced back to the center of the room and lorded over it, a monarch surveying his domain. Assured that the gaming floor was operating smoothly, he plucked from a pocket inside his tunic a slim steel case filled with rolling papers. He held a paper in one hand while he procured a flip-top vial of minced sweet leaf from another pocket and thumbed it open. A few shakes deposited a small mound of the aromatic herb on the paper. Kleftis closed the vial and put it away, then spread the minced leaves across the paper. A slow, deliberate caress of his long tongue moistened one edge of the paper, which his nimble fingers twisted into a tight cylinder. He pulled his platinum-plated lighter from his belt, put the cigarette in his mouth, and lit it.

Kleftis inhaled. His vocal sac expanded until its skin grew taut and almost transparent, so that he could see the smoke swirling within. Then the sac contracted and forced the smoke into his lungs. He felt his pulse slow and his senses sharpen. He became aware of the pungent fumes rising from his cigarette, the cologne of the elderly patrons at the nearest table, the clangor of electronic machines, the mad chatter of voices pitched with excitement—

Then he became aware of something else, something he dreaded.

Someone was winning, and winning big.

He pivoted, his sharp eyes searching the sea of faces. Who was it? Where were those howls of joy coming from? To his horror, he discovered there was more than one source.

At one card table, every player had beaten the dealer. At a spinner table, a player who had placed an outrageous wager cackled madly as the wheel master pushed a fortune in ingots across the table to her. Then everything went haywire, and Kleftis’s blood ran cold.

Laughter pealed and drowned out the diabolical machines. Joyful whoops of celebration came from all directions. At every table where guests played against the dealers, the dealers lost. All the automated machines landed on jackpot payouts. Even the most outlandishly rigged games, the ones at which the house commanded a thirty-percent edge, were giving up their profits to the players. In a matter of seconds, before Kleftis could raise his voice above the bedlam, a year’s worth of profits had vanished.

There was nothing else he could do. He pulled his personal comm from inside his tunic and triggered the emergency alarm. The overhead lights snapped off, and the automated machines went dark. Sirens blared, and from the lobby came the resounding crash of the reinforced security gates slamming into place.

Confident the casino and hotel were locked down, Kleftis patched his comm into the house’s public address system. “Attention!” His amplified voice boomed back at him from the speakers embedded in the ceilings and walls. “As of this time, no one may enter or leave the casino or the hotel. The authorities have been summoned, and whoever committed this act of sabotage and fraud will be found and prosecuted. Until then, all winnings from the last round of each game will be confiscated by members of the casino staff as evidence.”

If the mood had been wild before the lights went out, now it was utter mayhem. Patrons assaulted the casino workers who tried to carry out Kleftis’s orders. Bellows of fury mixed with the shattering of glass to create a riot of destruction.

The mob surged toward Kleftis. He ran. By the time his security personnel arrived in force to contain the brouhaha, the crowd had beaten him bloody and laid waste the Chrimata’s gaming floor and bar. Kleftis cracked open one swollen eye to see his once-pristine gaming floor aflame. It had to be sabotage, he told himself. There’s no way that many people can win at once.

That was what he told the constables when they arrived half an hour later.

They dashed his hopes for justice with two cruel words.

“Prove it.”

He raged, he cited statistics, appealed to math, to logic, to common sense. But it made no difference. Without evidence of wrongdoing, all the constables could say for certain was that Kleftis’s luck had finally run out—and as far as they knew, there was no law against that.

•   •   •

The romance of elected office had long since faded for Tribune Tiras Saranda. She had begun her political career just after she finished her education, serving as an aide to council members at the local level. Only after years as an underling had she mustered the gumption to run for her own seat. After that, it had taken her decades to claw her way up through the seemingly endless layers of bureaucracy that had come to define Anura’s global government. By the time she had achieved sufficient public notoriety to make a bid for the world’s highest executive office, an arrogant chorus of pundits and many of her peers had protested she was too old, that she would be physically unequal to the unique stresses of serving as tribune.

Tonight was the first time she wished she had listened to them.

Ensconced behind her amoeba-shaped desk of carved white stone, she pressed her bulbous fingertips to her throbbing temples and tried to wrap her mind around the news she had just been given. “Are you trying to tell me that you might have just caused a global disaster?”

On the other side of her desk, Doctor Pren Kavalas at least had the courtesy to hang his head and half-close his eyes in shame. “It hasn’t become one yet, Madam Tribune. But it might.”

Determined to project authority and confidence, she set her hands on the desktop and straightened her back. “How did this happen?”

“We’re still analyzing the data. It might have been a miscalculation of the dark energy potential, or a materials failure in our capacitance system.”

It was all gibberish to Saranda, but she nodded as if she understood. Using the holographic interface projected onto the surface of her desk, she called up news reports from around the planet. Bewildering patterns of freak accidents, unexplained disruptions in the laws of chance at multiple casinos, channels once full of random static transmitting pulses in ever-increasing prime number sequences without apparent origin. She let it hang in midair until she was certain Kavalas had taken note of it. She gestured at the evidence. “Your work, I take it?”

He did his best to sound calm. “It might be an unintended consequence of it, yes.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful it wasn’t deliberate?” She waved one hand to forestall a reply. “Never mind. Just tell me this: Can you shut it down?”

A crooked grimace played across Kavalas’s face. “Not at this time.”

Her patience expired and her countenance grew stern. “Why not?”

Kavalas folded his hands together as he concocted his reply. “We tried to shut it down as soon as our primary experiment failed. The main generator is refusing to accept new input. We think something may have severed its hard-line command systems. Further analysis—”

Saranda raised a hand to halt the technobabble. “Just pull the plug, Doctor.”

“We did, ma’am. It didn’t work.” He used his portable comm to call up a holovid from the Science Ministry’s secure servers. It showed a multi-limbed robot slicing an insulated bundle of wires with a laser. “As you can see, we triggered the fail safe power cutoff, and our remote observation circuit confirms the main line between the fusion core and the quantum fluctuation generator was physically severed at nine minutes past the hour.” He paused the vid’s playback. “Unfortunately, this measure came too late to shut down the generator.”

There were few things Saranda hated more than feeling like the dumbest person in the room, and the scientist’s briefing was accomplishing exactly that. “How can the generator still be operational when your robot literally cut its link to the plant’s fusion core?”

“Because achieving energy autonomy was the core function of the QFG. The impetus for the project was to tap into an extra-dimensional source of dark energy. Which it’s just done.”

“So how do you interrupt that connection?”

The scientist’s shoulders slumped into a pose of humility. “We don’t know.”

She appreciated his contrition, but she had no use for it. “What about these wild epidemics of circumstance? Were they part of its core function?”

A shake of his head. “No, Madam Tribune. Only the most extreme simulations suggested such effects might be possible. We discounted them as statistical improbabilities.”

“Improbable or not, they’re here. How long do we expect them to last?”

“That’s hard to say.” He entered commands into his personal comm as he replied. “Based on our post-event analysis of the QFG’s output, my colleagues and I project that the intensity of the generator’s improbability field will continue to increase on a logarithmic scale over the next day. The first waves will be a few hours apart, and then they’ll recur at ever-shorter intervals. By midday, the effects will likely be potent enough to be felt in low orbit. After that, the pulses will continue to grow until they propagate throughout our solar system.”

“What effect will that have on our space station?”

Kavalas blinked and froze for a second. “It’s impossible to predict.”

“And we return to my original question: Did you just spark a global catastrophe?”

He puffed out his vocal sac, then croaked, “Maybe.”

Saranda was aghast. “Maybe?”

He started to pace. “All I can say for certain, Madam Tribune, is that as the pulses from the improbability engine intersect with one another, the laws of probability within those zones of confluence will become chaotically disrupted, perhaps even inverted.” He paused beside her window and gazed out at the capital city of Mitsaro. “Over the next several hours, events that under normal conditions would be considered astronomically unlikely will suddenly become commonplace, and outcomes we take for granted will elude us in apparent defiance of logic.” He turned back toward her, his tone grave. “This will be a day of miracles and disasters.”

The tribune absorbed his warning with horror. “In other words, anything can happen.”

“Yes, ma’am. And I guarantee that it will.”

4

No place had ever felt so right to Clark Terrell as the captain’s chair of the Sagittarius. That hadn’t been the case when he had been the ship’s executive officer, under the late Captain Adelard Nassir. In those days, he had never lost sight of the fact that the Sagittarius was Nassir’s command, and that even when it was entrusted to his care, he was only its temporary steward. Ever since Nassir’s death during the Battle of Vanguard, however, Terrell had come to view the center seat as his, rather than his former captain’s. He knew that one day he might be asked to relinquish it to another officer, should he and the ship both be so fortunate as to remain in service that long. But until that day came, he planned to enjoy feeling at home in this, his first command.

Around him, his bridge crew worked with quiet efficiency. Nizsk occupied the combined helm and navigation console directly ahead of him. Behind him, along the aft bulkhead, to the left of the off-center door, Sorak manned the tactical station. Seated to Terrell’s left, operating the communications console, was Chief Razka. On the opposite side of the bridge, Lieutenant Sengar Hesh busied himself collating data from the ship’s sensors at the science console.

Roaming from station to station was Lieutenant Commander Theriault. She claimed she had picked up the habit of supervising on the move from watching Terrell, but it was a common enough practice in Starfleet that he sometimes suspected her of currying favor by crediting him with more influence than he’d actually had.

Can’t fault her for being a charmer.

Thanks to the slight elevation of his chair’s dais—thirty centimeters, just enough to give it a place of prominence in the confined compartment—Terrell had an unobstructed perspective of the main viewscreen, which dominated the curved forward bulkhead. Now that the ship had dropped out of warp and returned to impulse power, its virtual window to the universe depicted an orange orb of light surrounded by a halo of blackness and, beyond that, an increasingly dense dusting of stars.

Terrell swiveled his chair a few degrees to starboard, toward his science officer. “Mister Hesh? Any luck pinpointing the source of those dark energy fluctuations?”

Hesh lifted his three-lobed forehead from the blue glow of the sensor’s hooded display. “Affirmative, Captain. Sensors confirm the fluctuations are emanating from the surface of this system’s fourth planet. To be precise, a single location in its northern hemisphere, close to its arctic circle.” He turned his solid green, iris-free eyes toward the viewscreen. “However, there appears to be a new complication in our mission profile.”

Theriault wasted no time picking up the slack. “What would that be?”

“The planet is inhabited,” Hesh said. “Biomass readings are significant. If its dominant species is humanoid, I estimate its population is roughly eight point four billion people. There are several active fusion reactors on the planet’s surface. Furthermore, electromagnetic signal emissions suggest this planet has robust, hard-wired information and power networks that encompass all populated areas of its surface. Lastly, it has what appears to be a manned facility in low orbit—possibly for astronomical observation, perhaps for commerce.”

The news drew a sigh from Terrell. “Who wants to say my two favorite words?”

His executive officer put a musical spin on them: “Prime Directive!”

“Thank you.” He turned his chair toward Razka. “Chief, monitor all communications to and from their space station. If there’s even the slightest indication we’ve been spotted, I want to know immediately.”

He looked up from his console just long enough to nod and say, “Aye, sir.”

Terrell stood and walked aft to stand beside Sorak. “Any sign of Klingon or Romulan activity in this sector?”

Sorak flipped toggles and keyed switches to put the latest tactical data on the displays above his station. He and Terrell watched the screens flicker and stutter. The controls on the tactical panel cascaded on and off in a bizarre repeating pattern—and then everything reverted to normal, and the sector maps appeared as intended on the overhead screens.

Wide-eyed, Terrell waited for the system to malfunction again. “What was that?”

“Running a diagnostic,” Sorak said. A few seconds later, he cocked one eyebrow. “The system has no record of the malfunction, sir.”

It took only one hairy-eyeball glance from Terrell to prompt Theriault into action. “I’ll have the Master Chief look at it right away.”

“See that you do.” He turned back to Sorak. “You were saying?”

“No sign of hostile contacts in this or adjacent sectors, Captain. At the moment, we appear to be the only vessel within twenty-five light-years responding to the event.”

That was good news, always a rarity in Terrell’s experience. “Glad to hear it, but that could change. Keep a close watch on the long-range scans. The last thing we need is a visit from someone looking to weaponize a dark energy technology.”

“Understood.”

Terrell left Sorak and circled around the center seat to stand behind Nizsk. Theriault fell in beside him on his right, just as Terrell had always done for Captain Nassir.

Maybe she did learn by watching me. He folded his hands behind his back. “Okay, Number One—how do we check out these readings without violating the Prime Directive?”

“How about a stealth trajectory? Nizsk, pull up a system map.” Nizsk switched the main viewscreen’s image to an overhead diagram of its eleven planets orbiting its star. “Zoom in on the fourth planet and its moons.” The requested portion of the image enlarged and filled the screen. Theriault gestured at its details as she continued. “The fourth planet has two moons, in different orbits. Based on their current positions and motion, we could adjust our course to approach the planet from behind them, as their paths intersect relative to the planet.”

It wasn’t the worst plan Terrell had ever heard. “Not bad. That should obviate any risk of direct observation. But will it be enough? How advanced a culture are we dealing with?”

Theriault deflected the question to Hesh with a glance. The science officer pondered the query. “It’s hard to say, Captain. They have fusion power, but their space station seems to lack faster-than-light sensors. Nonetheless, it won’t be possible to gauge their full capabilities from a distance. They might possess orbital telescopes we have yet to note, and there might be any number of stellar observatories on the surface with sufficient resolution to see us already. Consequently, even concealed by their moons, we might be at risk of detection.”

“I’ll never be able to accuse you of fostering false hope, Lieutenant.”

“Most assuredly not, sir.”

Terrell turned toward his pilot. “Ensign Nizsk? Can you plot a safe approach heading?”

“Yes, sir. I have one ready to execute on your command.”

“Then it’s time we rolled the dice.” He returned to his command chair. “Hesh, Sorak, keep your eyes on those sensors.” He lifted his arm and pointed for dramatic effect as he gave his next order. “Helm, take us in.”

•   •   •

There had to be a more productive way for Taryl to use her downtime, but she wasn’t interested in finding it. Alone in the quarters she shared with Doctor Babitz and Petty Officer Cahow, she was content to lie in her rack and stew in her petty resentments.

Deep down, she felt ashamed of herself. Sulking was the refuge of a child, not the proper response of a grown woman, and even less that of a Starfleet officer. But so much of her time on the Sagittarius was spent on the kind of drudgery she had come to despise during her youth and adolescence of indentured servitude. Her days now were filled with the kind of mind-numbing chores she would still be mired in had she not made the effort to secretly educate herself when her masters and the other servants were all asleep. She had risked beatings and the repeated loss of food privileges to teach herself languages, mathematics, sciences, and even a bit of music theory, despite her ongoing struggle to carry a tune.

I thought I’d left that life behind when I got into the Academy. But it followed me here. She tried to calm herself with a deep breath, but her chest felt packed to bursting with swallowed anger. It’s not fair. I spent four years training to be the best field scout in Starfleet. So what do I spend most of my time doing? I man a sensor console. I watch wave forms go flat on the comm panel. Everything except the job I was trained for.

She thought about turning on some music, or slipping aft to the mess hall—“culinary triage,” she’d heard her shipmates call it recently—for a snack or maybe just a cup of hot chai. The more she pondered those options, the less either one appealed. So she went on staring at the underside of Cahow’s rack, less than an arm’s length above her own.

On the bright side, at least my bunkmates don’t snore. But if the doc tries to sterilize the compartment again before we make port, I might have to jam her hypospray right up her—

The door signal buzzed.

Great. It’s not as if I can pretend I’m not here.

Vexed, she looked toward the door. “Come in.”

The portal slid open to reveal Crewman Torvin. The thin, gawky Tiburonian man stood off-kilter in the open doorway, with one hand behind his back. He cast a nervous look inside, as if he feared an ambush. “Um, I hope I’m not, you know, interrupting anything. Am I?”

Taryl sat up on the edge of her bunk. “What do you need, Tor?”

Her glum manner seemed to flummox him. “Need? I didn’t—I mean, I don’t, um . . .” He spent a moment chasing down his runaway train of thought. “I don’t need anything, per se. I just know that you were, y’know, kind of bummed out about having your patrol cut short.”

She knew the young engineer’s mate meant well, but his inability to come to the point exhausted her. “And? What can I do for you?”

Torvin revealed the hand he’d hidden behind his back. Clutched in his bony fist was a rainbow bouquet of wildflowers from the planet they’d just left. “I thought you might need some cheering up, so I, uh, picked these for you.” He fidgeted and looked at everything in the compartment except her. “As decoration for your quarters. A memento, I guess.”

Was he serious? She shook her head. “Why would I want that in here?”

“Huh?” A dumbfounded look at the flowers, then back at her. “You don’t like them?”

She got up and stood in front of him and his handful of dead plants. “I liked them very much when they were growing in the soil, converting carbon dioxide to oxygen and filling the natural world with beauty. What baffles me is why you’d think I’d appreciate your killing these beautiful plants just to make a gift of them. I mean, am I supposed to enjoy watching them rot?”

His anxiety transformed into contrition. “I’m sorry. It was just a custom on—well, not on my world, but on some planets, and, um, I—”

“Who told you it was a good idea?”

A hard swallow. He seemed reluctant to name names. Then: “The Master Chief.”

“That makes sense.” She eyed the half-wilted blooms with disappointment. It was clear that Torvin was smitten with her; it took no special insight or Orion powers of pheromone-based control to make that deduction. But what was she supposed to do with him and his fumbling, tongue-tied infatuation? She had fended off more than her fair share of overzealous suitors at the Academy, but most of those had been other cadets, peers she had felt no qualms about abusing. Torvin was young and had a sheen of innocence that she was loath to tarnish with heartbreak.

She crossed her arms. “I understand you meant well, Tor. But I should probably tell you, I’m not worth this kind of effort.”

His thick eyebrows knit in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . how do I say this? I’m not your typical Orion gal.”

“Hey, I know! I didn’t mean to imply that you were, you know, like, a—”

“Tor, I’m not naïve. I know why men chase after Orion women. You hear the tales of animal women, harem dancers, veiled courtesans with mysterious ways of seducing men—but I’m not them, and they aren’t me. Matter of fact, I don’t even like most people. To be frank, I tend to prefer the company of animals.”

He waved his hands, as if fending off an attack. “I get that! I like animals, too.”

What’s it gonna take to get through to this kid? A phaser set on “educate”?

“I’m glad you like animals, Tor. Maybe you could get a pet or something. But whatever you’re hoping for here”—she gestured back and forth between the two of them—“it’s not gonna happen. I mean, even if I wasn’t trying to spend a few years celibate, there’s also the fact that Starfleet still frowns on fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel.”

His chin drooped, and he stared at his feet. “Yeah, I understand.” He turned away, took a few steps aft, then paused as if he had some witty bon mot with which to save face. After a silent beat, he second-guessed himself and kept on walking. A few seconds after he was out of sight around the curve of the corridor’s interior bulkhead, Taryl heard a garbage reclamation chute creak open and then shut, heralding the undignified disposal of the dead flowers.

Poor guy, she thought, feeling a moment of sympathy for his crushed hopes. But she pushed her pity aside in the name of self-preservation. She had spent too much of her life railing against the stereotype that seemed indelibly attached to her as an Orion to indulge even one misguided young man’s notion of who she was under her masks of profession, rank, and race.

She was still trying to solve the riddle of her own identity; the last thing she needed was the distraction of someone else’s illusions—however flattering that false portrait might be.

•   •   •

The moons of Cavino IV filled the bridge’s viewscreen. As far as Terrell could see, the rocky, airless satellites were all but identical. Similar in mass, both had crater-pocked, pale gray surfaces. Because their orbits were about to place them on the same bearing between Cavino IV and its parent star, both blazed with reflected light, though the first sign of an eclipse shadow was edging its way across the surface of the one that orbited closer to the planet.

Terrell looked to Hesh for an update. “Any new intel on the dark energy readings?”

“Nothing conclusive,” Hesh said, his eyes fixed upon the sensor readout. “All I can determine so far is that the phenomenon appears to be ongoing, rather than an isolated event.”

That intrigued Terrell. “Why would anyone want to sustain such a reaction?”

“Unknown, sir.”

Theriault stared at the main screen. “Why risk tapping into dark energy at all?”

Hesh finally looked up from the sensor hood. “Free energy, Commander. Although the Federation’s early experiments with harnessing dark energy were no more successful than those of the Vulcans several centuries earlier, it remains a theoretically viable source of power—one that will continue to be readily available even hundreds of billions of years from now, when much of this universe’s matter has degenerated due to entropic heat death.”

“Great—tech that’ll be useful long after our galaxy burns out.” The executive officer aimed a crooked half-smile at Terrell. “I guess some folks like getting in on the ground floor.”

“That’s where the money is, Number One.”

“So they keep telling me, sir.”

Terrell looked over his shoulder as a prelude to asking Sorak for an update on the ship’s tactical status when he heard a soft feedback tone from the communications panel, a sound he recognized as the alert for an incoming signal. He watched Razka work the controls and inspect the readouts. After several seconds without a report, Terrell grew impatient. “What is it, Chief?”

Razka swiveled toward Terrell. His large reptilian eyes blinked slowly, from the sides in, and his voice was a guttural rasp. “Captain, we’re being hailed on a primitive radio frequency.”

Dreading the answer, Terrell asked, “Hailed by whom?”

“The planetary head of state from Cavino IV.”

No matter how hard Terrell tried, he couldn’t stop himself from shooting a sour glare at his helm officer. “Ensign Nizsk? I thought we were on a stealth-approach heading.”

Her flurry of clicks was parsed by her universal translator module into a halting reply. “We were—I mean, we are, sir. None of their observation facilities should be able to see us.”

Lieutenant Hesh stepped away from his post to get Terrell’s attention. “Sir? I think I know what happened. I’ve detected what appear to be passive sensors on the surface of the fourth planet’s outer moon. Preliminary scans indicate the inner moon might also harbor a similar early-detection grid.”

“Why didn’t we note them earlier?”

“As I said, Captain, they appear to be passive systems. They emitted no signals for us to detect. Unless I’d run a scan specifically to find them, I don’t think we would have seen them.”

Razka silenced another incoming-signal alert. “They’re hailing us again, sir.”

It wasn’t the scenario he’d intended, but Terrell knew better than to waste time wishing for what was already impossible. “It seems we underestimated the residents of the fourth planet. Mister Hesh, update our stealth-approach protocols to look for passive sensor networks, even when we don’t think the native population is capable of creating them.”

“Aye, sir.”

He turned back toward Razka. “Chief, let me hear their message.”

“It’s audio only, sir.” Razka routed the greeting to the bridge’s overhead speakers.

“Attention, unidentified vessel behind our moons. This is Tribune Tiras Saranda, head of government for the planet Anura. Please identify yourself on this frequency.”

Terrell considered the message. “Ensign Nizsk, update our star charts to indicate the native name for the fourth planet. If we get more details about their name for their star and other worlds, we’ll fill them in later.”

Razka adjusted some settings on his panel. “The second message was different, sir.”

“All right. On speakers, Chief.”

“Attention, alien vessel. This is Tribune Tiras Saranda of Anura. If you can hear this message, please respond. We are experiencing a global emergency and require assistance. I repeat, if you can understand this message, please reply at once on this frequency.”

“So much for the Prime Directive,” Theriault said.

Terrell nodded. The Prime Directive prohibited Starfleet from interfering in the affairs of most pre-warp cultures, as much for their protection as for its own. But in a case such as this, where a head of state made an unprompted appeal for aid, the Prime Directive all but ceased to apply. Regardless, caution was called for, and Terrell meant to tread with care.

“Chief, open a reply channel.”

“Ready, sir.”

“Tribune Tiras Saranda, this is Captain Clark Terrell of the Starship Sagittarius. We have received your message and stand ready to render aid, if possible. Can you describe the nature of your planetary emergency?”

Silence. Chief Razka interjected, “We’re dealing with light-speed signals, sir. We’ll experience brief delays.”

“Understood.”

A scratchy response filtered down from the overhead speakers. “Captain Terrell, we welcome you in the spirit of friendship. We have recently experienced an accident related to our research into a new form of energy production. The consequences of our malfunction are proving extremely chaotic. Can you or your ship help us contain and negate these effects?”

So far, so good, Terrell thought. The tribune’s explanation comported with the facts he and his crew already had. Still, he wanted to confirm what he was dealing with. “Tribune, is your new form of power generation related to the harnessing of cosmic dark energy?”

He and the rest of the bridge crew waited while their message traveled through hard-wired relays on the moon’s surface and then through vacuum.

“Yes, Captain. My advisors say that’s what we’re developing. Can you help us?”

This time, he had his answer ready. “Yes, Tribune. I think we can. With your permission, I’d like to land my ship on the surface of your planet and come ashore with a few of my crew.”

He felt the anxious stares of his bridge crew while they awaited the tribune’s answer.

“Permission granted. Send us your ship’s landing requirements, and we’ll send back coordinates for a landing in our capital city. And, Captain? Thank you.”

Terrell stood. “Chief, send them our landing specs, then relay the touchdown coordinates to Ensign Nizsk.” He faced Theriault. “Number One, I’ll be leading the landing party. You’ll be staying behind to command the ship.”

She nodded. “Aye, sir.”

He turned toward the science station. “Mister Hesh, you’re with me.” He used the controls on one arm of his command chair to open the ship’s PA channel. “Ensign Taryl and Master Chief, meet me in the hold in ten minutes.” He couldn’t help but break out a smile. “We’re going on a first-contact mission.”

5

Thunder rolled across the capital’s overcast sky. Saranda looked upward at black bellies of cloud that threatened rain. A steady gust from the west, humid and unseasonably warm, fluttered her turquoise dress and emerald shawl. At her side stood Doctor Kavalas, his gaze also turned toward the sky. In front of them was the empty landing pad behind the capital’s Executive Complex, which served as Saranda’s residence and office during her tenure. Far behind them, standing at attention near the complex’s rear entrance, was a trio of Saranda’s bodyguards.

Kavalas inflated his vocal sac, then let it contract with a soft croak.

Saranda rotated her right eye in his direction. “Nervous, Doctor?”

“With good reason, Madam Tribune. Asking the aliens for help was dangerous.”

“More dangerous than powering up a—what did you call it?”

A deadpan reply: “Quantum fluctuation generator.”

“Whatever. If you can’t bring it under control, I need to reach out to anyone who can.”

His protest took on a new urgency. “Madam Tribune, it might not be a coincidence that we’re being approached by another alien vessel at exactly the moment when our experiment went wrong. For all we know, they might have caused this calamity!”

“I’m not a fool, Doctor. I considered that possibility. But I don’t think it makes any sense. How would sabotaging your project benefit them? And if they were responsible for unleashing this storm of improbability, why would they agree to bring their ship down into it?”

Her questions left the scientist drumming his steepled fingertips, a curious affectation she had seen him resort to when he needed to stall for time. “Interesting queries,” he said.

Flashes of lightning set towering banks of clouds aglow for an instant. The sky rumbled and shook the ground. It promised to be a night of torrents and clamors.

Saranda felt the truth weigh on her conscience. “I admit, it might have been rash to ask the aliens for help. We have no knowledge of their species, their culture, their agenda. For all we know, their aid might come at a terrible cost.” Fear tainted her dwindling reservoir of hope. “But what price wouldn’t we pay for salvation?”

Kavalas pointed upward. “I think we’ll have our answer soon enough.”

She followed his outstretched arm and saw a dim spot of light appear in the clouds. It grew larger and brighter by the moment, as if a star were plummeting through the stormhead.

The misty curtain tattered as a tiny vessel shot through it. Its forward section was a thin, elliptical saucer, narrower at its bow than at its stern. Mounted at the forefront of its underside was a circular dish that resembled an antenna. A short, semi-cylindrical fuselage extended back from the middle of the saucer. Connected to it by a pair of short pylons were two long, narrow cylinders whose forward ends were capped with spinning, reddish-orange domes.

It had no wings, no tail fins, no obvious means of directional control. All the same, it maneuvered with speed and grace, clearly in command of forces unknown to Austaran science. Unlike the turbojets that crisscrossed Anura daily, the alien vessel emitted only a low, pleasant hum as it descended toward the landing area in front of Saranda and Kavalas. Three panels on the bottom of the ship’s saucer opened, one behind the antenna dish, the other two on either side, near its aft curves. Landing struts with broad metal feet extended downward as the vessel floated to a landing so gentle it kicked up not a whit of dust.

A whistle of admiration escaped Kavalas’s contracting vocal sac. “I’ll give them this much: They know how to make an entrance.”

“Agreed.”

A large panel extended down from the center of the saucer’s underbelly. Blue light spilled out of the ship’s interior as the ramp opened wider. Four persons descended the ramp while it was still lowering. The first of them stepped off the ramp as it touched the ground. They all were bipedal, with two eyes. They wore similar uniforms, full-body suits of green fabric, and dark boots cut to fit their oddly narrow feet. Their hands were empty, but Saranda noticed they all had small gadgets tucked into waist pockets on their uniforms, and the smallest of them toted a peculiar device at his hip, supported by a strap that crossed his torso on a diagonal.

While they were still out of earshot, she whispered to Kavalas, “Am I crazy, or do they look like lemoa taught to walk upright?”

He whispered back, “I was thinking the same thing.”

The visitors came closer, and it became clear that, despite their similarities to one another, the four aliens might not all be of the same species. The one in front was the tallest, with deep brown skin and close-cropped fur atop his head. The second male, who walked at the leader’s side, seemed to be of the same species, but his flesh was tan colored; he was the only one with fur on his face and a short but unkempt medium-brown mane. The group’s lone female—assuming these beings’ anatomies were similar to those of lemoa, the Anuran arboreal creatures they most closely resembled—sported jade-colored skin and raven hair. The group’s shortest member had a peculiar three-lobed cranium and solid-green eyes without visible pupils.

Saranda concealed her fear and stepped forward to greet them.

“Welcome to Anura. I am Tribune Tiras Saranda.”

The large brown male came to a halt in front of her, and his team stopped behind him. He acknowledged Saranda with a curt nod. “Thank you, Tribune. I’m Captain Clark Terrell, commanding officer of the Sagittarius.” He gestured to the scruffy one. “This is my chief engineer, Master Chief Mike Ilucci.” To the male with the three-lobed head: “My senior science officer, Lieutenant Sengar Hesh.” Then to the female: “And Ensign Taryl, field scout.”

After honoring each guest with a half-bow from the waist, Saranda directed their attention toward Kavalas. “This is Doctor Pren Kavalas, one of my science advisors, and the lead researcher on the project that’s put us in this predicament.” She motioned toward the Executive Complex. “May I suggest we repair to my office and discuss this in private?”

“Of course,” Terrell said. “But for safety’s sake, I’d like to have my ship wait in orbit.”

“I understand.”

Terrell took a small boxlike device from a pocket on his waistband, flipped it open, and spoke into it. “Terrell to Sagittarius.”

A feminine voice replied via the comm device. “Go ahead, sir.”

“We’re heading inside. Take the ship back to orbit and await further orders.”

“Understood.”

“Terrell out.” He slapped the device closed and gestured for Saranda and Kavalas to lead the way inside the complex. “After you.”

She and Kavalas led the visitors toward the complex. A low whoosh and a gentle, melodious humming turned her head in time to see the Sagittarius hover upward. It retracted its landing struts, pivoted away, and then disappeared like a shot, piercing the canopy of clouds in a blur before vanishing entirely into the storm.

Terrell’s starship was small, but even a brief glimpse had convinced Saranda her world had no technology that even approached its capabilities. All she could do was hope that its crew had enough miracles at its command to save Anura before it was too late.

•   •   •

“That, in conclusion, is the crux of the problem,” the Austaran scientist said. “We can’t shut it off, it gets stronger by the hour, and it’s causing the wildly implausible to become common. It’s only a matter of time before one of these miracle events kills us all.”

Terrell nodded. “It poses a challenge, to be sure.” He noted Ilucci’s look of pained confusion. “Something to add, Master Chief?”

“I have a couple of questions.” An imploring look at the tribune. “If I may?” The alien leader nodded her permission, and Ilucci turned toward her advisor. “Doctor Kavalas, I’ve been looking over some of these partial schematics you gave us. And I have to confess, I’m a bit confused. What did you call this machine of yours?”

“A quantum fluctuation generator.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s confusing me.” He swiped his finger across the screen of the electronic tablet in his hand, switching from one schematic to another. “What quantum particles are created or manipulated by your generator?”

Kavalas seemed to shrink into himself as he realized he was on the spot. “I don’t understand what that has to do with our problem.”

“Maybe nothing, maybe everything. From what I can see in these designs, you and your people ginned up a device for tapping into the cosmic dark energy potential. Which I’ll admit is quite impressive. But I see nothing in this system that would create or affect subatomic particles. Nor do I see anything that would use quantum particles to affect dark energy.”

Like a referee stopping a fight, Terrell stepped in. “Master Chief. What’s your point?”

“I just want to know why this thing is called a quantum fluctuation generator when none of its functions have anything to do with quantum mechanics or particles.”

Kavalas straightened his back and mustered some pride. “It describes the unpredictability of events that occur within the field created by the generator. Just as quantum effects seem to respond to strange attractors and on occasion appear to precede their causes, so, too, do events in the halo of our dark energy siphon.”

Ilucci shook his head in disgust. “Sorry, sir. It just drives me crazy when people slap the word ‘quantum’ on things when they can’t figure out how they work. As if ‘quantum’ were a synonym for ‘magical.’ ”

Terrell aimed a stink-eye stare at the engineer. “You done?”

“For now.”

“The correct answer is, ‘Yes, sir.’ ” Terrell faced Kavalas. “I get that you and your team lost control of the system, and what happened as a result. But I still don’t understand how you lost control of it. Can you explain why the system became self-perpetuating?”

The scientist’s stature diminished with shame. “No, we can’t. We were in such a hurry to demonstrate our proof-of-concept that we failed to document several key steps in the process.”

Taryl, who had occupied herself for the past several minutes staring out the office’s wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, turned to join the conversation. “Why were you in a hurry?”

Her question put Kavalas on the defensive. “I beg your pardon?”

“You said you were ‘in such a hurry’ that you half-assed part of your job. Why the rush?”

Watching the scientist squirm before answering, Terrell mused that if Taryl hadn’t trained to be a field scout, she might have made a damned good Starfleet JAG lawyer.

Shoulders slumped in defeat, Kavalas spilled out the truth. “We’ve been competing for the past few years with a rival group, one that’s been making much faster progress than we had. We focused on tapping into dark energy. They’ve been working on using electromagnetic fields to harness the energy from matter-antimatter reactions.”

The Starfleet officers volleyed knowing looks. The competing system Kavalas had just described was the type of reactor that powered Starfleet starships.

Hesh reacted to the revelation with a birdlike tilt of his head. “At the risk of adding to your distress, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that your competitors’ technology will likely prove to be safer and more stable than your dark energy siphon.”

Kavalas fluttered his vocal sac with a mournful exhalation.

Saranda intervened. “Hindsight is a luxury for another time, Mister Hesh. And while I will take your recommendation under advisement, for the moment I would ask that we keep our attention on the crisis at hand.” She eyed Terrell. “Captain, what should our next step be?”

He looked around at his landing party. “I’m open to suggestions.”

Ilucci stroked his scruffy chin. “It might help if Hesh and I could visit the control center for Doctor K’s doomsday device.”

“That won’t be of any use,” Kavalas said, ignoring Ilucci’s verbal jab. “When the generator malfunctioned, we lost all our links to the command-and-control system. There’s nothing in the lab that isn’t in the files we’ve already given you.”

“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t,” Ilucci said. “But until we check it out, we can’t be sure that’s not where the problem started.” A conspiratorial glance at Hesh. “Right?”

The science officer faced Terrell. “The Master Chief and I are in agreement.”

“Then that’s our next stop.” Terrell got up from his chair. “Doctor, take us to your lab.”

6

Viewed from orbit, the planet’s surface appeared peaceful. Theriault watched Anura from the comfort of the command chair on the bridge of the Sagittarius. She found it hard to imagine such a serene-looking world being enveloped by unstoppable waves of bizarre freak accidents. Even harder for her to believe was that the captain had willingly ventured into the thick of it.

“Sir, are you sure you and the others will be safe?”

Terrell answered, “Of course not. But risk is our business, Number One.”

It took effort not to roll her eyes. “So you keep telling me. But we’re tracking the distortion field produced by the dark energy generator. It looks like a new pulse just went out, which means a whole new round of weirdness is about to start.”

“How long until it reaches our position in the capital?”

“Three minutes. It’ll make its first pass over the planet’s surface in ten, and then the wave front will begin intersecting itself as it comes back around, following the planet’s magnetic field.”

“I’m guessing that’ll be round two, where the scores can really change.”

“Something like that,” Theriault said, pretending she understood what archaic game he was referring to this time. “I’ve got Sorak working on some ideas for how to block or dampen the effects with a short-range shield, but it’s slow going so far.”

“Understood. Since we have no idea what we might be in for down here, I want you to keep the ship’s sensors locked on to as many of our communicators as possible, at all times. If you see danger heading our way, give us a heads-up.”

“Already on it, sir. Lieutenant Dastin’s tracking all of you as we speak.”

“Well done. But remember: No matter what happens, don’t try to use the transporter.”

“You mean the thing that malfunctions whenever there’s a solar flare or a day ending in y? I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

“Good. We’ll let you know if we find anything useful in Kavalas’s lab. Terrell out.”

Theriault swiveled her chair to starboard. “Dastin, track all distortion wave fronts circling the planet. Have the computer predict their future intersections—those points seem to be where the strangest things are happening. Let’s make sure the landing party doesn’t blunder into one.”

“You got it.” Dastin hunched over the sensor hood and stared into its azure glow.

From the overhead speakers crackled a spurt of static, followed by a peculiar, atonal melody of alien music. Theriault turned the command chair toward Razka, who was flipping switches on the communications panel. “Chief, what are we listening to?”

“A commercial radio broadcast from the planet’s surface.” His long, scaly fingers kept changing the settings on the communications board, but despite a few hiccups, the music played on. “It’s on every frequency being transmitted from Anura, and all are within four-hundredths of a second of perfect synchronicity. Also, for some reason I can’t explain . . . I am unable to turn it off.” He glared up at the speakers. “No matter how dearly I wish to do so.”

Sorak got up from the tactical station and moved to Theriault’s side. “It’s possible this is a new manifestation of the improbability field encompassing the planet.”

“Maybe,” Theriault said. “Or it could be a cultural thing. For all we know, the Austarans might have a custom of always playing this melody on all channels at this time of day. Let’s not be so quick to blame every oddity on the distortion field.”

A humble nod. “Quite right. However, we might wish to continue to monitor their broadcast frequencies for other such coincidences. If similar events coincide with intersections of distortion wave fronts, or with periodic increases in the ambient distortion level—”

“Point taken. Work with Razka to set up automated signal monitors. But remember that keeping tabs on our landing party is our primary concern.”

“Understood.” Sorak withdrew to the communications station, where he and Razka conferred in hushed tones while they worked.

As the ship’s orbit carried it over the terminator to the planet’s night side, Theriault’s thoughts took a dark turn. Before being admitted to Starfleet Academy, every cadet needed to know the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems always evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium, a state with maximum entropy.

One of her instructors had summarized that lesson with a far more succinct version known as Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Deep in her gut, Theriault sensed that she and her shipmates were all about to learn just how true that adage really was.

•   •   •

The day was off to a late start, always a recipe for disaster. Executive Chef Cauda Salir burst through the doors of his kitchen, belting out a roar amplified by his vocal sac. “Line up!”

His junior chefs, prep cooks, and kitchen assistants fell into place, standing single file and ordered by seniority. All projected an appropriate degree of trepidation as he strode past them, inspecting them with his center eye wide and the other two squeezed into menacing squints.

“Despite my better judgment, I’m not going to fire any of you for last night’s debacle.” After a sufficient delay, he paused his march to look back and add in a sepulchral tone, “Yet.”

The youngest of his junior chefs, Caycil Nophris, grimaced in dismay.

As he should, considering he turned a rika-leaf soup into a pot of swamp water.

Salir resumed his review on the move. “None of you has anything to be proud of after last night. Whether any of you will still be working here tomorrow will depend entirely on how well you do your jobs tonight.” After passing the end of the line, he flipped on the heating coil under a pot of salted water. “In five minutes, the contents of this pot will be at a boil. Each of you has exactly that long to show me some reason why I don’t terminate you right now. Get to work!”

He found perverse amusement in watching his troop of potbellied cooks and assistants scurry about like water droplets on a hot skillet. They slammed into each other and tripped over their own webbed feet in their collective mad dash to reach their assigned stations.

Half a minute after his command, flames danced from broilers. Steam rolled from pots and skillets, and vapor condensed at the threshold to the walk-in refrigerator every time the door was opened. Aromas sweet and savory filled the kitchen, and the air was alive with the steady, high-speed rhythm of knives chopping meat and vegetables. Someone switched on the radio that sat on the shelf above the slop sink, adding a lively musical soundtrack to the team’s labors.

That’s more like it. Already Salir felt the change from the night before. Today his team was coordinated and quick, and all its members acted in sync with one another. This was the way his kitchen was supposed to function all the time. He was pleased but sustained his mask of disapproval. No point making them overconfident. If fear works, let’s keep them scared.

He roamed from station to station, doling out praise and criticism in his trademark arbitrary manner:

“Too much haska weed.”

“Don’t stir it so much, let it caramelize a bit.”

“Good, but it needs a bit more zing. Punch it up.”

“What is this supposed to be? Chum for a grazak? Dump it and start over.”

“You’re supposed to be cooking food, not tanning hides. Learn to check your oven temperature or you’ll be today’s first casualty.”

His first circuit of the kitchen complete, he leaned against a prep table and watched his team work. They really weren’t as bad as he liked to tell them they were. Most had graduated from esteemed culinary academies, and several had been senior chefs in restaurants of great renown, in cities all over the world. But for some inexplicable reason, they all had decided to weather his daily tirades, his merciless torrents of invective, for the chance to work in his kitchen at Andrias, an oft-overlooked restaurant attached to a remote island resort.

It was absurd, really. The only people who ever came to Andrias were vacationers at the resort that hosted it. It wasn’t as if Andrias had casual walk-in traffic. Most of its patrons weren’t what Salir considered discerning diners. He doubted half of them could tell the difference between a braised yuva shank and a deep-fried leg of xanth.

We craft plates adorned with edible art, and we serve them to imbeciles.

It was dispiriting in more ways than Salir could enumerate. He was wasting the best years of his professional life, practicing his craft at the height of his abilities, and getting nothing for it. His customers lacked the palates to appreciate what he made for them; his peers in the big cities looked down on him for being an “island-resort slop-slinger” when everyone told him he could have been so much more, if only he’d had different options, made different choices, or been even the slightest bit luckier. Instead, he was here. With perhaps the only dozen individuals who knew as well as he did the artistry and the agony of their culinary adventure.

Maybe I’m not too old. Maybe I could still get out. Open my own place. He thought of all the mediocre chefs collecting accolades and awards, all the half-baked hacks who had turned their lackluster cooking into wildly successful brands and franchises. Their success and wealth taunted him. It could have been me. It should have been me. So what am I still doing here?

A whistle of alarm from one of the prep cooks freed Salir from his maudlin reverie.

“Chef! You really need to come see this!”

The rest of the staff backed away from the pot whose heating coil he had switched on a few minutes earlier. Concerned that a spot of unnoticed grease might have caught fire, he sprinted across the kitchen and pushed through the circle to see what had spooked his cooks.

There were no flames. What there was, Salir couldn’t explain.

Under the pot, the heating element had melted into slag. Its smoke curled up and around the pot, which was sweating with condensation. Salir edged closer and stole a look inside the pot. What he thought was steam rising from the water inside it was actually cold water vapor lingering above a solid block of ice.

The senior associate chef, Nasiikh Renar, stared at the molten metal and frozen water. “Chef? What happened?”

“It looks like the heating coil absorbed heat instead of emitting it. Somehow, it froze the water in the pot and melted itself.”

Renar’s eyes bulged wide in disbelief. “How is that even possible?”

“I have no idea, but I’m taking it as a sign.” Salir shook off his chef’s jacket. “Anyone who wants to help me open my own restaurant on the mainland, come with me now.” He threw his jacket on the floor and stepped on it on his way to the rear exit. “Screw this place. I quit.”

•   •   •

There wasn’t much that could twist Master Chief Mike Ilucci’s guts with fear, but the ride across the capital city in an automated ground car, from the Executive Complex to Doctor Kavalas’s laboratory, had done the trick. The entire trip had been nothing short of nerve-wracking, thanks to the utterly chaotic behavior of every intersection’s traffic controls. By the time they reached the lab—in one piece, thanks no doubt to the mercy of the Great Bird of the Galaxy—Ilucci was all but ready to fall on his hands and knees and kiss the ground.

“Man, am I glad to be out of that death trap,” he said as he and Taryl fell out of the driverless electric vehicle. “Doc, if that’s what the improbability field does to your traffic lights, I don’t blame the tribune for grounding your jets. That was a nightmare.”

Hesh climbed out of the vehicle behind him. “It could have been worse, Master Chief.”

Close on Taryl’s heels, Terrell replied, “If so, Lieutenant, I don’t want to know how.”

Kavalas walked toward the domed building’s entrance and beckoned the landing party to follow him. “This way, please.”

The four Starfleet personnel followed him to the door. Kavalas opened it and walked inside, then ushered them into the cold gray foyer on the other side. He locked the door behind them, then led the way down a corridor toward an elevator at the terminus of a dead end.

No one spoke during the ride up to the top floor of the building, or on the way inside the operations center, which was situated beneath the massive, translucent dome that capped the building. All its clunky computer banks and monitors were dark. The only sound was the soft droning of the building’s ventilation system, which had chilled the dormant operations center to what Ilucci could have sworn was barely a few degrees above freezing.

Their host shivered. “My apologies. The climate controls have been erratic since the incident. The operations center’s been alternating between being a sauna and a freezer. We’ve tried to fix it, but we can’t find the problem—and there’s no way to shut it off without blacking out the rest of the building with it.”

“That’s fine,” Ilucci said. “If it gets too cold, we’ll just start burning the furniture.”

“The furniture is metal,” Kavalas said.

Not wanting to waste time refining the Austarans’ sense of humor, Ilucci pressed onward. “Let’s try to get some of these command systems back online. I want a look at the generator.”

Kavalas pointed at a large bank of switches that dominated one wall. “The center row of toggles restore power to the command-and-control network. But I think you’ll find they’ve been severed at the source, according to the diagnostic software.”

Ilucci did his best not to let preconceptions color his analysis. “I get it, Doc. Bring them back online, please. We need to have all available systems up and running so we can make our own determinations.” As Kavalas carried out his request, he added, “Thank you.”

The captain roamed among the banks of computers and studied them with his usual detachment. Never more than a few paces behind him was Ensign Taryl, her right hand perched on her left hip, just above her phaser. She let her stare move around the room, ever vigilant for the slightest sign of danger to the captain or the landing party.

One row of terminals after another flickered to life. The screens were packed with symbols Ilucci didn’t understand. He looked around for Hesh and was relieved to see the science officer was already running a translation matrix with his tricorder. “Hesh? What have you got?”

“All the data being provided by the system confirms Doctor Kavalas’s report.” He adjusted the settings on his tricorder. The rectangular device whirred and filled the air with high-frequency oscillations. “I have patched into the system on a wireless frequency. I can confirm, sir: This facility has no direct connection to the generator facility.”

Terrell asked, “Can you tap into its activity logs? Any record of what went wrong with their initial experiment could be useful.”

“I’ll try, sir.” Hesh keyed more commands into his tricorder, all the while staring at its display with his solid-green eyes. After a few moments, he frowned and looked up. “I’m sorry, Captain. The logs match the data Doctor Kavalas provided earlier.”

“As I told you before we came here,” Kavalas said, “this is a waste of time.”

If the Austaran scientist was trying not to sound like a smug know-it-all, Ilucci was reasonably sure the big frog was failing. “Hesh, can you see any way to restore the connection?”

“No, sir. All diagnostic data I’ve been able to interpret so far suggests that the command line was physically severed at the generator facility, likely as a misfire of a fail safe system designed to protect the system’s control apparatus from being remotely hijacked.”

“Then we have to go to the next link in the chain.” Ilucci looked at Kavalas. “Doctor, how long will it take to get from here to the generator?”

“Well,” Kavalas said, “that depends on—”

The lab went dark, and the low droning of the ventilators turned to silence. Overhead, the glow of the city through the translucent dome also went black.

Momentarily reduced to a voice in the darkness, Hesh retained his understated deadpan. “Captain? When I said earlier that matters could be worse? I was referring to this.”

7

Most of the time, Theriault was happy to remain above the fray, to stay out of the rough-and-tumble of other people’s problems. When the other people happened to be her commanding officer and shipmates, however, her feelings on such matters were quite the opposite.

Never mind that she had a duty as the ship’s executive officer to safeguard the vessel, as well as the lives and well-being of its officers and crew. Terrell and the others were like a second family to her. Knowing the landing party was at risk while she bided her time in orbit felt to her like a dereliction of duty. Ensconced in the command chair on the bridge, she stared at the image of the planet on the main viewscreen and castigated herself in silence. I should be leading the mission on the surface. What was I thinking, letting the captain walk into danger?

It didn’t matter that she couldn’t have stopped the captain even if she had tried. Once he made up his mind, changing it could be a Herculean labor. Theriault took comfort in the fact that she knew he could take care of himself. During his tenure as the ship’s first officer, he had proved himself something of a daredevil more than once. He was no stranger to risk. There was no one better prepared to protect the landing party in the pit of chaos Anura was about to become.

Just have faith, she told herself. He wouldn’t have gone down there without—

A tide of dimming coursed through the glowing webs of cities that dotted the landmasses on the planet’s night side—a phenomenon Theriault had once heard was called a “brownout.” Then the artificial constellations of light began to stutter. Large segments of each city’s grid went out, followed by others, an erratic cascade of blackouts. She swiveled her chair toward the science console. “Dastin, what’s going on down there?”

The tall field scout hunched over the hooded display. Its blue glow stole the subtle, earthy colors from the pattern of spots that ran from his temple to his jaw, and then down his neck and under his collar. He answered without looking up. “It’s just what it looks like, sir. Power failures rolling from one section of the planet’s integrated grid to another.” He flipped some switches on his console to adjust the sensors’ settings. “I’m also picking up random surges in the grid. Some sites lose power for a few seconds, get it back, and lose it again.”

Sorak turned from the tactical console to join the discussion. “I believe I have identified the cause of the sudden blackouts, and their brief but unpredictable reversals. The planet’s magnetic poles have reversed themselves twelve times in the past two minutes, and they continue to do so. Furthermore, they appear to be shifting position with each reversal.”

Theriault got up and moved aft to look over Sorak’s shoulder at his screen. “Show me.”

He called up his data and rendered it as an animation to show the bizarre wobbling and inversions of the planet’s electromagnetic poles as they occurred. “Their pattern of movement is suggestive of the precession seen in some planets’ axial tilts, but at a greatly accelerated rate.”

“What’s that likely to mean for the landing party?”

Crossed arms and a furrowed brow. “Difficult to say. Navigation systems that rely upon the planet’s magnetic poles for orientation are now useless.”

“What about satellite-based nav systems?”

“That would depend upon how resistant they are to EM interference.”

Taking the cue, Theriault turned toward the communications panel. “Chief? Are we seeing any changes in the operation of the Austarans’ satellites?”

Razka poked at his console’s buttons with his slender digits. “Affirmative. Several have gone quiet in the past few minutes. Signal traffic from the surface to low orbit has decreased by nearly seventy percent during the same time period.” A few more adjustments, then he checked the monitor above his post. “Fifty percent of their low-orbit satellites have lost power.”

“That’s not good.” Theriault paced back to the command chair. “Dastin, start looking for patterns in the blackouts, the failed satellites, and the distortions produced by the dark energy generator. I need to know how, where, and when these wave fronts are going to intersect, and to what effect. And I need to know now.”

He looked up just long enough to nod. “On it.”

“Ensign Nizsk, widen our orbit to ten thousand kilometers.”

“Aye, sir.” She entered the commands into the helm, and instantly the image of Anura grew smaller on the main viewer as the Sagittarius climbed away, until its orbit was wide enough to see nearly the whole planet on the broad, rectangular screen.

Theriault settled back into the command chair and pondered her options in troubled silence. Her mind turned from one worst-case scenario to another for half a minute before she noticed Sorak standing beside her. “I think there is another risk we need to consider, sir.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I presume you’re referring to the fact that our shields won’t do anything to protect us from the effects of the improbability field?”

“Yes, and the likelihood that as a greater number of increasingly powerful wave fronts continue to intersect, their area of effect will very soon extend into high orbit—and might well expand to encompass much if not all of this star system.”

Their conversation drew anxious glances from Dastin, Nizsk, and Razka, so Theriault did her best to maintain a brave mask. “Yes, Mister Sorak, I’m well aware of the dangers posed by the distortion field. I used to be a science officer, remember?”

“Quite well, Commander. But right now you serve as acting captain, and in that capacity you have a decision to make. Assuming the captain refuses to cut short the landing party’s mission on the surface, how long do you intend to remain in orbit?”

“That’s a good question, Sorak.”

“Thank you. What is your answer?”

She drew a deep breath to steady her frazzled nerves, then she fixed her stare on the deceptively placid image of Anura. “As soon as I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

•   •   •

A sharp crack announced Terrell’s priming of a fourth emergency light-stick, which consisted of a flexible clear plastic sheath around a pair of brittle cylinders, each of which contained half of a binary formula for a bright fluorescent chemical. Its violet glow mixed with that of a handful of other snap-flares, as the Austarans called them. Even so, the pool of illumination was limited to the middle of the operations center, leaving the majority of the spacious facility in the dark.

Ilucci pulled open tool cabinets and drawers of worktables in one corner of the room. “Kavalas? Any more of those snap-flares?”

“I didn’t know we had as many as you’ve found. I suspect there are no more.”

Taryl held up a sheaf of printed pages. “Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple songs,” she snarked before tossing the papers aside in a wild flutter.

Terrell took Taryl’s sarcasm in stride. “If you don’t mind, Ensign, I’d like to hold off on arson for the moment.”

Hesh held to his chest two of the glowing sticks, whose light threw sinister shadows upon his face. “Master Chief? I think we have enough flares to find our way back to the vehicle.”

The unsolicited opinion lit a fuse under Ilucci’s bad mood. “So? So what?”

The science officer was undeterred by the chief engineer’s grouchy mood. “Without main power, there is nothing more we can accomplish from this location. We should move on.”

Ilucci slammed the cabinet door. “Suits me.”

Before Terrell could give the order to move out, his communicator beeped twice. He plucked it from his waistband and flipped it open. “Terrell here.”

Theriault answered over the comm. “Captain, are you and the landing party all right?”

“We’re fine, Number One. How’s the ship?”

“So far, so good. But we’re seeing blackouts all over the planet.”

He looked around the darkened lab. “We seem to be caught in one ourselves.”

“I wish I could say that would be the worst thing you’ll face today, but that would be a lie. Dastin’s been analyzing the distortion field produced by the dark energy generator. Their power levels are increasing even faster than the Austarans’ data predicted.”

Hesh cut in, “The generator might have made a feedback loop on the other side of the dimensional rift it created to tap into the cosmic dark energy matrix. Just as its effects amplify one another on this side, it might be increasing its access to energy on the other side.”

“Sir, if Hesh is correct—and I’m pretty sure that he is—I’d suggest we shorten our timetable for this mission and initiate retrieval of the landing party immediately.”

“Negative,” Terrell said. “We’ve barely begun to assess the problem. I’m not throwing in the towel. Not yet.”

“Sir, blackouts are about to become the least of Anura’s problems. Sorak and Dastin agree that within approximately six hours, the distortion effects created by the generator will pass a tipping point. After that, the only thing that will stop them will be the total destruction of the planet. I don’t think you want a front-row seat to that.”

“You’re right, Number One, I don’t. And there are several billion Austarans down here who I’m pretty sure feel the same way. So I’m going to do anything and everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

“In that case,” Hesh said, “I would strongly suggest that the Master Chief and I proceed at once to the generator itself and conduct an onsite inspection of its systems and components.”

The chief engineer nodded. “I’ll second that. You want this fixed? We need to go hands-on with this gizmo—the sooner the better.”

“I fear that will be a more difficult proposition than you think,” Kavalas said. “For the safety of the public, we built the generator facility at a remote location, approximately twenty-five degrees of latitude below our northern pole.”

Apparently unfazed, Ilucci asked, “So? That’s not too far.”

Kavalas’s bulbous eyes swiveled so that two faced Ilucci and the other looked at Terrell. “Before the incident, it was an hour away by turbojet. But the improbability field makes any kind of aviation too dangerous. As we speak, flights are being grounded all over the planet.”

Taryl sounded impatient. “So let’s get back on the Sagittarius and head up there.”

“That might be unwise,” Hesh said. “Based on our sensor readings of the distortions around the generator, it would pose just as much of a danger to our navigational systems as it would to the Austarans’ aircraft. I would also advise against using a transporter inside its area of effect. The results could prove to be . . . less than optimal.”

“You can say that again,” Theriault interjected.

The alien scientist exhaled a weary sigh. “The only way to reach the generator now is to drive to it—and at the moment, that’s not really any safer than flying.”

“It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Terrell said. “Number One, no matter what happens on the planet’s surface, do not bring the Sagittarius down from orbit. I don’t want my ship any closer to the distortion field than absolutely necessary.”

“I’ve already taken us to a higher orbit. To stay ahead of the distortion field, we’ll need to move to maximum communications range in less than two hours. After that, we can try to deploy comm buoys to maintain communications across extended distances, but there’s no telling how the improbability field might affect them.”

“Sounds like a plan, Number One.”

“Sir, one more thing: If the buoys fail, and we lose contact . . . what then?”

As always, he took refuge in gallows humor tinged with a grain of truth. “In that case, Vanessa, I hope you’ll have the courtesy to wait until Starfleet officially promotes you to captain before you throw my things out the airlock and move into my quarters. Terrell out.”

8

Building façades in the Anuran capital of Mitsaro flickered with hashed holographic vids, and the streetlights pulsed without pattern or rhythm. It looked to Taryl like a parody of the post-re-de-reconstructionist aesthetic that had been all the rage in Orion’s trendiest night clubs before she had turned her back on them and her homeworld nearly a decade earlier.

The landing party trailed a pace behind Doctor Kavalas, who led them out of the building that housed his operations center, and across the paved walkway to the lot where his vehicle was parked. In the streets outside the building’s walled lot, other vehicles jerked along, an automotive epileptic seizure that seemed to have spread to all of the capital’s ground traffic.

Kavalas shot an embarrassed look over his shoulder as he gestured toward the street. “It’s normally not like this. Most of the time, the city’s traffic is centrally coordinated.” With a small remote he dug from his pocket, he opened the doors on the same vehicle in which they had come from the Executive Complex. “Remember to fasten your safety harnesses.”

“Whoa.” Ilucci stopped walking. “I thought you said that thing was safe.”

“Under normal circumstances, it’s perfectly safe. But at the moment—” A metallic scrunch of impact from a collision on the street punctuated his thought. “I’d suggest we all err on the side of caution. At least until we’re past the city limits.”

Terrell played peacemaker, nodding at Kavalas while ushering Ilucci toward the vehicle. “Of course, Doctor. That makes perfect sense. Master Chief, why don’t you take a middle seat?”

Ilucci pointed at the front passenger seat. “I thought I’d ride”—a glare from the captain cut him off, and he shifted his finger’s aim to the backseat—“in the middle. Great idea, sir.”

Duly chastised, Ilucci was the first to climb inside the automated transport as its engine came alive. Hesh pushed in from Ilucci’s left, while Taryl climbed in on the engineer’s right. Captain Terrell settled comfortably into the front passenger seat as Kavalas got behind the controls. The interactive panel lit up and emitted soft feedback tones as the scientist keyed in the instructions for their destination. Then a dysfunctional buzzing made Kavalas recoil.

Perhaps sensing the landing party’s collective alarm, Terrell turned a stern look at them to preempt their questions before he asked Kavalas, “What seems to be the problem?”

“The navigation system is having difficulty acquiring an approved route to the generator.” A few more taps on the controls continued to prove unproductive. “Between accidents and malfunctions in the guidance network, it seems we—” The colors and icons underwent an abrupt change. New symbols flashed, and a pale blue line superimposed over a map of the capital’s surface roads indicated the route that had been designated for them. “There we go. As I said, nothing to worry about.” The vehicle eased into motion, slipped out of the lot, and merged into traffic—where it came to a sudden halt, surrounded by a hundred other cars.

It took less than a minute for the stop-and-go traffic to grate on Taryl’s patience. “Just out of curiosity, Doctor—how long is this trip going to take?”

“Ordinarily, it would be about six hours by guided ground transport.”

The captain nodded at the control panel. “Does the display give you an estimated time for this trip, factoring in the delays?”

On the spot, Kavalas squirmed and briefly puffed out the translucent vocal sac around his throat. “Approximately ten and a half hours.”

Hesh let slip a low groan of distress and a pained frown. Ilucci scowled at him. “Why didn’t you go before we left?”

“I did not realize it would be this long a trip in confined quarters.”

Taryl sighed. “Yeah, this trip’s gonna be a little slice of paradise. I can tell already.”

Kavalas entered new commands into the control panel. “I will see if I can manually program a faster alternate route out of the city.”

It took several minutes, but a few artful detours engineered by Kavalas brought the transport to a faster-moving artery of traffic. By any reasonable standard it was still maddeningly sluggish, but it was faster than any other stretch of highway or service road in the capital. “There we go.” He sounded pleased with himself. “That cut our time from ten hours to seven.”

A whimper from Hesh. “Could we pull off the highway, maybe just for a moment?”

Ilucci looked ready to throttle him. “Are you serious? We’re finally moving!”

“Gentlemen!” Terrell barked. “Don’t make me turn this automated transport around.”

Taryl turned away from the petty drama playing out beside her and stared out the window, at the pandemonium slowly engulfing the city around them. Crowds of civilians were taking to the streets in every neighborhood the vehicle passed. Even from a distance, their angry shouts were loud and clear. From the elevated vantage of the highway, it looked to Taryl as if the capital was on the verge of erupting into mass hysteria and a mob-fueled riot.

She reached forward, tapped the captain’s shoulder, and pointed out some of the more unruly gangs coursing through the streets below. All Terrell could do was frown and nod. Taryl understood his silent lesson all too well: Seeing a disaster aborning and being able to do something about it were two very different things. At the moment, the landing party was little more than tourists, strangers passing through one crisis on their way to a larger one.

The transport slipped out of the wall of traffic into the outer lane, a long straightaway that cut through the center of the metropolis. Despite the empty stretch of road in front of them, their transport made only a slight increase in speed.

Ruby flames erupted from a building beside the highway. The shock front from the blast boomed through their vehicle and sent it rocking on both axles. Debris pattered across the freeway, and several smoldering chunks bounced off their roof and windshield.

Taryl leaned forward and snapped at Kavalas, “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

“No. Even in override, the transport’s accelerator is limited by a governor circuit.”

She looked back and frowned at their brush with incineration. “Don’t tell me—let me guess: for our safety.”

•   •   •

Life had run its course. Now gravity lured Ellisor Onda to take one last step into its embrace.

Overhead, the stars were distant and indifferent. Far below stretched empty boulevards, a blank canvas of stone and concrete waiting to be blemished for a brief moment by the last evidence of Onda’s life. The street, far below, would no more welcome her mark upon its history than the rest of the world had done, in all the pointless decades of her existence.

Death promised release. An end to her years of loneliness, shame, and failure.

No, she corrected herself. Even that’s too generous. I can’t be a failure. I never even got a chance to fail. I’m just insignificant. Someone who wanted to take a chance and never made it even that far. Her lifetime of dreams had amounted to nothing more than fleeting brushes with success, followed by professional invisibility. All her life she had been brought up to think she had the potential for greatness, to be someone of consequence. To live a life that mattered.

What a cruel joke it all seemed in retrospect. Her family hadn’t been wealthy or well connected. Only through a stroke of luck and a willingness to take on usurious loans had she been able to gamble on higher education, on a shot at the dream her life had dared her to chase. Too late had she realized it was all a trap, a beautiful lie spun to separate her and her family from whatever money they’d once had, and whatever meager earnings they ever hoped to have.

Still I struggled on. Because I was fool enough to hope.

The fantasy that she might turn her absurd notions into songs that could live on after she had left this life, that she could earn a living crafting music from her heart, that anyone would ever value her minor-chord delusions over those of so many other composers more gifted than she was—it had been absurd when she was young, sad now that she’d grown old.

Now a new generation of younger, more energetic, more personable songwriters dominated the scene, and no one in the industry had time for Onda anymore. She and her work had become passé, relics of a bygone age. In the blink of an eye, her youth had fled, and she and her style of music had become obsolete. Irrelevant. Disposable.

Friends to whom she might once have turned for support, for work, for another chance to prove her worth . . . they had all since turned their backs on her. All while her peers, and the new voices, the younger voices, crowded her out, drowned her out, hounded her out of the business.

Still, she had hung on for as long as she could. For as long as her savings had lasted. But it hadn’t been long enough. The money was gone now and, with it, so were her options. There were no more opportunities lurking just around the next corner of her career. There were no more corners; no more turns. Just a long, straight path into oblivion.

She had pretended not to know it was all over. That nothing she did anymore would or could make a difference. That her life had been reduced to a cost on a balance sheet. A foolish spark of optimism had lived inside her, too stubborn to die, too arrogant to admit defeat. It was a fading ember of the artist she’d once been, the broken shard of a dream that refused to see how cruelly it had been shattered, and how resolutely the world did not care.

Then, just when Onda thought she had lied herself back into a semblance of hope, she had received the diagnosis. A deep and thoroughly metastasized cancer. Most of her vital organs had been compromised already. Time had caught up to her. The yawning black of the abyss was calling her name. Her song was over whether she wanted to fight on or not.

If I’d accomplished something worth calling a legacy, she grieved, I could let go without regret. If I thought anyone would sing my ballads after I’d gone back to the sea, I’d depart with grace. But who’s going to remember my name a year from now? What have I done that matters even now, never mind after I’ve passed away?

Pointless rhetorical questions, all of them. She had said her good-byes—admittedly, in her own cryptic way, but they had been farewells all the same—but no one seemed to have listened. The handful of neighbors, acquaintances, and occasional coworkers to whom she had made her final valedictions had barely noticed her, even as she had been baring her soul.

Ever the responsible one, Onda had made sure her financial and legal affairs were in order before this evening. Her will had been made clear, and what meager assets she possessed would be distributed in a way that might do some good for those less fortunate. There were no more loved ones or kin for her to wound with her act of self-destruction. She couldn’t think of any lives that would be diminished in any meaningful way by her abrupt exit. It was time for her to let go, to bring down the curtain on her solo tragedy of errors with one last act of infinite spite.

She stepped off the skyscraper’s ledge, her arms wide to embrace the end.

Gravity welcomed her, its attractions unseen and irresistible.

Free fall set Onda’s heart racing. It was the first moment of true freedom she had ever known.

All the haze and dullness that had clouded her perception burned away, leaving only the perfect clarity of that moment—the inevitability of acceleration, the crisp details of the ground rushing up to meet her, the promise that a lifetime of feeling unwanted, unloved, and unneeded was finally about to end and be replaced by the sweet nullity of death and nothingness.

Then came the wind.

A gust unlike any Onda had ever felt swelled upward, a tide of air surging beneath her. It was powerful but gentle, unyielding but soft. She was so close to the ground that she could see the cracks in the sidewalk pavement when she came to a momentary halt in midair, suspended between the pull of gravity and the grip of the gale, a pawn in the game of fortune.

For half a second she rose, a prisoner of the wind.

Then the tempest dissipated, and she plummeted the last short distance to the cold, hard ground. The moment of impact brought pain and a jolt of awareness, a sudden epiphany that she had been spared by some mechanism of Providence she didn’t understand.

Lying on her back she stared up, beyond the hundred stories past which she had fallen, to the stars that only minutes earlier she had thought cared nothing for her life or death.

Chilled and bruised, embarrassed and unnerved, Onda had no explanation for what had just happened. All she knew for certain was that she would never be able to muster the will to make that leap again. For reasons that eluded her, a miracle had spared her broken life.

All she could think to do now . . . was go on living.

•   •   •

After nearly two hours, the domes and spires of Anura’s capital were far behind the transport, hazy shadows at the end of a stretch of deserted highway. In front of them, the road vanished into a night without horizon, an endless sprawl of formless black under a sky peppered with stars.

Boredom had reduced Taryl to a low monotone. “Are we there yet?”

“Go back to sleep,” Terrell said. He snuck a quick look over his shoulder. Taryl pressed her forehead against her window and gazed blankly into the night. Across from her, Hesh had crossed his legs at the knees and folded his arms over his chest, as if he were practicing to be an Egyptian mummy in a sarcophagus. Stranded between them was Ilucci, his chin against his chest, which rose and fell in time with the soft rasps of his snoring.

Beats hearing him complain.

Ahead, the highway curved around a low hill. When the road straightened again, Terrell saw flashing green lights ahead. The automated transport slowed nearly to a halt in a matter of seconds, pushing him forward against his safety harness and jostling awake the trio in the back.

Ilucci mumbled through a mouthful of sleep, “What’s going on?”

“Some kind of traffic stop.” Terrell looked at Kavalas. “You know anything about this?”

A roll of knobby shoulders under a shiny tunic. “Not a thing, Captain.”

The transport was guided remotely into a lay-by, behind one of three official-looking vehicles. A pair of brawny Austarans wearing red-and-white tunic uniforms and carrying batonlike weapons approached either side of the transport and leaned down to look inside.

Kavalas lowered his window. “Good evening, Constable.”

The peace officer’s enormous eyes bulged wide at the sight of Terrell and the others. He asked Kavalas in a nervous hush, “Are . . . are those . . . ”

“Offworlders? Yes. The first ever known to set foot on our planet. They’re my guests.”

Terrell waved. “Hi, there.”

Stunned silence. Then a scramble for composure. The constable holstered his baton and pulled a thin electronic tablet from inside his tunic. “Are you Doctor Pren Kavalas?”

“I am. This is my vehicle. Is something wrong?”

“There’s been an accident,” the constable said. “A cargo ship in the channel struck one of the bridge supports. We’re still waiting for engineers to assess the damage, but we have reason to think the collision has rendered the bridge structurally unsound and unsafe for traffic.”

The news left Kavalas perturbed. “Are you sure? We need to reach the Krokur Research Facility as soon as possible, and this is the only direct route.”

The constable fluttered his vocal sac. “Not tonight, it isn’t. I’m sorry, Doctor, but you and”—he threw a long, uncertain look at the landing party—“your guests will have to take the detour.” He pointed perpendicular to their intended direction. “Take Riverside Highway to the Ribik Bridge. Once you cross over, you can double back on Prairie Route Twelve.”

Kavalas stewed as the suggested route appeared on his vehicle’s navigation display. “That would add seven hours to our trip!”

“Sorry, Doctor. But the bridge’s guidance nodes are off, and we’re under orders to divert all northbound traffic to the Ribik Bridge.”

The scientist’s temper got the best of him. “But this is an emergency! If we don’t reach the generator in the next four hours—”

“Take it up with the Ministry of Transportation, Doctor. Safe travels.” The two constables stepped away from the transport and waved it on its way.

Flustered, Kavalas closed his window. “They’ve used a law enforcement override to commit us to the new route. There’s nothing we can do now.”

“I disagree,” Terrell said. “But I’m going to need you to trust me, Doctor.”

A dubious reaction. “Why? What are you going to do?”

“This transport’s engine is in the rear, correct?”

“Yes, but I don’t—”

Terrell snapped orders over his shoulder. “Taryl, trade places with the doctor—you’re driving. Hesh, use your tricorder. Override the nav system. Master Chief, dig into the engine and disable the accelerator’s governor circuit. We’re about to need some serious speed.”

“Roger that,” Ilucci said, as Hesh powered up his tricorder and Taryl clambered forward between the front seats, initiating an awkward round of musical chairs with Kavalas. Within a matter of seconds, she was in the driver’s seat, and Kavalas had strapped himself in behind Terrell. Meanwhile, the quiet interior of the transport resonated with the high-pitched oscillations of Hesh’s tricorder and the screech of Ilucci’s phaser cutting through the back chassis panel.

Kavalas shied away from the activity, seemingly in shock. Terrell thought it might be a good idea to reassure him that the landing party wasn’t crazy. “Relax, Doctor. We’ll have everything under control in a moment.” The scientist said nothing; he just watched in horror.

Ilucci pried open the red-hot plate he’d cut free behind the backseat. “Okay, then. Let’s see. What do we have here? Primary dynamo? Check. Ignition system? Check. Fuel cell reserve? Check. Transmission system? Check. So where would our governor circuit be?”

Hesh entered commands into his tricorder. “Captain, I’ve isolated the frequency for the transport’s guidance control system. I can interrupt it on your command.”

“Good, stand by. Taryl? Think you can figure out the controls?”

“Steering wheel, accelerator, brake, automatic transmission. Good to go, sir.”

“Glad to hear it. Get ready to bring us about and take us over the bridge.”

The chief engineer let out a whoop of victory from the backseat. “Got it!” He turned around, holding up a broken computer chip. “Say adios to your governor circuit.”

Terrell took hold of the armrest on his door. “Now, Mister Hesh.”

One flipped switch on the tricorder scrambled the nav system’s display, which went dark a few seconds later.

Taryl tested the wheel with a few quick swerves. “I have manual control.”

“Ensign, bring us hard about, then take us over the bridge as fast as you can.”

“Hard about!” She stomped on the brakes and twisted the wheel to the left. The transport spun as it skidded to a halt. As soon as its nose was most of the way around, Taryl stepped on the accelerator and pointed them back toward the bridge. “Stand by for flank speed!”

The constables rushed into the road. They waved their batons and flailed their arms, but they seemed to have no idea how to stop a rogue vehicle from defying their orders. At the last moment, they dived out of the transport’s path. Taryl swung through the turn and picked up speed as she did, pinning Terrell and the others against the vehicle’s right side and one another.

Painted lines on the bridge blurred past, then zigzagged as the vehicle raced over the broken section. Deep rumbling filled the air—a roar like thunder, though the skies were clear.

It was the sound of the bridge collapsing directly behind them. Broad sections of the roadway writhed and weaved as they raced over it. Ear-splitting cracks heralded the snapping of high-tension wires, which whipped across the fracturing asphalt on either side of them. The edge of destruction chased them clean across the river, until the last stretch of road fell away and vanished into the water below. Safe at last on its far side, they sped away on solid land.

In the backseat, Kavalas was all but paralytic. Hesh shivered.

Ilucci’s eyes were frozen wide, a gaze of horror. “So that happened.”

They picked up speed on another straightaway as Taryl tested the transport’s limitations. “On the bright side,” she quipped, “we’re finally making good time.”

Terrell smiled back at Hesh. “Still need a pit stop, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir.” A slow, stunned blink. “Also? I think I could use a sedative.”

9

A beeping from the arm of the command chair drew Theriault’s attention to the switch for the engineering deck’s internal comm channel. She thumbed the flashing button. “Bridge here.”

Threx answered, “Commander, we’re ready to launch the comm buoy.”

“Good work. Stand by.” She closed the channel and swiveled toward Razka. “Chief, deploy the communications buoy to maximum subspace booster range.”

“Now, sir? We still have a lock on the landing party’s communicators.”

“I want it in place early, in case we need to fall back in a hurry.”

“Aye, sir.” He made a few adjustments on his panel. “Launching now.” A brief whoop from the buoy’s thrusters resounded through the hull, and then a bright light streaked across the main viewscreen before arcing away from the planet, into space. “Buoy’s away, sir.”

“Good work. Track it and make sure it comes online as expected.” Theriault got up and moved aft to hover beside Sorak. “Any progress mapping the distortion field?”

“Some.” On the display above his console, he called up a series of animated graphs that showed circular wave fronts moving over the planet’s surface. “As we noted, the distortions are more pronounced when wave fronts intersect. What we didn’t expect is that each new intersection generates new wave fronts, which in turn multiplies the number of intersections and their intensity, on a logarithmic scale.”

On the screen, the proliferation of distortion wave fronts grew so rapidly that it obscured all other details of the map. Unable to mask her concern, Theriault turned a worried look at Sorak. “How long a period does that simulation represent?”

“The next six hours. Beyond that, the variables became too much for our computer.”

She pointed at a map with a conspicuously blank space. “I take it that’s the generator?”

“Correct. Although the inner perimeter of the distortion effect is quite severe, inside it everything appears to be calm. The ‘eye of the hurricane,’ as I believe it’s called on Earth.”

“So, the generator is immune to its own effects?”

Sorak nodded. “So it seems. Though it’s not yet clear if that’s an intentional safeguard against self-disruption of its operations, or an unintended consequence of its malfunction.”

Dastin backed away from the sensor hood, his manner troubled. He looked at Theriault. “More bad news. We’re detecting violent tectonic shifts in the planet’s crust and major movement in its mantle.” He transferred the sensor readings to his overhead display while Theriault hurried to his side. “The flip-flopping we saw in the magnetic poles? It’s got things stirred up big time. We’re talking earthquakes, spontaneous volcanic eruptions, you name it.”

Theriault let out a low whistle. “This planet’s about to shake like a wet dog.”

“And our landing party’s right in the middle of it. We need to get them out of there.”

“No. You heard the captain. Unless he calls for an evac, we stay clear of this.”

“When he said that, I don’t think he knew the planet was about to melt itself.”

She sharpened her tone. “He knew what he was doing, Lieutenant. Now here’s what I need you to do: Run a geological scan of the planet’s crust. Identify weak spots, subduction zones, or regions where tectonic plates are colliding or separating. I want a detailed map of every high-risk area on this planet. Which are the most vulnerable to earthquakes? Which have the greatest risk of mass casualties due to volcanic eruption? If the landing party’s driving into one of these areas, I need to know right now—and the planet’s government needs every warning we can give them so they can start evacuating endangered regions. Do you get me, Lieutenant?”

Dastin absorbed the reality check with a deep breath and a short nod. “Aye, sir. I’m on it.” He leaned back over the sensor console and resumed working with laserlike focus.

Theriault returned to Sorak, who was running a new simulation. “What’s this?”

“By removing some of the more granular data points, the computer is able to provide a more big-picture forecast of the field’s eventual expansion. Within the next few hours, its effects will extend well past low and middle orbit and encompass most of this star system.”

“We already knew that. But I didn’t realize how many factors it would affect. If the distortion field can stir up activity inside Anura’s core, what might it do to objects in space? Such as Anura’s moons? Or its parent star?”

“Difficult to say.”

“Take a guess.”

He cocked one eyebrow to convey his disdain. “If I were to offer an educated hypothesis, I might speculate that the distortion field could trigger any number of solar events, including an increase in solar flares, coronal mass ejections, or possibly even a supernova.”

“A supernova? Are you serious?”

“It’s a remote possibility. The star’s extreme range from the generator might diminish the risk. But any profound disruption of the laws of probability increases the risk of catastrophic events that might affect the planet—and also us, assuming we remain here.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them for a moment, until it was interrupted by Chief Razka. “Sir? The buoy is in position and confirmed as operational.”

“Thank you, Chief.” To Sorak, she added under her breath, “Dastin has an eye on the planet. I want you to keep an eye on the rest of this star system. If you detect anything—and I mean anything—out of the ordinary, notify me immediately.”

“Understood.” The centenarian set to work turning the ship’s tactical sensors into their watchful eye for dangers that might soon appear from the endless black.

Theriault settled back into the command chair and stared at the planet on the viewscreen. A pinpoint of light appeared on its night side, commanding her attention. “Nizsk, magnify.”

Nizsk adjusted the viewscreen, which shimmered for a moment before presenting a greatly enlarged and enhanced image of the planet’s surface. A yellow-orange ball of fire raged in the darkness, a portrait of geological violence.

Dastin looked up from the sensor readout. “The good news? That eruption’s happening in the middle of open ocean, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest population. The bad news? It’s major, and it won’t be the last one.” Mournful, he faced the viewscreen. “I hate to say it, but it looks like we’ve got front-row seats to the end of a world.”

•   •   •

The whole planet was falling apart, but Kilmarlic Tritur was almost certain it had to be some kind of a scam. He hadn’t become Jefgis Amalgamated’s youngest-ever factory foreman by being gullible—and the stories being called in by all his tardy workers, and jamming all the broadcast channels, were just too outrageous to be believed. Who’d ever heard of a ground transport’s fuel cell melting in mid-drive? Or of inventory computers suddenly going blank? It was absurd.

He was prepared for just about anything when he heard the knock at his office door. He muted his vid player and swiveled his pad to face Desmar Lahdik, the strangely tall and narrow-bodied union representative from the warehouse. “What now, Lahdik?”

“Things are getting too weird, sir. The team wants to go home.”

“Home? They just got here! Are they crazy? Are you? Anyone who leaves early is fired.” He dismissed Lahdik with a broad wave of his hand. “Get out of my office.”

“With all respect, sir, I don’t think you understand what’s going on.”

“And you mean to educate me? How generous of you.” He hoped Lahdik would take the hint and go away, but the union officer held his ground in Tritur’s doorway. “Okay, Lahdik. I’ll give you two minutes to persuade me to send the crew home.”

The lanky champion of the rank-and-file pointed with one freakishly long arm at the muted vid screen. “Have you been watching the news?”

“Off and on. I have to say, they’ve become quite brazen in their quests for ratings.” He picked up the remote and switched from one channel to another, narrating their sins as he went. “These talking heads say the planet’s magnetic poles have been flip-flopping for the past four hours.” Click. “This channel says it has authenticated vids of alien visitors, and that they’re working on a secret project with a government scientist—with the full blessing of the tribune.” Click. “Some terminally ill moron who’s probably hopped up on more drugs than I can count claims she survived a jump off a hundred-story building because of a freak wind.” He switched off the vid and pushed aside the remote. “Do they really expect us to believe this junk?”

Lahdik clenched his fists and puffed out his vocal sac, clearly overwrought. “Sir, it’s all true. Something strange is happening right now, and it’s happening everywhere. Half the team has seen things today they can’t explain, and so have I.”

“Really? What have you seen, Lahdik?”

Now the union rep looked abashed. “Well, I heard it. On the wireless, I mean. Driving to work, a song came on that I didn’t like. I tried to change the channel, but it was on every channel. All of them, sir. What are the odds of that?”

“Considering the way our one-world government loves to meddle in the affairs of its citizens? I’d say you can probably lay the blame for that one on the tribune. I bet she issued an executive order to make all the wireless stations play the same song, just to remind us all that she makes our decisions for us.” He lifted his voice to add with sarcastic venom, “Thanks, Saranda!”

“You can’t write all these coincidences off as government conspiracy.” He pointed out the door. “You don’t believe me? Come talk to the team yourself. They’ll tell you the same.”

In the mood for a confrontation he knew he couldn’t lose, Tritur got up from his pad. “All right, Lahdik. Let’s go hear what your tool-pushers and load-lifters have to say.”

He followed Lahdik out of his office and downstairs to the floor of the warehouse, where the hourly employees had gathered in a throng. Behind them yawned the cavernous interior of the warehouse, with its towering stacks of high-capacity storage grids, arranged in long parallel rows. Piled at various points on the concrete work floor were irregular pyramids of crates and mounds of palletized cargo optimized for the rolling hydraulic lifts the union insisted on keeping under manual control, even though management was certain automation would be more efficient.

A few steps from the bottom of the metal staircase, Tritur stopped and rested his hands on the railing. “Who wants to explain to me what’s so pressing that I need to close the warehouse?”

A cacophony of voices was shouted down by Lahdik and a few of his deputy foremen. Lahdik pointed at one employee, an older female, who stepped forward and spoke in a loud but tremulous voice. “Every single person in my town who played the lottery this week won it this morning!” She held up a ticket. “Including me! We all had the same number—and it won!”

“That sounds more like a conspiracy to me,” Tritur said.

“There were more than nine thousand of us. Most of us don’t know each other. And because we all won, no one got more than a few credits. Why would we do that?”

“Because you’re bad at business?” He shot an impatient look at Lahdik. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

Another tumult of voices. From the din, Tritur picked out a few stray exclamations:

“Every transport on my street had engine failure!”

“All the males in my pod have gone sterile!”

“We had forty-seven new job applicants this morning—all named Torlas!”

“Stop! Stop! Everyone, enough! I think half of you are being pranked, and the other half are probably in on the joke. I don’t know who’s crazier—you or the idiots running the news!” He pointed at Lahdik. “Get your people under control, and get them back to work before I—” The rumble-purr of a lift engine’s motor interrupted him. He looked down at the unmanned machine. “Who switched that on? What are you trying to—”

The lift put itself into gear—something that should have been impossible with its manual safety engaged. It sped away from the stairs toward the crowd of workers, who croaked and screeched in alarm as they scattered. By luck—Tritur refused to call it a miracle—the lift didn’t hit anyone. It raced off across the warehouse floor, straight toward a stack of wooden crates.

He pointed at the retreating lifter. “Someone stop that thing!”

A few workers stumbled after it, to no avail. None of them was fast enough to catch it. The heavy lifter slammed into the crates. Its front forks impaled the sides of one box on the bottom. The jolt of the collision knocked a crate off the top of the pile. It crashed and broke apart on the concrete floor, scattering its load of precision-milled ball bearings. They spread across the concrete floor. Tritur watched with bulging eyes and bated breath as the bearings rolled to a stop in a perfect grid formation, one hundred rows by one hundred columns, each perfectly aligned with its neighbors, every one as straight as if drawn by a master draftsman.

Lahdik and the workers stared in shock at the grid of ball bearings, and then they turned in unison to look up at Tritur, who made what he considered a logical, reasonable decision.

“Everybody go home. We’re closed until further notice.”

•   •   •

Floris Lanon had never been what anyone would call dexterous. More often than not, she was the one who could be counted upon to drop something fragile, knock over something valuable, or spill something hot into the lap of someone who never saw it coming. It often seemed to her that she had spent her whole life fumbling things, both literally and metaphorically: her possessions, her career, her marriage. Sooner or later, everything she cared about wound up broken at her feet.

So she was more confused than anyone after her fifth consecutive perfect dart throw.

Deafening cheers filled her neighborhood bar as her sixth dart landed dead-center, in the minuscule circle at the heart of the triskelion. She was four core shots away from a perfect game. That was a feat none of her friends or neighbors could remember ever having seen, either here in Vassago’s or anywhere outside of a professional tournament.

Borim, the barkeep, collected cash as the other patrons placed their bets. Everyone was betting on her streak to end with her next throw. She couldn’t blame them for betting against her. Her life’s story and the law of averages both said that was where the smart money would be.

Twelve paces away, the board was cleared for her next toss. She picked up a new dart and felt its weight. It had exquisite balance, and its tail fins boasted perfect symmetry.

Crouched beneath a table just an arm’s reach away was her daughter, Prila. The tiny pogling giggled and pretended to cover her eyes each time Floris threw, as if the excitement were too much for her to stand. Floris knew better; her little one was nothing if not a glutton for spectacle and attention. She was in the center of this bizarre drama and loving every second of it.

A gruff-voiced smart aleck at the bar called out, “Make me rich, Floris! Put it in the floor!” His de-motivational spiel was answered by a blend of laughter and jeers.

Floris set her right foot beside the edge of the throwing line. The room fell silent as she fixed her eyes on the core of the triskelion. She extended her arm, the dart poised lightly in three of her fingers. A long slow intake of breath. Then she exhaled and felt her world go still.

In a fleeting moment between two beats of her heart, she cocked her arm and threw.

The dart sailed through a shallow arc—and struck the triskelion’s heart.

Wild cheers and raucous cries erupted behind her. Someone yelled “Foul!” only to be told “Shut your sac, you old coot!” More cash traded hands, and Borim skimmed a few bucks off every transaction—the unspoken but commonly understood privilege of the house.

The mood inside Vassago’s was veering toward the manic. Slaad, one of the old-timers, waggled his transport’s keychain at her. “Make another shot like that, I’ll give you my ride!”

Borim plucked the keys from Slaad’s hand. “Bet’s a bet!” Then he pointed at Floris. “Make that shot and I’ll let you eat and drink here free for the rest of your life!”

The room’s good vibes soured at the intrusion of a voice Floris knew all too well. “Well, well—look whose luck finally turned!”

Floris turned away from the throwing line to face her former mate, Keelix Tran. The mere sight of him made the tan speckles on her golden skin flush dark brown.

“What are you doing here, Keelix?”

He sauntered forward, as arrogant as ever. “I heard the greatest sporting event of our generation was happening at Vassago’s triskelion. Never dreamed you’d be the one at the line.”

“Happy to disappoint you. Now take your dreams and get lost.”

Her dismissal only encouraged him. “What? So soon? I just got here! I want to get in on this.” He swiveled his eyestalks at Borim. “What’s the current line?”

“Slaad’s ride, my menu, and about sixty thousand min.”

Keelix feigned a swoon, then continued mocking Floris with insincere praise. “Hey, now! You really are playing for big stakes, aren’t you? I’m impressed. Really, I am.” He pointed at Slaad. “How many shots has she made so far?”

“Seven.”

“Three away from a perfect game?” A sadistic gleam infused Keelix’s stare. “What do you say, Floris? Want to make things really interesting?”

“What I want is for you to go away and leave me alone.”

“Let’s make that the bet!” He preened for the crowd. “Throw a perfect game, and you’ll never see me again. I’ll leave town. The only proof you’ll ever have of my continued existence will be the support payments I send every week for Prila.” Then he intruded on Floris’s space and dropped his voice. “But anything less than a perfect game, and I get full custody of Prila. And you disappear.” He let the terms sink in while he flashed a malevolent grin.

“Forget it.” Floris reached for Prila’s hand. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

Disappointed boos surrounded her, and Keelix blocked her path to the door. “What’s wrong? Not feeling lucky anymore?”

“Some things are too precious to gamble.”

She tried to step around him, but he obstructed her again. “You think skipping out of here will keep me from taking her? I’ve got more wealth than the sea, and I’ve hired the best legal team in the world. They’ll run circles around you and your volunteer attorney. So slink out of here. All you’re doing is prolonging the inevitable.”

Sick fury welled up from a deep, dark place inside her. She wanted to hurt Keelix, to deal him a blow he’d never forget, to send him out of her life—and Prila’s—forever. She looked around the room at the cluster of faces both strange and familiar. “Whose comm can take vids?”

Dozens of hands hoisted personal comms. One young patron at the bar stepped forward with his comm held in front of him. “I’ve been recording since your first throw. I’ve got it all”—he pointed at Keelix—“including his bet.”

Slaad shouted at Keelix, “And a bet witnessed is a verbal contract!”

Murmurs of assent traveled around the room.

Floris poked Keelix’s chest. “I accept your wager. And these people are my witnesses.” Holding her daughter’s hand, she led her back the way they’d come, to the throwing line. “Stay behind me.” She held out her hand toward the crowd. “Someone give me a dart.”

Borim opened a new box of darts and pressed one into Floris’s hand. She set her feet and extended her arm. She drew a breath, then let it go.

In the silence, she made her throw.

Dart number eight struck the heart of the triskelion.

Joyous cheers and applause filled the bar. Borim handed her another dart.

Anxious silence befell the crowd. Floris breathed in and extended her arm. She exhaled and waited for the moment of stillness in her center. Then she threw—

Dead-center. Nine core shots in a row.

One more to decide the shape of her life, and her daughter’s.

No one spoke. The bar became so hushed that Floris wondered if the crowd was holding its collective breath. A deep breath swelled her chest, then escaped without resistance, as free and natural as the tide. She held out her arm and pictured the moment before she threw.

At the last moment, she turned her head away from the triskelion and looked Keelix in the eye. Then she threw.

She didn’t have to see the triskelion to know where her shot had landed. The crowd erupted, an explosion of jubilation. People who’d never met before embraced, and laughed, and croaked their vocal sacs so loudly that the walls shook.

Keelix fumed, a lonely island of fury and resentment in a sea of exultation. He said nothing more. He just turned and walked away, out of Floris and Prila’s life, at long last.

Prila hugged Floris’s leg and looked up at her, eyes wide with wonder.

“Mama? What happened?”

“A miracle, darling. A miracle.”

•   •   •

The impromptu strategy meeting in the Sagittarius’s mess hall was proving less productive than Theriault had hoped when she had convened it five minutes earlier. Sorak and Threx flanked the large display on the inner bulkhead, while Dastin lingered in front of it.

Dastin pointed at an orbital image of the storms ravaging the planet’s surface—with one notable area of exception. “This gap in the distortion field is just begging us to take a shot. It’s an unmanned facility. Why don’t we just blast it from orbit? That ought to shut it down.”

“It would do more than that,” Threx said. “The collateral damage from detonating a dark energy siphon might be enough to crack this planet in half. And I mean that literally.”

A sage nod from Sorak. “I concur. At the very least, such an uncontrolled release of dark energy onto the planet’s surface would pose an elevated risk of burning off its atmosphere.”

Theriault held up a hand to preempt Dastin’s rebuttal. “I’m all for shutting down the machine, but not if it means breaking the planet or frying it like an egg. We need something more surgical and less violent.” She wished she could just pluck it off the surface—and that gave her an idea. “What about the tractor beam? If we put all the warp power into it, could we pull the active core of the generator out of the building and into orbit?”

Threx shook his head. “No way. The interference that thing’s kicking up would make a tractor-beam lock all but impossible. Even if you got hold of it, odds are you’d drop it before you got halfway back to orbit.”

“Hang on,” Dastin said. “Once we pull it free, won’t it go inert?”

“Nope. The Austarans’ report says its reaction is self-sustaining. The only way to shut it down is to destroy it. And before you ask, the transporters won’t help. They can’t get enough of a lock on that thing to dematerialize it.” To Theriault he added, “This is a hands-on job, sir.”

She crossed her arms. “Too bad we’re stuck in orbit. Any other ideas?”

Threx scratched his black bramble of a beard. “This might be crazy, but . . . if the pulses from the generator are causing the problems, what if we generate an inverted form of those waves? You know—like a noise-canceling frequency.”

Sorak lifted one eyebrow. “An intriguing notion.” He switched the image on the display to show the wave forms from the generator. “However, I see several obstacles to implementing such a plan. The first is that we have no hardware on the ship capable of generating such wave forms. Second, the specific frequencies and harmonics of the wave fronts affecting the planet continue to change as they propagate. We would need to cancel out not just one of them but all of them. Third, even if we devised a means of producing such waves in the multitude of required harmonics, our warp core can’t produce enough raw power to compete with the output of a dedicated, planet-based generator whose own capacity doubles several times per hour.”

“This is insane.” Theriault rested her head in her hands for a moment to collect her wits. “There has to be some way to turn this thing off or cripple it without killing the planet.”

Threx regarded the data on the screen with dismay. “Not from orbit, there isn’t.”

Frustration impelled Theriault to get up and pace. “Okay, then let’s change the game. If we can’t save the planet, is there some way to save the people? Evac them, maybe?”

Dastin looked at her as if she were crazy. “To where? This is the only M-class planet in the system.” He switched the display to a star map of the surrounding sector. “The last planet we surveyed is their closest option. But in the time it would take us to make one round-trip, this planet’s likely to implode. And I might be wrong about this, but I don’t think eight billion Austarans are gonna fit in our cargo hold.”

“Equally unfortunate,” Sorak added, “this far from the Federation, it would be months before Starfleet could muster a fleet of sufficient capacity to evacuate the Austarans.”

“So we can’t fix the problem,” Theriault said, “and we can’t evacuate the people.” She grimaced in frustration. “Damn it! Is there anything we can do?”

Threx shrugged. “Hang back and hope nothing else goes wrong?”

“Yeah, right,” Theriault said. “As if we’ve ever been that lucky.”

10

The news filtering up from the planet’s surface wasn’t good, but from the vantage of the crew of Space Station Xenopus, it never was. It always seemed as if some tiny breakaway faction wanted to shatter Anura’s fragile global peace, or some shortsighted legislator with an axe to grind was threatening to sequester the operating budget for the space station, leaving its eight-person crew in the unenviable position of trying to figure out how they would get home if no one on the ground was willing or able to pay to recover their escape pods from the open ocean.

All the same, the news over the past several hours had gone from being garden-variety bad to downright strange, with a smattering of the ominous. There had been reports of bizarre phenomena all over the planet’s surface—some disastrous, others miraculous. Confounded by the sudden flood of weird tidings from her homeworld below, Engineer Kassinas Nasutas put the news out of her mind and focused on her day’s assigned maintenance schedule.

She floated through the station’s zero-gravity interior, taking care as always to make certain her duty uniform had no free-floating straps or other wayward pieces that might snag in the hatchways or foul the delicate workings of exposed circuit boards. Her webbed hands found purchase at a corner, enabling her to arrest her forward momentum, reorient herself, and push off into another spoke of the wheel-shaped orbital complex. It all felt so natural now that she had been in orbit for more than a hundred days. Her first week in low orbit, on the other hand—she shuddered to remember the nauseated, disorientated mess she had been.

Her eyes swiveled independently of each other, enabling her to inspect open panels on either side of Spoke Three while she floated ringward, away from the hub. Everything appeared to be in order—no warning lights flashed, nothing had gone dark. It was a welcome change from the typical grocery list of minor malfunctions that cluttered her days.

Her headset’s comm link spat a staticky squelch, followed by the voice of her supervisor, Doctor Pylus, the station’s senior engineer. “Kass? Are you at the ring yet?”

Nasutas propelled and guided herself with one hand while she used the other to tap open a reply channel. “On my way, Doctor. I’m in Spoke Three now.”

“Did you bet on the number of no-score rounds in today’s playoff?”

“I did.” With both hands free, she picked up her pace toward the outer ring of the station. “Why? Is there a final number?”

“Not yet, but they’ve just started the seventeenth round. Still scoreless.”

Startled, she almost missed the next rung along the bulkhead. Pressing forward, she tried to purge the surprise from her voice. “Seventeen? Has that ever happened before?”

“Never in the history of the sport. A lot of people just lost a lot of money.”

“I get the feeling I’m one of them, Doctor.” Nasutas controlled her movements with the grace of experience. She swung around the end of the narrow spoke passage into the exterior ring of the station. View ports at regular intervals along its outer bulkhead looked out on the breathtaking splendor of Anura from orbit. The graceful arc of its northern hemisphere bent across the field of view, its blaze of reflected light almost too intense for Nasutas to appreciate. “Doc, I’m at the outer ring. What am I looking for?”

“The stress gauge at junction thirty-five sixteen. I’ve been getting warning lights off that section all day. If it’s the real thing, we need to get it reinforced on the double. If it’s a short in the system, I want it turned off so I can try to sleep through the night for a change.”

“A full night’s sleep? Who do you think you are, the commander?”

“An old engineer can dream, my dear. Now find the stress gauge, if you please.”

Nasutas floated through the spacious cavity of the outer ring, her sharp eyes searching for the hull stress gauge Doctor Pylus wanted her to find. She spotted it and gave herself a gentle nudge off the opposite bulkhead so that she arrived before it with the grace of a feather alighting on fresh-fallen snow. “I’m at the gauge. Checking it now.”

It took only a minute to key in the commands to launch a diagnostic program. The gauge’s display spewed out a string of machine-language symbols that Nasutas had learned to recognize. In a matter of seconds, she parsed the computerized gauge’s complaint. “Doc? You might get your beauty sleep tonight, after all. Diagnostic shows a fault in the secondary electrical system. I’m tracking the source now.” A few more commands isolated the error’s origin. “There it is. Bad relay inside Airlock One. I’m on it.”

“Good work, Kass. Do you need Nelonnuk’s help?”

“No, it’s just a short, I can handle it.” She returned the stress gauge to standby mode and pushed herself back into motion toward the nearby airlock. As per standard procedure, both of the airlock’s doors were sealed. Nasutas entered her authorization code to pressurize the airlock and unlock the inner door. A faint hydraulic hiss grew louder as air flooded the airlock. Then metallic thunks reverberated through the bulkhead plates on either side of the circular hatch as its bolts retracted. Nasutas lifted its manual latch and pulled the door open toward her.

She tapped her headset to make sure her comm channel with Doctor Pylus was still open. “I’m heading inside Airlock One to repair the electrical fault.”

“Acknowledged.” A scratch of background noise revealed itself to be the faint echo of cheering and applause. “Another scoreless round. That makes eighteen.”

Nasutas retrieved tools from her work pouch to open the electrical panel beside the airlock’s controls. “Who won the pool?”

“Specialist Heelar.”

“Heelar? The one who doesn’t know the difference between a round and a form?” Nasutas puffed her vocal sac in irritation. “Beginner’s luck.”

“Either that or the greatest swindle ever perpetrated in low orbit.”

“Let’s not give her that much credit.” The cover came off the electrical panel, revealing the tangle of wires inside the bulkhead. Nasutas pocketed the cover plate and studied the electrical knot. “Doc, I’m looking at a real mess in this junction. Who built this thing?”

“An army of private contractors, every one of them the lowest bidder.”

“Exactly the answer I didn’t want to hear, thank you.”

A heavy thud behind her made her pivot in alarm. The airlock door had closed, seemingly on its own. “Doc? I have a problem. The inner door just shut by itself.” She reached for its release lever. It refused to budge. “And now it’s locked.”

Fear put a tremor in Pylus’s voice. “That shouldn’t happen.”

“Yes, I know that. Tell Nelonnuk to get over here, now.”

Lights flickered on the control panels inside the airlock. Moments later, all the command interfaces went dark. Nasutas told herself to stay calm, to resist the tendency to panic—and then she heard the soft hiss of air being extracted from the airlock.

She checked the air gauge on the belt of her duty uniform. It registered the rapid decrease in the airlock’s atmospheric pressure. No! This can’t happen! There are triple safeguards!

Focus and consciousness became tenuousness and impossible to muster. Her hands found the latch for the inner door, but the locks refused to release, despite the multiplicity of fail safes built into the system to prevent an accident such as this.

Her head swam, and spots of light danced in her vision. Panic made her thrash like a wild animal for a few seconds, and then the last of her strength ebbed. She lost hold of the hatch’s handle and floated free inside the depressurizing airlock. Devoid of air, it became a silent tomb.

Light-headed, barely awake, she thought she saw her fellow engineer, Nelonnuk, looking through the hatch’s circular window at her. Brilliant flashes of light pierced the gloom, one at a time, and a cool caress of air swept across her face. Greedily she inhaled, filling her vocal sac before pushing the bounty of air into her lungs. Hovering lights faded to sickly violet spots in her vision. Buzzing, grinding, clanging noises assaulted her as sound returned to the airlock.

The door was pulled open. Air flooded in. Nelonnuk reached inside, seized Nasutas by her foot, and towed her out of the airlock, back to the outer ring. “Are you all right? Talk to me!”

“I’m okay, it was just a few seconds.”

“No, you lost consciousness. You were in there for almost a minute.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “You sure?”

“Positive.” He closed the airlock hatch, through which he had hastily drilled three large holes with his plasma torch. As Nasutas’s faculties sharpened, she realized he’d had no choice—he had needed to give her air to breathe, and to at least partially pressurize the airlock before he could pull open the inner door, which would otherwise have been sealed by the grip of vacuum. Now, for the safety of the rest of the station, he worked feverishly to close up those holes with injections of emergency sealant, a carbon nanofiber foam designed to adhere to all nonorganic matter and harden within seconds to a solid brick free of air bubbles.

As soon as he had secured the airlock’s hatch, he tucked his tool back into its holster on his thigh. Then he turned to Nasutas and took her by one arm. “Come on. Let’s get back to the hub and have Doctor Kaolula check you out, just to be sure you’re all right.”

“Fine.” She let Nelonnuk tow her back down Spoke Three to the hub, the core module of Space Station Xenopus that contained the crew’s quarters, the galley, the head, and the docking ports for the station’s supply and transport vehicles.

Along the way, Nasutas saw one error after another cascade through the station’s interconnected data and electrical systems. What had seemed to be an isolated fault in the airlock’s secondary bus was now propagating throughout the station, and it was doing so in a manner that suggested it was following her. She slapped Nelonnuk’s shoulder. “Stop!”

“Relax, we’re almost there.” He ignored her panicked flailing and towed her the rest of the way into the heart of Xenopus Station.

As they floated into the center node, Doctor Pylus shot forth from the engineering control room to meet them. “Is she all right?”

“I’m fine,” Nasutas said. She refused to let Nelonnuk—or anyone else—speak for her. “Just a bit woozy. But we have bigger problems. Those electrical faults? They followed us, from the airlock to here. Something weird is going on.”

As if she had invoked a curse, the station’s omnipresent interior lights stuttered out, and the readouts on the control panels in the center node went haywire. The voice of Commander Beiana roared down from the command node. “What in blazes is going on?” Seconds later, Beiana and his second-in-command, Major Septen, emerged from the command node, both angrier than Nasutas had ever seen them. “Someone start talking,” the commander said.

“Cascade malfunctions,” Doctor Pylus said. “All over the station, all systems.”

“We can see that,” Septen snapped. “Why is it happening?”

The senior engineer rolled his shoulders and puffed his vocal sac. “Probably the same reason why everything is going upside-down on Anura right now.”

“That’s not helpful, Doctor.”

“Unfortunately, Commander, it’s all I have to offer at the moment.”

The station’s other two current residents, astrophysics specialist Professor Mufungo and chemistry specialist Heelar, scrambled hand over hand out of Spoke One and tumbled into the middle of the impromptu crew meeting. Mufungo, being the elder and more accomplished of the two, spoke first. “The entire station’s gone crazy! What’s happening?”

“We don’t know,” Beiana said. “And that’s what troubles me.” He addressed Pylus. “I need a precise answer, Doctor. Are there any systems on this station right now that aren’t compromised? Any that we can put our trust in?”

“Not as far as I can determine, no. Primary systems are offline, and most of our backup systems appear to be experiencing cascade failures. The entire station will go dark in two hours.”

“Then I’m making a command decision to evacuate this station, effective immediately.” Looking from one crew member to another, he doled out orders with speed and certainty. “I’ll fly Pod One. Major, you’ll fly Pod Two. I’ll take Doctor Pylus, Professor Mufungo, and Specialist Heelar. You’ll take the others.” He asked the group, “Any questions?” No one had any. “Good.”

The commander started toward Pod One—and then a thunderous rumbling shook the station, followed by another. Emergency sirens wailed, warning lights turned the center node green, and vapors hissed from rupturing valves in every direction Nasutas looked. Over the din, Beiana yelled, “Pylus! Septen! Report! What just happened?”

The second-in-command and the senior engineer struggled to coax accurate information from the station’s failing data network. It was Pylus who delivered the bad news.

“Sir . . . both escape pods have defied our overrides and launched themselves from the station. Which means we now have no means of escape.”

Beiana muttered vile curses under his breath for a moment before he marshaled himself back into a semblance of composure. Doing his best to project professionalism, he drew a deep breath and then spoke his mind in a tone so calm it had to be a sham.

“I think this might be a good time for us to transmit a distress call.”

•   •   •

The first warning of bad news was Razka’s change in posture. He had spent more than two hours hunched over the communications panel on the bridge when he straightened his back with an abrupt shift and a swivel of his chair in Theriault’s direction. She watched him press one scaly hand to the headset earpiece that covered his tympanic membrane. In a matter of seconds, his half-lidded bulbous eyes opened wide, a prelude to several quick blinks.

He looked at Theriault. “Commander, I think you should hear this.”

“Patch it through, Chief.” Nizsk, Dastin, and Sorak all turned away from their consoles to listen as the intercepted radio transmissions scratched from the overhead speakers.

“—repeat, total failure of main bus. Major errors in the secondary bus and emergency backups. Crew evacuation pods self-ejected empty. Please advise, Murçao.”

Half a second of static, then: “Xenopus, did you say both pods self-ejected?”

“Affirmative, Murçao. All eight of us are stuck here, and the electrics are scrambled. Even the batteries are malfunctioning. Unless you know something we don’t, this whole station’s going dark in about two hours. After that, it’ll get cold real quick up here.”

“Stand by, Xenopus. We’re running a simulation to see what we can do.”

The station officer was getting angry. “A sim? How about a ride off this thing?”

“Negative, Xenopus. No flights right now. The situation down here is muddy—but even if it were perfect, the soonest we could send up a recovery boat would be nine days.”

“Nine days? We’ll be frozen solid in nine hours!”

“Not if we can reboot your electrics. Hang tight while we finish running the sims.”

“Acknowledged, Murçao. Standing by.”

The channel went quiet, so Theriault signaled Razka to mute it. She looked to Sorak. “That didn’t sound good, did it?”

“No. But I suspect the situation is about to become worse than they realize.” He beckoned her with a tilt of his head and relayed a new set of tactical scans to the screen above his console. Theriault got up and moved to stand behind Sorak’s chair as he described his findings. “My latest sweep for incoming threat vessels has detected a tight swarm of several hundred small asteroids, inbound on a trajectory that was previously obscured by Anura’s moons.” He updated the sensor readout with a chart showing a complex pattern of orbital paths above the planet. “The asteroids will pass remarkably close to the planet. Some will likely be caught by the atmosphere and make planetfall. I predict most of the remaining asteroids will collide with various satellites and other artificial structures in low orbit. Those that don’t hit the space station directly pose a high risk for initiating a chain reaction that will deflect a storm of debris into its path.”

Dastin looked up from the sensor hood. “Maybe they’ve already detected the asteroids.”

“Unlikely,” Sorak said. “Their detection systems are not as sophisticated as ours. By the time they recognize this danger, it will already be on top of them.”

Dismayed, Theriault shook her head at the images on Sorak’s screen. “Damn it. Chalk up another point for the improbability field.”

Her remark drew a puzzled look from Dastin. “How are we blaming this on the dark energy generator? Those asteroids must have been inbound for years, maybe even centuries—long before the Austarans dreamed up their doomsday in a can.”

Once again, Theriault found herself slipping back into her old role as a science officer. “Quantum variance fields, like those produced by the dark energy generator, cause improbability effects to propagate both forward and backward in time. In other words, they can trigger events in the past as well as in the present and the future. Mysterious events that seem to have no rational cause in the present might be the effects of future improbability generators.”

Dastin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Now I have a headache.”

“Tell me about it. Temporal mechanics can get pretty trippy.” She turned back toward Sorak. “How long until the asteroids start making impact?”

Sorak answered with classic Vulcan precision. “Twenty-one minutes, forty seconds.” He superimposed another sensor readout over the first as he added, “At precisely the moment the next major intersection of wave fronts from the dark energy generator causes an expansion of its area of effect that will encompass the station.”

“And how significant a threat do the asteroids pose to the station?”

“I predict a ninety-eight percent likelihood of its total destruction.”

She absorbed the grim news. “We need to get those people out of there.”

“We can’t use the transporter,” Dastin said. “Not with all this random weirdness.”

Sorak lifted one eyebrow. “I concur. The risk is far too great.”

Theriault’s imagination raced to conjure other possibilities. “What about extending our shields around the station? Or part of it?”

A subtle head shake conveyed Sorak’s disapproval. “The Sagittarius has insufficient power to enclose a structure that size inside its shield bubble. If we were to shield only part of the station—its core module, for instance—the stresses on the other sections of the station would cause it to shear itself apart, due to its lack of a structural integrity field.”

“We can reconfigure the shields to deflect some of the asteroids and debris without putting stress on the station,” Dastin said. “But there’s another issue: The shields might not work the way we expect while we’re in range of the improbability field. For all we know, they might stop working at any time, or they might even act as force multipliers.”

Razka let out a few clicking sounds to snare the others’ attention before he spoke. “What about the tractor beam? We could tow the station out of the asteroids’ path.”

His suggestion compelled Nizsk to swivel away from the helm. “That would be inadvisable, Chief. As Commander Sorak noted, the station lacks the structural integrity field that we take for granted. The localized stress caused by our tractor beam would break it apart the moment we tried to take it in tow—and if we widen the beam to the point where that concern is obviated, we will not have enough of a hold on the station to move it.”

“Besides,” Dastin said, “we don’t have the power to tow something that big, anyway.”

Theriault had heard enough doom and gloom. She returned to the command chair and sat down. “Okay, folks. We’re doing this the old-fashioned way. Dastin, find a working airlock on that station and send its coordinates to the helm. Nizsk, take us in. We need to get within five meters of that airlock. We’ll open our ramp and have them spacewalk over to us. Razka, get on the horn and let the station’s crew know that help’s on the way.”

Sorak got up and moved to Theriault’s side. “Sir, I feel duty-bound to remind you of Captain Terrell’s orders. He directed us expressly to remain clear of the improbability field.”

“I’m aware of the captain’s orders, Sorak. I also know that if he were here, he wouldn’t just stand aside and let those people die—and neither will we. Now go below and put on a pressure suit. You’re the welcoming committee.”

11

Shoulder to shoulder, the crew of Space Station Xenopus floated into one another, tumbling and caroming in slow motion off the bulkheads as they all struggled to pull on space suits in zero gravity. Commander Beiana was the first one suited up. As soon as he fitted his helmet into place, he turned his eyestalks in different directions to assess his crew’s progress.

Major Septen was almost done fastening his suit’s air seals. Doctor Pylus and his two junior engineers were close to ready but expending precious seconds double-checking one another’s redundant safeties. As usual, the mission specialists—the least experienced members of the crew, since they and their ilk tended to rotate up and out every sixty days—were all barely half-dressed in the puffy gray protective gear.

Beiana clapped his gloved hands twice. “Quickly! We need to go!”

Septen secured his helmet. “Are we sure about this, Commander?” The second-in-command sounded skeptical. “There’s an uncharted asteroid storm headed for the station? And we’re being rescued by an alien space ship? Is it possible we’re being hoaxed?”

“I wish we were. But we’re already getting reports of medium-orbit satellites going offline in record numbers, and the failures are moving in our direction. Whatever’s coming, I’d rather not be here when it arrives.” Beiana floated over to Specialist Heelar and started pulling the parts of her suit into place. “I don’t mean to be brusque, Specialist, but we need to go.” He secured the body of Heelar’s suit and snapped orders over his shoulder. “Pylus! Septen! Help the professor and Doctor Kaolula get dressed. We’re running out of time.”

The team worked together to get everyone prepped for vacuum. Less than a minute later, everyone’s suit checks came up amber, which meant it was time to go. Beiana pushed off from a bulkhead and soared away down the middle of Spoke Six. “This way, folks. Let’s be quick.”

In accordance with protocol, Septen ushered the rest of the crew into the spoke behind Beiana, then the major brought up the back of the single-file formation to make sure no one was left behind. Beiana pulled himself along by means of the spoke’s regularly spaced handholds. He moved with a steady surety that belied his growing anxiety. Something was critically wrong with the station; he could feel it. A catastrophe was on its way, and he meant to stay ahead of it.

Straight ahead, at the end of the spoke, the door to Airlock Two glowed like a sea beacon piercing a storm cloud. The status lights that ringed the hatch glowed amber, indicating it was still secure, but Beiana fixated on Nasutas’s report of the spontaneous malfunction in Airlock One. If the station’s last working airlock went haywire in the midst of the evacuation . . .

Don’t obsess over that. Focus on the variables you control. Stay on point.

Beiana reached the outer ring and anchored himself with a firm grip on the handhold beside the airlock’s control panel. He keyed in his command code. The panel switched from amber to green, indicating it was ready to receive instructions. He looked back at his crew and finished his head count as Septen emerged from Spoke Six. “Everybody listen up. Only two of us can fit inside the airlock at a time. I’ll control the hatches and the pressurization sequence from out here, so once you’re inside, all you need to do is make a short spacewalk to whatever ship happens to be on the other side of the outer hatch.”

Faint peals of metal-on-metal reverberated through the station’s hull. They were few and far between, their percussion erratic, but within seconds they became noticeably more frequent and pronounced. Beiana knew he didn’t have to tell his crew what those sounds meant. The leading edge of a barrage of asteroids and satellite debris had arrived. They were out of time.

“Eyes on me, folks. Here’s how it’ll work: Heelar and Professor Mufungo, you’re going out first. Doctor Kaolula—”

Panicked, Heelar cut in, “Why us? Why are we going first?”

“Reverse order of seniority. Junior specialists first, senior specialist and junior engineer next, and so on. As I was saying, Doctor Kaolula and Engineer Nasutas will be the second pair out. Doctor Pylus and Engineer Nelonnuk go third. Major Septen and I will go last.” He pressurized the airlock and released the inner hatch. A pull on its lever, and it swung open. Beiana ushered Heelar and Mufungo through the hatchway. “Let’s move like the water’s hot.”

Mufungo and Heelar crowded inside the airlock. Beiana shut the door and secured its seals, then depressurized the tiny compartment.

As the pressure gauge counted down to zero, the station shuddered like a palsied beast, and the patter of tiny strikes on its outer skin grew louder. Behind them, the lights in Spoke Six stuttered and went out, and then the distant glow of the core module dimmed. Beiana caught Septen’s eye. “See if you can patch into the master board from that aux panel.”

Major Septen floated to the auxiliary control panel, opened its protective cover plate, and activated it with a few careful taps. “It’s working—for now.”

“Close all the interior hatches you can, starting with the two on either side of us, then the ones inside Spoke Six. We need to contain hull breaches for as long as possible. The last thing we need is to get sucked into space by an explosive decompression.”

“Understood.” Septen set to work with a manic focus, overriding failing circuits with the deft touch of a master. Seconds later, the emergency hatches in the outer ring on either side of Airlock Two rolled closed, as did the nearest hatch inside Spoke Six. “So far, so good, sir. I’m working on the rest of them now, working outward from our position.”

“Well done. Keep at it.”

The pressure gauge for the airlock registered zero. Beiana set the outer hatch’s release to standby and wondered how long it would be before he and his crew could start their evacuation.

His answer came seconds later, in the form of a shadow falling across the outer hatch’s view port—the silhouette of a vessel whose like he had never seen before.

If this was a hoax, it was the most welcome deception he’d ever suffered.

•   •   •

The main viewscreen was packed edge to edge with the image of Space Station Xenopus and the steady incoming flurry of debris that careened in dizzying blurs off its outer ring and twelve spokes. Between the spokes radiating from the core module, Theriault glimpsed slivers of the planet’s surface far below—and then the Sagittarius dropped level with the outside of the ring, facing an airlock lit from within by an emerald glow.

Nizsk fired the thrusters to arrest the Sagittarius in front of the alien station’s airlock. “Commander, we are in position. Be advised, I might need to make manual adjustments to compensate for shifts caused by debris and asteroid impacts.”

“Can’t you program an autostabilization to hold our position?”

“I tried,” the insectoid helm officer said. “Interference from the improbability field is making automated systems unreliable. But I can compensate without them.”

“Understood. Good work, Ensign.” Theriault used the command chair’s armrest controls to open an internal channel. “Bridge to Torvin. Is the ladderway hatch secured?”

The enlisted engineer replied over the comm, “Good to go, sir.”

She switched the intraship channel to the cargo deck. “Bridge to Sorak. Depressurize the cargo deck, then stand by to open the ventral hatch.”

“Depressurization sequence initiated,” the acting first officer said.

Now or never. Theriault switched to the standby channel to the station. “Space Station Xenopus, this is the Sagittarius. We’re in position. Start your evacuation.”

The reply came quickly. “Sagittarius, this is Commander, Xenopus. Here we come.”

She closed the channel and drew a calming breath. “Look sharp, everyone.” The crew tensed at the booming thud of something ricocheting off the ship’s duranium hull. With one eye trained warily on the overhead, Theriault observed, “This ride’s about to get a little rough.”

•   •   •

The magnetic tether transmitted little sound through Sorak’s pressure suit as he affixed it to the bulkhead beside the ventral ramp of the Sagittarius. Through his suit’s broad faceplate he took in his surroundings one more time, to ensure nothing had changed since before he had suited up. Everything in the ship’s cramped storage hold was firmly secured, and the pressure gauge beside the ramp’s control panel showed the cargo deck had been fully depressurized.

He used the interface on the left arm of his suit to open an intraship channel. “Sorak to Bridge. The hold is at zero pressure and my tether is secure. Standing by to open the ramp.”

“Clear to proceed,” Theriault said. “Open the ramp and begin recovery.”

“Acknowledged.” He entered commands on the control panel, lowering the ramp. Wisps of vapor escaped its hydraulic system as it parted from the aft section of the ship’s saucer.

Searing daylight reflected off the exterior of the Austaran space station outside. Despite the polarization of his suit’s faceplate, Sorak squinted at the abrupt flood of harsh light. His inner eyelids constricted, a reflexive response that traced its roots to his ancestors’ need to withstand prolonged exposure to the harsh desert sun on his homeworld of Vulcan. In a matter of seconds his sight adjusted to the new levels of glare. Directly ahead of him was one of the station’s airlocks. Through a view port in its outer hatch, he saw two forms inside.

“Bridge, ventral ramp is open. I have visual contact with the station’s airlock. The path is clear of obstacles and safe for spacewalk. They can begin crossing over when ready.”

“Understood,” Theriault said. “Passing the message to the station now.”

He moved closer to the near edge of the ramp, to position himself to assist the station’s crew in their brief jaunt through vacuum to the safe haven of the Sagittarius. Several meters away, a wheel turned on the outside of the station’s airlock hatch, and the lights that ringed the hatchway turned from green to gold. Then the thick portal swung outward in a languid arc.

The first person out of the airlock flailed and tumbled. To Sorak, it was not unlike watching a novice cadet blunder through zero-g training at Starfleet Academy basic training. It seemed odd to him that someone who dwelled in null gravity aboard a space station should seem so maladroit during a spacewalk, but then he reasoned it out. Based on the evidence at hand, he concluded that the station’s first evacuee was not accustomed to wearing the bulky pressure suit required for working in a vacuum. To Sorak, that suggested this person was a short-term assignee to the station, perhaps a research specialist on a brief rotation into orbital duty.

The Austaran bumped against and rebounded from the ramp without finding purchase. In the interest of moving things along, Sorak ventured farther down the ramp and took hold of the visitor’s sleeve. In zero gravity it took only a fraction of his Vulcan strength to launch the alien to the far end of the cargo hold, clearing the way for the next person to exit the airlock.

Moving with only slightly more confidence than the first evacuee, the station’s second crew member out of the airlock bounced and swung in clumsy arcs while trying to shut the airlock’s outer hatch. Behind him, furious blurs of fast-moving metal debris streaked through the gaps between the station’s spokes. A few projectiles made sharp changes of trajectory after striking the station, but most of those that made contact tore off chunks of the structure, turning its mass into additional fodder for the fast-moving orbital storm.

Sorak reminded himself of the low probability of any single bit of wreckage striking the Austaran making a spacewalk at the moment, but then he remembered that the laws of probability presently were not reliable guides for the assessment of risk on this planet, or perhaps anywhere within this star system. It was as if all outcomes had been reduced to the simplicity of either/or. The spacewalking crew member would either reach the Sagittarius . . . or not.

The second evacuee secured the airlock’s outer hatch, then pushed off toward the Sagittarius. Sorak risked moving farther down the ramp, almost to its end, to hasten his retrieval of the imperiled astronaut. The Austaran floated toward him, an awkward spectacle if ever Sorak had seen one. Entrusting his safety to the grip of his magnetic tether on the ship’s hull, Sorak reached out with both hands to the desperate Austaran and caught his foot. He pulled the alien toward him and caught the scaly, bulbous-eyed visitor in a friendly embrace. The Austaran opened all three eyestalks wide in surprise at the sight of Sorak, who limited his own reaction to a subtle arching of his left eyebrow. A curious species. They seem easily alarmed.

With a jerk of his arm, he sent the second refugee tumbling through the cargo hold to collide with his—or her; Sorak couldn’t reliably assess their genders, if any—predecessor.

He fell back to stabilize the pair and secure them inside the hold with safety lines and magnetic tethers affixed to the forward bulkhead. As soon as they were safely anchored, he moved back toward the aft ramp and used the controls on his suit’s forearm to reopen his intraship comm channel. “Sorak to Bridge. The first two evacuees are safely aboard. Standing by to receive their next pair.”

“Good work,” Theriault said. “The station commander is sending them over now.”

A large chunk of fast-moving space junk slammed through a distant part of the station, which pitched and yawed in response to the collision. As the outer ring swung upward toward the Sagittarius, it occurred to Sorak that their own chances of surviving this hastily conceived rescue mission might in fact have just gone from fifty percent to zero.

•   •   •

There was no gravity in space, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t momentum, or mass. A fearsome roar shook Station Xenopus, and Commander Beiana felt his surroundings swing into motion around him. “Grab something!” he shouted at the others.

Everyone reached for handholds or levers or even the thin lip of coaming around the edge of a bulkhead. Through the airlock’s view port, the dusting of stars became a dark blur, followed by a streak of bluish-green light as their vantage swung past their homeworld. Their newfound momentum robbed them of the liberty of free fall and pinned them against the ring’s inner bulkhead and overhead. All the while, more bangs of impact rocked the station, and deep thundering, though distant, told Beiana sections of the station were being ripped apart.

He raised his voice to cut through the din. “No more time for going by the book! Pylus, depressurize the airlock and this section. We’re opening both the inner and outer doors and moving out, single file, as soon as we can!”

Doctor Pylus protested, “To where? We’re in a chaotic spin! How are we supposed—”

His rant cut off as the silhouette of the Sagittarius reappeared outside the view port of the airlock. To the surprise of Beiana—and also, it seemed, everyone else—the alien vessel was moving with the station despite its erratic tumbling, holding station outside Airlock Two.

The senior engineer’s eyes bulged almost as wide as his vocal sac did. “But . . . how? How are they . . . That . . . that’s not possible!”

Beiana regarded the strange vessel with awe. “Apparently, for them, it is.”

The alien commander’s voice crackled once more through his helmet’s transceiver. “Station Xenopus, this is Sagittarius. Are your people all right? Please respond.”

“Affirmative, Sagittarius. All hands accounted for and unharmed.”

“Are you ready to continue?”

“Absolutely! We’re all coming out now, single file. Stand ready to receive us.”

“Understood. Standing by.”

Beiana pointed at the airlock’s control panel. “Pylus! Purge this section and the airlock!”

The engineer keyed in the override codes and vented the remaining air from their isolated section of the outer ring. Then he purged the interior of the airlock and released the safety locks on both hatches. He looked back at Beiana. “Good to go.”

“Kaolula, Nasutas. You’re up. Nelonnuk, Pylus, fall in behind Nasutas. Septen, you’re in front of me.” The group formed a line, with their medical specialist leading the way. Kaolula pulled open the inner hatch and floated through the airlock. By the time Nasutas followed him into the airlock, the doctor was already throwing the lever on the outer hatch, which he pushed open ahead of himself. Because both portals were open at once, amber warning lights flashed inside the airlock as well as in the outer ring and on the exterior hull.

Ahead of them, glowing an eerie bluish white, was the open belly of the alien starship. Behind it pinwheeled a blurred vista of stars and the bright smear of Anura as the station whipped past it in a wild roll at velocities Beiana could hardly dare to conceive.

In the absence of atmosphere, there was no longer any sound of the calamity raining down on Station Xenopus, but Beiana still felt the titanic skeleton of the station shudder from each punishing blow. Engineer Nasutas, perched in the outer hatchway, must have felt the same death throes from the station, because she turned suddenly and looked back at Beiana and the others. He met her fearful stare with a decisive thrust of his finger toward the alien vessel. “Keep moving!”

In front of her, Kaolula tumbled like a bag of hammers into the waiting embrace of an alien crew member in a space suit not so different from those of Beiana and his crew. Seeing the hand of charity reaching out to meet his people, Beiana dared to hope for a moment that he and his people were all going to make it out of this mess, and that there was nothing to fear.

Then another disastrous collision slammed into Station Xenopus and threw him and the rest of the crew back against the bulkheads, prisoners of momentum and centripetal force, as the station was forced into a new, faster, and more violent spin.

A man of science, Beiana couldn’t bring himself to believe in miracles.

Which was how he knew he was about to die.

•   •   •

Chunks of high-velocity shrapnel hit the station in a steady barrage, blasting away entire sections of its outer ring and radial spokes. Each collision birthed a new cloud of wreckage, some of which hurtled away on the same vectors as the impacts that spawned them, while other pieces spun off in various directions, creating new and unpredictable hazards.

Watching the spectacle erupt on the main viewscreen, Theriault was mesmerized. It all felt so unreal. Her whole life she had taken shields and navigational deflectors for granted. It horrified her to witness the destructive power of unshielded impacts on a structure that lacked even the rudimentary reinforcement of an interior structural integrity field.

A huge slab of rock slammed into the far side of the station and sent the entire structure into an erratic dance through the incoming asteroid swarm. She clamped her hands onto the command chair’s armrests. “Brace for impact!”

Razka, who had taken over Sorak’s post at tactical, grabbed hold of the edge of his console, while Dastin did his best to take hold of the end of the sensor panel. At the combined helm and navigation station, however, Nizsk planted her lower appendages wide in front of her and continued to tap commands into the flight controls.

The hull of the Sagittarius pealed from a steadily worsening series of minor collisions, but the image on the main viewer, despite some jerking shifts and corrections, remained focused on the station’s airlock, even as the disintegrating alien structure rolled and yawed with wild randomness in the grip of the barrage.

Baffled by the seeming impossibility of such a feat of piloting, Theriault hollered above the deafening clamor, “Nizsk! How are we holding station?”

“Tractor beam,” the pilot-navigator said through her vocoder. “Minimum power. Not enough to move the station. Just enough to hold us in place.”

It was simple, elegant, and—in hindsight—obvious. “Good work, Ensign!”

“Thank you, sir.”

Theriault thumbed open the channel to the cargo deck. “Sorak! Report!”

“The rest of the station’s crew is unable to leave the airlock. They appear to be trapped.”

She looked at Dastin, who was already checking the sensors. “What’s going on?”

“They’re pinned to the bulkheads,” Dastin said. “Centripetal force, from the station’s movement.” He looked up from the sensor hood. “They’re pulling at least eight gees in there.”

A deafening boom rocked the ship hard enough to make Theriault wince. Razka swiveled away from the tactical panel. “Commander, we can’t stay here forever. If they can’t move—”

“We’re not leaving them! Not yet.” She opened the channel to engineering. “Bridge to Threx! We need a miracle, and we need it now!”

Threx answered with trademark calm, “Miracles are what we do, sir. Name it.”

“The station’s crew is pinned down by centripetal force. I need you to project a narrow extension of our inertial dampening field inside the station’s airlock so they can keep moving.”

Two seconds of muffled chatter among the engineers was followed by Threx’s confident declaration: “We’re on it. Give us thirty seconds.”

Another large asteroid punched through the station’s core module, which exploded into countless shards thrown in all directions. Without the center section, the rest of the station began to twist and deform under the stress of its chaotic rolls and turns.

“Threx! I don’t think we have thirty seconds!”

“Cahow’s running a patch to the deflector dish now. Ten seconds!”

It was the worst feeling Theriault knew—the helplessness of being forced to stand and wait. There was nothing she or anyone else could do to make the engineers’ task any easier, or compel them to work any faster. All she or any command officer could do was hope that the situation didn’t deteriorate any further in the precious moments it took to enact a desperate plan.

A sharp bang and a violent lurch up and to port nearly threw her from the command chair. Razka tumbled out of his seat, and Dastin was thrown face-first against the port bulkhead.

Over the shrilling of alert signals, the groaning of the hull, and the moaning of Dastin, Threx’s voice crackled down from the overhead speaker, along with a sparse shower of sparks. “Inertial dampening field extended! They should be good to go—but tell ’em to move fast. We can’t hold this long without burning out the forward emitter. If that goes, we’re all in trouble!”

“Roger that,” Theriault said. She flipped the channel to the cargo deck. “Sorak! Are the rest of the evacuees moving yet?”

“Affirmative. They appear to be exiting en masse, single file.”

“Good! Do what you can to speed them up. We can’t hold this position much longer.”

“Understood. Stand by—the first of them is coming over now.”

Dastin picked himself up off the deck and massaged the bruise that dominated the right side of his face. “About time something went right around here.” No sooner had he spoken than a new alarm beeped on the tactical panel.

Theriault glared at Dastin. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.” She turned toward Razka. “Chief? What’s our next disaster?”

Razka threw some switches and superimposed a long-range sensor image over the left half of the main viewscreen. It was an enormous hunk of brownish-gray rock tumbling through space. “Approximate mass, two hundred twenty-nine point six million metric tons. Composed of iron, silicon, nickel, and trace elements. On a heading that’ll hit us and the station in two minutes and forty-eight seconds.”

There was no reason to ask about the potential threat it posed. Theriault knew the asteroid was massive enough to reduce the Sagittarius and the station to dust. She had to think past that, to the potentially greater danger it presented. “Will it hit the planet?”

“Negative—but a large number of smaller bodies behind it will.”

“Noted.” She reopened the channel to the cargo deck. “Sorak, you have two minutes to get the evacuees on board, because we need to fall back before two hundred million tons of rock turns that station to confetti. Is that clear?”

“I will do what I can to expedite their transfer. Sorak out.”

Theriault watched the incoming asteroid loom larger on the left side of the main viewscreen, while the broken remains of the station flailed through vacuum on the right. Once more she felt helpless in the command chair. She tried to tell herself that she and her shipmates had beaten longer odds than this, then realized that only meant they were overdue for a brutal defeat, and that they might have finally come to the one place in the universe ideally suited to hand it to them—along with their heads.

•   •   •

Sorak fixed the anchor line’s carabiner-style clasp onto a sturdy-looking protrusion along the waist of another alien astronaut’s space suit. That made four evacuees secured against sudden shifts in direction and momentum. He turned and hurried back to the open ramp in time to help the third pair of evacuees over its threshold, into the Sagittarius’s cargo hold. Both seized his outstretched arms and allowed themselves to be pulled farther inside and pushed through the gravity-free vacuum to the waiting embraces of their already tethered colleagues.

A tap on his suit’s forearm controls let Sorak open a comm channel to the astronauts via the Sagittarius’s computer, which provided real-time two-way translation. “Those of you who I’ve already tethered, grab two of the free lines and secure your crewmates.”

To their credit, they reacted like professionals. All four of them did what needed to be done, to keep themselves calm and to make certain that their teammates were anchored as safely as they were, using more of the tether lines Sorak had set up in advance for them.

Outside the ventral rampway, the stars continued their frantic spinning, and the backlit orb of the planet’s night-side surface whipped past every few seconds in a vertiginous blur. Faced with such a dizzying tableau, Sorak appreciated anew the value of having purged himself of emotions by means of the Kolinahr ritual on Vulcan many years earlier. Armed with the stoic perspective of pure logic, he overruled the unreliable evidence of his eyes and ignored the confusion of his inner ear. He knew that despite the relative and absolute velocities of the fracturing station and the overtaxed Sagittarius, he himself was securely inside the envelope of its extended inertial dampening field. There was no reason for him to be concerned for his safety as he moved down the ramp to meet the last two evacuees from the station.

Unlike the other evacuees, the final two displayed more control over their movements in zero gravity. Their economy of movement suggested they understood that even small actions could affect one’s stability and trajectory while weightless. The first of them floated toward Sorak, who reached out, caught the Austaran by his forearms, and with a graceful pivot redirected the astronaut to a direct heading for his waiting crewmates.

Ready to meet the last member of the station’s crew, Sorak turned back toward the open rampway—and beheld a startling vision of silent cataclysm. Enormous hunks of rock and metal debris shredded the remaining segments of the station, sending significant portions of its wreckage racing toward the Sagittarius. Sorak keyed his comm. “Sorak to Bridge. Incoming!”

Theriault’s voice was raised in alarm. “We see it! Hang on!”

Sorak stretched out his hand to the last evacuee.

There was no sound as a twisted slab of metal bashed into the belly of the Sagittarius—just a sudden lurch and the shock of impact as Sorak’s helmet hit the overhead. He fought to reorient himself and looked for the last evacuee.

The station’s commander clung to the hydraulic post at the corner of the Sagittarius’s ramp. Outside, the heavens wheeled, betraying only fleeting glimpses of the station’s silhouetted debris cloud in front of the planet. Every roll and yaw of the ship threw Sorak like a rag doll in a tempest, allowing him to deduce that its inertial dampening field had been seriously weakened.

He fixed his attention on the Austaran clinging to the end of the open ramp. If the stress is this severe inside, it must be worse for that astronaut.

Theriault’s voice squawked over his helmet’s transceiver. “Sorak! Close the ramp!”

“Not yet. The last evacuee is trapped at the end of the ramp.” Fighting the ship’s nauseating swings of centripetal force, Sorak staggered down the ramp toward the last man. “I need to bring him in.”

“Negative! We need to close up and restore the integrity field!”

Sorak found it harder to gain purchase and retain his balance the farther he continued down the ramp. “Just a few more seconds, Commander.” He pushed himself to take another step toward the astronaut, who now dangled from the ramp’s corner by one hand.

Then Sorak’s tether went taut, restricting him from moving down the last meter of the ramp. He dropped to one knee and extended his arm, but it was no use. He couldn’t reach the trapped man. He started tapping new commands into his arm’s control panel. “Bridge, I’m out of tether. I am activating my magnetic boots so I can detach and complete the retrieval.”

“Sorak, this is a direct order: Do not detach! I repeat, do not detach!”

He froze. Logic told him it should be possible to reach the last evacuee using only the magnetic boots. The effort would pose significant risks to Sorak’s safety, but he considered such perils acceptable in the interest of preserving sentient life. However, he was bound by duty and oath to obey the lawful orders of his superiors, even when he disagreed with them. And though he was many decades Theriault’s senior, and they in fact held the same rank, she had the billet of executive officer, which gave her command authority over him.

The rational thing to do was turn back and close the ramp.

The dutiful thing to do was turn back and close the ramp.

Once more, Theriault’s voice filled his helmet. “Sorak. Acknowledge my last order.”

A bright flash of something tore past the open rampway—and ripped the alien commander away from the ramp and sent him tumbling into deep space.

Judging his actions, his inactions, and all their consequences with cold reason, Sorak watched the station’s commander hurtle alone into the endless void.

“Bridge, this is Sorak. Order acknowledged.”

•   •   •

Home was an ever-shrinking blue-green disk. Alone and wheeling into the void, Beiana caught only fleeting glimpses of Anura. When his chaotic tumbling turned him away from his world, the stars streaked past too quickly for him to pick out familiar constellations.

Every few seconds, his field of vision swept past the broken remains of his station. An unstoppable maelstrom of ancient rock and high-tech debris tore through what was left of his abandoned command and scattered its orphaned fragments in all directions. Faint streaks of fire cut short-lived scars through Anura’s upper atmosphere as space junk and pieces of rock burned up while attempting to pierce that shallow blanket of air that Beiana had taken for granted every day of his life until he went into space.

This isn’t how I thought my career would end, but even if I’d known, I still would have come. Beiana’s mind turned inward, away from the dizzying view of a spinning universe, to take refuge in the deepest waters of his memory.

Beiana remembered stargazing as a pogling. He had dreamed of exploration, of being the first of his people to set foot on a world in another star system. The demands of age and so-called maturity had compelled him to scale back his ambitions as he approached adulthood. Many years had passed since he had come to terms with the fact that his dreams would not be realized in his lifetime. The progress of science had been too slow to speed Austarans to the stars. The costs of moving payloads into orbit was prohibitive, the government had said, never mind the expenses that would be involved in traveling to other star systems.

Profit and loss. Beiana was tired of hearing politicians and pessimists trot out those three little words to justify horrendous budget cuts for nonautomated missions to other worlds and the maintenance of Space Station Xenopus. All his life, he had been vexed by those who protested that they “saw no profit in space exploration.” Where, the naysayers always asked, was its return on investment? It took all of his self-restraint not to bellow in their faces, “The survival of our species! What greater reward is there? And why are you too myopic to see that?”

Still, it was hard to argue in favor of the space program’s short-term costs and risks as he spin-drifted into deep space, tantalized by his ever-shrinking view of his home planet. He would never see his siblings again, or his mate, Pelanon, or their new poglings, Arbos and Bokir. All at once he imagined all the wonderful pieces of music he would never experience, all the stories he wouldn’t be around to hear, all the beautiful works of art he would never get to see.

Grief and panic tried to invade his thoughts, but he denied them access. He had known the dangers of being the last to evacuate the station, and he had long since accepted that it was his responsibility to shoulder them for the sake of his crew. Home was farther away with each passing second, but Beiana refused to give in to regret or remorse. He had seen all the other members of his crew safely aboard the alien starship before a random collision had condemned him to the endless night. He had fulfilled his duty and upheld his oaths. If it was his time to die, he could meet his end now with pride and dignity. For a commander, there was no shame in dying so long as one’s crew was spared the same fate.

I wonder how long it will take for my air to run out.

He checked his gauges. Driven by fear, he had been breathing too quickly. His air tank was depleting faster than it should have. Try to calm down, he told himself. Shallow breaths. He concentrated on filling his vocal sac gradually, then moderating its contraction so that it forced the air into his lungs more slowly. There you go. Calm down. Relax. Enjoy the ride.

It was hard to be certain as he rolled and tumbled, but he thought he spied a shadow moving against the mad carousel of stars. He glimpsed it only for an instant before it passed from his sight. Seconds later, he thought he noticed it again, but he couldn’t be certain. Was it a ship? A ghost? Or just spots swimming through his darkening vision?

Must be my imagination. It’s cooking up illusions as my air runs low.

He closed his eyes and gave himself to the euphoria of weightlessness. Without a frame of visual reference, he felt no sensation of movement. There was no resistance in space, no tug of gravity, and now that he was traveling based solely on the received momentum of the collision that had knocked him from the ramp, he didn’t even have the pressure of acceleration. Eyes shut, he was just a stray thought in the night. A mote in the eye of creation. Cosmic dust taking a wayward route back to its point of origin.

But curiosity nagged at him. Had he seen something? Or not?

He cracked open his center eye, just in case he hadn’t imagined the shadow on the stars.

The universe was still turning around him, a glittering tableau. It was just as empty as he had feared it would be.

Then something took hold of him. Firm, unyielding pressure clamped down on his right arm, then his left. Jerks of motion became a feeling of resistance, and the mad turning of the cosmos slowed, then stopped, as an external force arrested his triaxial spinning.

Strong hands in thick gray gloves turned him around until he found himself looking into the face of a being unlike any he had ever seen before. It resembled a primate with a naked face, a short shock of white fur atop its head, and oddly pointed ears. Its pair of narrow, dark eyes studied him from beneath steeply arched streaks of fur that covered its upper ocular ridges.

In any other place, at any other time, Beiana would have been terrified of the alien. Now he hung frozen before this odd being, who clipped a safety tether to Beiana’s space suit, linking them. Then the alien gave him a subtle nod and a slap on the shoulder, before turning away and engaging the thrusters on his suit’s back and chest.

Only then, as the line went taut between them and Beiana found himself taken in tow, did he see the elegantly curved alien vessel hovering close by, its underbelly’s ramp still open and angled to receive them. He had no idea what he had done in his life to deserve such a miraculous deliverance, but he was grateful for it just the same.

•   •   •

The warning light continued to glow red no matter how long Theriault stared at it. She stood at the aft end of the main deck’s elliptical corridor, willing the signal on the bulkhead panel to turn green, to indicate that the Sagittarius’s ventral ramp had closed and that the cargo deck was once again fully pressurized. It remained stubbornly red.

Standing on the other side of the sealed ladderway hatch, Doctor Babitz and Nurse Tan Bao noted Theriault’s mounting impatience. Babitz suppressed a nervous half-smile and shifted the medical satchel on her hip. “You know what they say about a watched pot, Commander.”

“That it can be used to hit people who spout useless aphorisms?”

If the lithe surgeon had a witty riposte at hand, she kept it to herself.

The signal light switched from red to green. Theriault thumbed the hatch release switch on the control board, and Tan Bao squatted and unlocked the manual levers on the ladderway hatch. He opened the hatch and secured it inside its recessed nook on the core bulkhead.

Doctor Babitz was the first to climb down the ladder to the cargo deck. Theriault went second, and at the bottom of the short ladder she stepped clear to make way for Tan Bao.

The cargo hold was small enough to feel cramped with half a dozen people in it. Now it had eight alien astronauts in bulky EVA gear, plus Sorak in his own pressure suit, as well as Babitz, Tan Bao, and Theriault. There was hardly room to move around without bumping into someone else. Despite the confined conditions, Theriault shouldered through the pack to an empty space. She turned to address everyone—and hoped the worsening spate of malfunctions plaguing the Sagittarius didn’t impair the universal translator and turn her welcome into a mash of gibberish or a declaration of interstellar war.

“Crew members of the space station, welcome aboard the Sagittarius. I’m Lieutenant Commander Vanessa Theriault, executive officer, and currently the acting captain.” She nodded at the other Starfleet personnel in turn. “You’ve all just met Lieutenant Commander Sorak, my acting first officer. This is Doctor Lisa Babitz, our chief medical officer, and Nurse Nguyen Tan Bao. They’re going to conduct brief physical exams to see if any of you have been injured or require immediate medical attention.” She stood with her arms open and palms up, a gesture she hoped the Austarans would see as welcoming. “Any questions?”

One of the Austarans removed his helmet and blinked the lids of his bulbous, stalked eyes. “My name is Commander Beiana. On behalf of all my crew, thank you for saving us.”

“Our pleasure,” Theriault said.

Tan Bao smiled behind his whirring medical tricorder. “All in a day’s work for us.”

As the other station crew members doffed their helmets, Beiana continued, “Can you return us to our planet?”

“We can . . . eventually.” Theriault was unsure how much she was supposed to reveal to the station’s personnel, but she had no intention of misleading them. “How much do you know about what’s happening on the planet’s surface?”

Worried looks traveled from one Austaran to another before Beiana answered. “Not much,” he said. “We picked up a few reports of strange coincidences, freak accidents. Things like that. Then we lost contact. After that, things started to malfunction on the station.” He looked around at the rest of his team, then cocked his head. “You know what happened then.”

“Here’s what we know,” Theriault said. “An experiment with a dark energy generator went wrong and produced a self-perpetuating, ever-increasing field of weirdness that’s engulfing your planet. Somehow it causes wild inversions in the laws of probability, which is what caused all those tech failures on the surface. Once it expanded into orbit, it fouled up your station. And some of its less intuitive effects, such as temporally inverted cause-and-effect relationships, might be to blame for bringing that asteroid storm down on your heads.” She sighed; it was exhausting delivering bad news. “Until the crisis on the surface is fixed, it isn’t safe to attempt any landing. For your safety and ours, you’ll need to stay out here, with us.”

Doctor Babitz reviewed Tan Bao’s tricorder readings, then looked up at Theriault. “Clean bills of health all around, Commander. No need for treatment or quarantine.”

“Glad to hear it.” She brightened her expression and tried to leaven the mood as she turned back toward Beiana. “If you and your team will follow Nurse Tan Bao up that ladder, we’ll get you set up in our mess hall and try to rustle up something you’ll be able to eat.”

Tan Bao quipped under his breath, “If you’re lucky, you might even like it.” Before Theriault could shoot a pointed glare his way, he started up the ladder to the main deck and the Austarans lined up to follow him, while Babitz stood nearby to assist those who might have trouble climbing due to muscular atrophy caused by prolonged exposure to zero gravity.

Theriault stepped away from the ladder and cornered Sorak, who was stowing his pressure suit in one of the equipment lockers. “I ordered you not to detach from the ship.”

“Yes, you did.” The centenarian Vulcan seemed unfazed at being called out.

“You disobeyed a direct order.”

“I made an unfortunate error while attempting to reposition my tether.”

It was so transparent a lie that it made her angry. “An error? You?”

“Despite being untethered for no more than a few seconds, I found myself outside the ship. Once ejected, I sought to arrest my motion and recover my bearings. In the course of doing so, I pinpointed Commander Beiana. Seeing an opportunity to recover him and bring him back to the ship, I did so.” He closed the equipment locker’s door. “And I have every reason to think that had you found yourself in my circumstances, you would have done exactly the same thing.”

Hearing her own rationale parroted back at her left her red-faced but speechless. What was she supposed to say? Even though the protocols of command required her to take him to task for disobeying a direct order, she couldn’t bring herself to force a confrontation and submit a formal reprimand after he had just risked his life to save a stranger’s.

So she nodded. “Well played.” Theriault headed for the ladder. “Let’s get back to the bridge. That asteroid storm and what’s left of Anura’s satellites are on their way down to the surface—and we need to warn the landing party before it falls on their heads.”

12

The highway north was anything but straight. Snaking curves and hairpin turns made it one of the most treacherous roads Taryl had ever seen—not that she was able to see more than a dozen meters of it at a time in the abyssal darkness that, according to Doctor Kavalas, would last for several hours that night, from sundown until first moonrise.

The transport’s chassis groaned from the stress of another high-speed turn, then the tires yawped in protest as Taryl stomped on the emergency brake to avoid plowing into the rear end of another vehicle creeping along on the other side of a tight curve. A quick glance showed no vehicles coming the opposite way on the other side of the road, so she jerked the wheel, swerved around the slowpoke, and shifted her foot to the accelerator.

In the rearview mirror she glimpsed Kavalas covering his eyestalks with his hands.

“What’s wrong, Doc? Don’t like my driving?”

Kavalas said nothing, but Captain Terrell said, “It’s my opinion you should be worried about, Ensign.” He grimaced as she pushed the fully loaded transport to its limits. “Racing the clock is one thing. Tempting fate is another.”

“Not my fault the Austarans didn’t light their roads.” A buzzing vibration shook the transport as she hugged the shoulder a hair too closely on the next curve. “Or use guardrails.”

From the backseat, Kavalas piped up in a timid voice: “We haven’t needed such features on our highways since we switched to guided navigation.”

His remark drew a disbelieving look from Ilucci. “Not even as backups?” He pointed at the navigation screen between Taryl and Terrell. “Don’t tell me you think that’s foolproof?”

“It hasn’t failed us yet.” An embarrassed pause. “Until today.”

Taryl checked the navigation system. “The good news is, we’re about to hit a long multi-lane straightaway. That should be it for the S-curves for a while.” She steered through the last gentle turn, then pushed the transport to full speed as the road straightened ahead of them.

They cruised for several minutes, the lull in conversation filled by the droning of smooth pavement under tires and the steady rush of air against the windows. Then a trio of soft beeps from the navigation system commanded Taryl’s attention. “Traffic ahead.” She nudged the brake to slow the transport to half its top speed. “Looks fairly heavy.”

“Backup from earlier system failures,” Kavalas said. “If those transports are controlled by the central traffic network, they’ll be grouped too closely for us to go around them.”

She pointed at the display. “Why are some vehicles tagged with different colors?”

“Green marks an occupied vehicle. Amber denotes empty vehicles. The system uses that to assign priority to occupied transports over extra vehicles being moved to serve other areas.”

She took a fresh look at the screen. “Hang on, then. According to this, almost all this traffic is empty transports. There are only two with passengers, stuck in the middle of the pack.”

“Must be another malfunction,” Kavalas said, stating the obvious.

A muted double beep announced an incoming communicator signal and masked Taryl’s muttered string of expletives. The captain flipped open his communicator. “Terrell here.”

Theriault’s voice pierced an uncharacteristic wall of static on the channel. “Captain, is there anywhere you and the landing party can take cover in the next sixty seconds?”

That ominous question made everyone in the car sit up and take note of the conversation. Terrell did his best to maintain a sanguine demeanor. “Why do you ask, Number One?”

“Because a meteor storm that just wiped out the Austarans’ space station is on its way down to the surface, along with the wreckage of most of their satellites.”

The captain’s trademark calm started to slip. “How severe is the risk on the surface?”

“Sorak estimates pockets of moderate to heavy damage across an area of roughly three hundred thousand square kilometers on the night side of the northern hemisphere.”

Hesh leaned forward to be heard over the communicator. “Can he be more specific?”

“No, but I’d bet the improbability field will land the meteoroids where it’ll hurt most.”

Ilucci asked the question Taryl was thinking: “What about us? Are we in danger?”

“Look up. Do you see streaks of fire in the sky?”

Kavalas pointed at a symbol on the transport’s master console. “Ensign Taryl? Push that. It makes the roof of the vehicle transparent.”

She did as he instructed. The opaque roof above their heads faded to reveal a panoramic dome of open sky—filled with blazing yellow-white tails of fire growing larger by the second.

“Number One, that’s an affirmative on the streaks of fire.”

“Then I’d say you’re in trouble.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. Terrell out.” He closed the communicator’s grille and tucked it away, never once taking his eyes off the descending firestorm. “Suggestions? Anyone?”

Taryl looked up and assessed the angle and speed of the approaching barrage. “Hang on!” She slammed on the brakes. The tires screamed as the brakes locked and the transport skidded across the asphalt. It took all of Taryl’s strength to halt the fishtailing transport and keep it on the highway. As soon as they came to a stop, less than fifty meters behind the sluggish wall of receding traffic, she shouted, “Duck and cover!”

The first meteoroid crashed down half a kilometer ahead of them, beside the highway. It exploded on impact, sending a fireball laced with glowing rock across the roadway and tumbling automated transports like dice. Dozens more impacts followed in rapid succession, but Taryl knew not to let herself be hypnotized by the pageant of destruction.

Great thunderclaps split the air and shook the surface. A brutal shock wave of broken pavement and white-hot rock pummeled the transport and cracked its windshield a dozen times in the span of a few seconds. A gust of superheated air blasted over them and raised the temperature inside the vehicle ten degrees in a matter of seconds. Taryl was sure the only thing keeping them on the ground was their combined weight.

After less than half a minute, the cataclysmic noise outside fell away, leaving only a deathly hush. Taryl sat up slowly, as did Kavalas and the rest of the landing party. Behind them, the road and landscape looked normal despite being hidden behind a dusty veil. Ahead of them, the highway had been narrowed to a single lane through a cratered, apocalyptic vista of fire and ash. The fleet of automated transports that had clogged the route ahead of them was gone, scattered in pieces across the charred, broken plains.

Terrell looked at Taryl. “Are we mobile?”

“Let’s find out.” She started the engine and checked the gauges. “Looks like it.”

“Good. Take us half a kilometer down the road.” He looked back at Hesh. “There were two occupied cars ahead of us. Start scanning for survivors.”

Taryl put the transport in gear and cruised into the fresh hellscape. “Sir, do we really have time for this? We need to get to the dark energy generator while there’s still—”

“Ensign, if the passengers of those vehicles are alive, we’re the only ones close enough to help them. I’m not going to drive on and leave them to die. Is that understood?”

A sheepish nod. “Yes, sir.”

Hesh’s tricorder filled the transport with its high-pitched, oscillating whirring for a few seconds. When it ceased, the science officer reported in a bright tone, “Captain! I’m reading five survivors. A pair on one side of the road, a trio on the other.”

“Lock in their coordinates.” Terrell nudged Taryl and pointed at a broader section of the road ahead. “Stop there.” To the group he continued, “We’ll split up. Doctor Kavalas, you and Master Chief Ilucci will join me to treat the trio of survivors. Taryl, you and Mister Hesh will tend to the pair. Render first aid and stabilize them as best you can. If it’s safe to move them, we’ll bring the survivors up to the main road and summon emergency personnel before we move on.” He looked around as Taryl stopped the transport at the location he had specified. “Any questions?” There weren’t. “Then move out.”

Taryl opened all of the transport’s doors with a master switch. Everyone clambered out into the smoky, sulfuric aftermath of the meteoroid strikes. Hesh pointed out to Terrell the vehicle holding the trio of Austarans, then took point and led Taryl toward the other pair of survivors’ shattered transport.

As she followed the slender science officer through the swath of burning desolation that flanked the road, she wondered when her misanthropy had crossed the line that would have let her drive away from a calamity such as this without even thinking of looking for survivors, much less argue against rendering aid.

When did I forget how to feel compassion for other people? Have I shut my feelings off for so long that I’ve lost all empathy? And if I have . . . how do I undo it?

She didn’t know the answers to those questions.

All Taryl knew for certain was that she could no longer ignore them.

•   •   •

Pursued by a gaggle of her advisors, Tribune Saranda quickened her pace as she pushed through the doors that led outside onto the quad. Her chief of staff, Soparen Tosc, jogged after her, calling out between labored breaths: “Tribune! Stop! Where are you going?”

“To address the crowd in the plaza.” She marched past a squad of constables, who belatedly realized who she was and scrambled into a protective phalanx around her.

Tosc was desperate. “That’s no crowd, Madam Tribune—that’s a mob!”

“All the greater their need for a voice of reason.”

“Madam Tribune, please! Why face a riot in the making, today of all days?”

She refused to be deterred. “Why? Because the entire world is spiraling into mayhem. Fire is falling from the skies. And all the media can talk about is an endless string of wonders and horrors sweeping the planet. They need to see the government is still functioning.”

“But we’re not functioning. All our offices are closed!”

“Let’s not lead with that, shall we?”

Her obstinacy pushed Tosc over the fine line separating fear from anger. “What do you plan to say? You can’t tell them the truth. Doctor Kavalas’s project is top secret!”

“I’ll think of something.” She ascended the stairs to the high rampart that separated the public commons from the inner courtyard of the Executive Complex. Armed officers lined the top of the rampart, living symbols of authority intended to hold the chaos of the world at bay. Saranda stepped toward the permanent podium that in centuries past had been used by previous heads of state to address the people on occasions of great importance.

Her appearance on the rampart drew a mix of proud cheers and angry hoots from the sea of faces that packed the city for several blocks around. She lifted her hands, hoping to invoke silence, but the tumult of the masses only grew louder.

It’s going to be one of those nights, then. So be it.

She switched on her vocal amplifier, which she wore as a nearly invisible patch on the lapel of her jacket. Her voice boomed from speakers mounted along the ramparts and drowned out the roars of the madding throng. “People of Anura! Hear me and be calm!” Some of the angry noise abated, so she continued. “We know that unusual events seem to be occurring with improbable regularity, but it’s vital that we not panic. The worst thing we could—”

An amplified voice from below interrupted, “Is it the aliens?”

The question left Saranda wondering how word had gotten out. “I don’t understand.”

“Aliens! We have citizen footage of an alien vessel landing here just a few hours ago. Now aliens have been spotted at the scene of a massive road bombing in the Sirkun Territory.”

Saranda shielded her eyestalks from the lights shining upon her and followed the voice from below to its source: a notoriously tenacious journalist named Syrem Eguen. He stared back at Saranda, his transceiver goggles no doubt relaying his questions and her answers around the world on an open channel. He met her stare with an accusatory look. “Are the aliens causing these strange events? Are we under attack? Why did you meet with them?”

“We are not under attack, and the aliens are not causing the recent oddities.”

Enraged boos swelled up from the crowd, encouraging Eguen’s interrogation.

“Then why are they here today of all days, Tribune?”

She wanted to throttle him. How could she answer him without making things worse? She couldn’t admit the Sagittarius and its crew had come in response to her government’s plea for help. Knowing that the government was appealing to offworlders would only accelerate the panic already sweeping through the populace. But what lie could she possibly concoct to make their appearance during the crisis seem plausibly like a coincidence?

A clumsy falsehood started to take shape on her tongue, but it never got the chance to escape into the world. Just as she inflated her vocal sac to answer with the rich timbre of authority, the sky above the capital turned crimson with fire from the heavens.

The mob’s angry jeers turned to cries of terror, and the crowd scattered in all directions. Around them, meteoroids ripped through the darkened façades of empty office towers.

Behind Saranda, a cascade of fiery projectiles crashed down into the Executive Complex and reduced it in a matter of seconds to a flaming husk. Fire and debris exploded outward from the gutted building.

Insistent hands closed around Saranda’s arms. Tosc and a pair of constables hustled her off the rampart, through an emergency escape hatch that was slammed shut above them while they descended the stairs in a frantic scramble. Long before they reached the secure sublevel, they heard the blast wave quake the rampart and the trapdoor above them.

Tosc’s wrath was gone, replaced by sincere concern. “Are you hurt, Madam Tribune?

“No, I’m all right.” She forced herself to push through the shock of their narrow escape from death, so that she could focus on what needed to be done. “Let’s get to safe ground. I think we’re in for a long night of coordinating emergency response.”

“Yes, Madam Tribune.”

She knew there wasn’t much they could actually do; any efforts they might make now would be tantamount to spitting at a wildfire. But it was better than admitting what she had just seen with her own eyes: If Doctor Kavalas’s dark energy generator didn’t kill Anura, the unstoppable tide of fear it had spawned in the general population would.

13

“Repeat: Sagittarius to Captain Terrell. Please respond.” Theriault stood by the communications console and listened to the weak crackling static of cosmic background radiation. She aimed a worried look at Razka. “Chief, can you boost the gain?”

“We’re at maximum power, sir. Unfortunately, we are also at maximum comm range.” His scaly digits flipped switches and toggles on the console. “Let me narrow the transmission beam. It might compensate for long-range signal dispersion.” He finished his adjustments and looked up at Theriault. “Ready for another try, sir.”

She pressed the transmission button. “Sagittarius to Captain Terrell. Please respond.”

The captain’s answer came back through a heavy scratching of noise. “Terrell here. What’s the ship’s status, Number One?”

“Scuffs and scrapes. Nothing a bit of paint won’t hide. How’s the landing party?”

“Worse for wear but unhurt, thanks to your warning. We just finished rendering first aid to some injured civilians at the impact site and summoned emergency medical help for them. Now we’re back on the road, heading north toward the dark energy facility.”

“Going forward, you might want to ignore your charitable impulses. Before we broke orbit, Razka picked up several transmissions from civilian sources on the surface that are blaming us, and you, for the ongoing weirdness sweeping the planet. The next time you run into the locals, they might not be happy to see you, so be on your guard.”

“Another timely warning, Number One. Thank you.”

“All part of the service.”

“Speaking of service, how are your guests holding up?”

An alert tone from the sensor console on the other side of the bridge distracted her for a moment. Dastin leaned over the sensor hood to investigate the cause of the alarm, so Theriault resumed her conversation with Terrell. “They’re fine, considering they all came within minutes of getting pulverized. Right now they’re in the mess hall, trying to find something in our food synthesizer that they’d consider palatable.”

“If they do, they’ll be the first.”

His quip made her smile. “I told them to lower their expectations.” A howl of electronic noise flooded the channel. When it ceased, Theriault continued, “Captain? Are you still there?”

“Still here, Number One.” His tone turned more serious. “First, let me commend you and the rest of the crew for your rescue of the station’s team. Second, don’t do anything like that again. When I ordered you to keep the ship away from the distortion field, I meant it. No more unnecessary risks. Understood?”

“Aye, sir.” Theriault aimed a reproving look at Sorak, who she hoped would appreciate her omitting from the log his daredevil thruster-pack rescue of the station’s commander. For his part, Sorak responded to her keenly arched eyebrow with one of his own. Affecting her most humble demeanor, she asked the captain, “What should we do with our rescued astronauts?”

“Treat them like honored guests and keep them safe. Which, for now, means not bringing them home unless you get the all-clear from me or another member of the landing party.”

His order troubled her. “What if that all-clear never comes?”

“Keep the ship out of the danger zone for the next two hours,” the captain said. “If we don’t check in by then, assume that our mission to the generator has failed, and take the ship out of the system to summon help. But under no circumstances should you approach the planet.”

“Copy that, sir. We’ll—” An intraship channel beeped on Razka’s console, flashing red to signal an urgent message. “Hang on, sir. I’ve got bad news coming from engineering.”

“Do they know any other kind?”

She thumbed open the intraship channel. “Bridge here.”

Threx’s voice spilled from the overhead speakers. “Sir, we need to fall back farther than we thought. Even at this distance, we’re still feeling the effects of the distortion field.”

“What effects are you seeing?”

“You name it, we’ve got it. Irregularities in the matter-antimatter mix chamber, strange fluctuations in power output from the warp coils, and about two dozen minor malfunctions in everything from the impulse coil modulator to the plasma relays. And whatever you do, don’t go to warp speed—right now I can’t guarantee we won’t shred ourselves if we do.”

Theriault took a breath and concentrated on remaining calm and in control. “Understood. We’ll fall back at half-impulse. Let me know if the weirdness eases up. Bridge out.”

Before she could resume her conversation with the captain, she noticed Dastin crossing the bridge at a quick step, moving in her direction. “Commander, we’ve got a new problem.”

“Oh, good. I was worried we might not have enough to keep us busy.”

“Then you’ll love this: a dark comet, inbound on a stealth trajectory. Once it passes Anura’s larger moon, it’ll be on a direct heading to strike the planet’s central landmass.”

Sorak swiveled away from his console. “Confirmed, Commander.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Never a dull moment in this job. “How big is it?”

“A planet-killer,” Dastin said. “And it’ll hit Anura in four hours and nineteen minutes.”

“Not if we hit it first.” She turned back toward the communications console. “Captain, I assume you caught all that?”

“I certainly did, Number One. Sounds like you have your hands full up there.”

She loved his knack for understatement. “And then some, sir.”

“Then you’d better get to work, and we’ll do the same.”

“Aye, sir. We’ll check in as soon as we have news.”

“Acknowledged. Good luck, Number One.”

It took effort not to let her fear show through her mask of authority. “Same to you, sir. Sagittarius out.” She nodded to Razka to close the channel, then she returned to the command chair. “Helm, increase to half-impulse and move us beyond the range of the distortion field, then plot a course at full impulse to intercept the comet. Mister Sorak, Mister Dastin: Start looking for a way to cut that dirty ball of ice down to size—the faster, the better.”

•   •   •

It had been a long time since Clark Terrell had traveled a long stretch of lonely road. He had cruised North America’s famed Pacific Coast Highway one summer before joining Starfleet, and as a midshipman cadet he’d been a passenger on an overland drive through the breathtaking desert terrain that separated two of Vulcan’s largest cities. Neither had prepared him for the monotony of traversing a straight cut of road through a bleak inland plain on a moonless night.

The navigation system’s screen was angled toward Taryl. She remained alert and kept her senses sharp by shifting her attention, seemingly at random, between the road ahead, the rearview mirror, and glancing toward either shoulder of the empty, unlit highway.

Terrell cleared his throat with a muffled cough so that his voice wouldn’t startle her. “What’s our ETA, Ensign?”

She checked the navigation screen. “Ninety-one minutes.”

Ilucci leaned forward. “Maybe we could pass the time with a driving song.”

“If you so much as hum a bar,” Terrell said, “I’ll have you court-martialed.”

“On what charge?”

Terrell threw a glare over his shoulder. “Trust me, I’ll think of something.”

The chief engineer took Terrell’s threat to heart, sat back, and closed his eyes.

Taryl squinted into the darkness, then did a double take toward the navigation screen. “Sir, I think there’s some kind of a structure ahead, off the right side of the road. The nav shows a lot of vehicles stopped in front of it.”

Her report made Kavalas sit up. “It’s a rest area. There aren’t many this far north, but there are always a few along every highway. For food, bodily needs, that kind of thing.”

An anxious look from Taryl. “What do you think, sir? Should we stop for a minute?”

It took only a moment’s consideration for Terrell to decide. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. If Commander Theriault’s right, we might not be very welcome there right now.”

Kavalas struck an optimistic note. “We are quite far north. It might be deserted.”

Hesh, who hadn’t spoken in over an hour, activated his tricorder. Its shimmer of sound filled the transport. Seconds later, Hesh turned the device off. “I’m reading several dozen life-forms at the rest area, sir. All register as Austarans. Based on the fact that many of them are in motion, I feel confident in my deduction that the majority are presently awake.”

“Thank you, Mister Hesh. Ensign Taryl, that’s our cue to drive on.”

Up ahead, a dim orange glow from the rest area became visible through a sparse patch of woods. Ilucci studied it with naked suspicion. “The XO said we were on the news, and the locals sound pretty keyed up about it. What if that crowd at the rest area’s been waiting for us?”

Taryl scrunched her face in confusion. “How would they know where we are?”

“Because I made us stop to render first aid to the victims of the meteoroid impact,” Terrell said. “Word must have gotten out by now.”

Hesh, as ever, tried to remain hopeful. “Perhaps they will not recognize us.”

“We’re about to find out,” Taryl said.

The transport sped past the rest area, which was packed with a variety of vehicles. A crowd milled about the fleet of personal transports. At first, no one seemed to pay any attention to the landing party’s transport as it streaked by in the dark.

Then someone pointed at them, and the mob scrambled into action.

Taryl frowned. “I think they recognized us.”

The blinding glare of headlights filled the road behind the landing party’s transport. It took less than a minute for the radiance to fill the rear window like a halogen sunrise.

Ilucci tried to look back, then ducked under the headlight beams. “How the hell are they catching up to us? I thought guided-nav transports were speed-limited.”

Kavalas looked back and swallowed hard. “You aren’t the only ones who know how to bypass the velocity governors. Our pursuers must also have asserted manual control of their vehicles after the grid started to fail.”

Shouts and honks assailed them from outside. Cracks of gunfire made Terrell flinch, and he felt his breath catch and his heart skip a beat when a projectile caromed off the transport’s rear window. He checked the side mirrors and noted chase cars creeping up on either side of their overloaded transport. “Mister Hesh, Doctor Kavalas, follow the Master Chief’s example and get down. Ensign, coax every bit of speed out of this thing that you can, and hold her steady.”

The trio in the backseat huddled on the floor, and Taryl hunched low in the driver’s seat as she pushed the accelerator to maximum.

Alarms pinged on the master control panel as Terrell unfastened his safety harness. He lowered his door’s window, drew his Type-1 phaser, and climbed out the window. Icy wind buffeted his face and made his eyes water.

Another crack of gunfire was followed by a bright metallic ping of contact as the shot ricocheted off his door. He sat on the bottom edge of the open window frame, held on to the roof’s edge with his left hand, and crossed his right wrist over his left to steady his aim.

One prolonged shot on high power. The crimson beam sliced a zigzagging wound in the pavement, which erupted into smoke as the asphalt turned to molten rock, blocking the road and halting the parade of would-be vigilantes behind a fresh-cut canyon of white-hot divots and crumbling pavement, while the landing party’s transport slipped away into the night.

Satisfied his work was done and that no one had been harmed, Terrell holstered his phaser and slipped back inside the car. Taryl helpfully raised his window for him, using the master control panel on her door, while he refastened his seatbelt harness.

The trio in the rear got up from the floor and settled back into their seats. Ilucci nodded in approval at his commanding officer. “Nice shooting, Skipper.”

Terrell accepted the compliment with a grin.

“That’s why they call it ‘riding shotgun,’ Master Chief.”

•   •   •

Theriault leaned forward in the command chair, her eyes locked on the image of the massive hunk of ice and rock that filled the main viewscreen. Nizsk had piloted the Sagittarius to within several thousand kilometers of the comet, then set the tiny scout ship into reverse while matching the comet’s speed, providing her crewmates with an optimal vantage for targeting. All that was left to do now was divert the gargantuan mass before it exterminated all life on Anura.

“Mister Sorak,” Theriault said, “lock weapons on target. Mister Dastin, stand by on tractor beams. Ensign Nizsk, be ready to engage evasive maneuvers. Once we start slicing up that comet, there’s no telling which way some of the pieces might go.”

The aft door slid open. Theriault swiveled her chair and turned her head to see the leader of the Austaran space station crew standing in the open doorway to the Sagittarius’s bridge. “I hope this isn’t an inconvenient—” His eyes flared at the sight of the comet. “What is that?”

Starfleet’s protocols dictated the alien visitor be denied access to the bridge, but Theriault doubted he would understand enough of what he saw for his presence to constitute a danger to Federation security or the Prime Directive. “That, Commander Beiana, is a large, fast-moving comet. Right now it’s on a heading that’ll crash it into your homeworld in less than four hours. If you don’t mind observing in silence, we’re about to do all we can to prevent that.”

Beiana stepped clear of the door’s proximity sensor, allowing the portal to glide closed. “By all means, Commander Theriault. Carry on, please.”

She swung her chair back to its forward-facing position. “Weapons, status.”

“Phasers locked on to key stress points in the comet,” Sorak said.

Theriault was troubled by what he’d left unsaid. “What about torpedoes?”

Sorak checked his console. “Still awaiting confirmation from engineering.”

Losing patience, Theriault thumbed open the channel to the top deck. “Engineering, Bridge. Where are my photon torpedoes?”

Cahow’s reply sounded strained. “Almost . . . there. Autoloader . . . failed. Loading . . . the launch tube . . . by hand.” Next came a heavy thump and a metallic clang. “Loaded!”

“Thank the Great Bird for minor miracles.” She looked at Dastin. “Are we far enough from the distortion field to use shields?”

He nodded. “All clear, sir. And tractor beam is standing by to autotarget based on the parameters you specified.”

“Good work, Lieutenant.” She turned toward the other side of the bridge. “Chief Razka, patch the feed from our viewscreen to the mess hall’s display, and tell Commander Beiana’s crew what they’re looking at. It’s their homeworld at stake—they deserve to know what’s happening, and what we’re doing about it.”

“Aye, sir.”

Commander Beiana acknowledged Theriault’s gesture of openness with a half-bow she interpreted as a sign of gratitude. She answered him with a nod, then resumed her work. “Ensign Nizsk, angle our shields for maximum forward deflection.”

Nizsk’s claws worked the forward console’s controls with surprising speed and precision. “Shields raised, Commander. Multiple evasive programs ready, as well as manual response.”

Theriault used the armrest controls to open a shipwide channel. “All personnel, brace for impact. We’re about to break up the comet, and we might catch some blowback, so look sharp.” She closed the channel. “Mister Sorak, lock torpedo on the comet’s most likely fracture point. And just in case this crazy plan actually works, prepare to target the segments.”

“Torpedo locked, phasers charged. Give the word, Commander.”

“Fire torpedo!”

One tap by Sorak launched the photon torpedo, a compact self-propelled projectile with a matter-antimatter warhead capable of phenomenal destructive power on unshielded targets. A whoop from its thrusters resounded through the hull as it shot from the launch tube above the bridge. It streaked away from the Sagittarius, a crimson bolt against the dark backdrop of space, and disappeared into the shadowy maw of the comet.

Its detonation turned the viewscreen white for a half-second. When the blinding light faded, the interior surfaces of the broken comet’s now several pieces glowed bright red, still half-molten from the intense energies of the torpedo. Most of the largest pieces were already drifting apart, their individual trajectories having been altered by the force of the blast.

“Mister Dastin, how many of the remaining pieces still pose a threat to Anura?”

It took him a few seconds to coax the report from the computer. “The core remains on course to hit the planet.” He looked up from the sensor hood. “But if we nudge it a little . . .”

“Understood.” Theriault looked back at Sorak. “Phasers?”

“The tractor beam would be more effective.”

It was a riskier method, but Theriault trusted her crewmates to get it done. “Helm, take us to optimal tractor beam range. Watch out for loose debris from the torpedo blast. Dastin, I need an angle of attack that will make the greatest beneficial change in the comet’s heading.”

“Working on it.” After a few hurried computations he added, “Sending now.”

“Received,” Nizsk said. “Course plotted, Commander.”

“Engage, best possible speed.” Within seconds, the ship was in position. “Sorak, activate tractor beam!” On the main viewscreen, a pale glow lashed out from the Sagittarius into the comet’s core. The ship lurched as if it were an old seagoing vessel suddenly run aground. Theriault thumbed open the channel to the top deck. “Engineering! We need more power!”

Threx shouted over the rising whine of the impulse core, “We’re patching in power from the warp reactor. Don’t make any fast maneuvers or you’ll shear us in half.”

“Understood. Just give us all the juice you can, right now!”

“Hang on—here it comes!”

A sharp jolt of resistance boomed like thunder inside the Sagittarius, and the bridge crew clung to their chairs and consoles to keep from being knocked to the deck—unlike Beiana, who was launched from one side of the bridge to the other. Steady shivers trembled the tiny ship, and the high-pitched cry of its overtaxed engines drowned out all other sounds on the bridge.

Dastin shouted something at Theriault, but she couldn’t hear him. She pointed at her ear, shook her head, and shrugged. He pointed at the image of the comet on the viewscreen, then at his console, before giving her a thumbs-up.

She swiveled the command chair so Sorak could see her. As soon as they made eye contact, she made a slashing gesture across her throat with her hand. Despite his stereotypically Vulcan penchant for being literal minded, he had served with her long enough to understand the idiomatic meaning of her signal. He deactivated the tractor beam.

The engines returned to their normal background hum, and except for the gentle feedback tones of the computers, all was quiet on the bridge. Theriault looked at Dastin. “Report.”

“Comet’s core mass trajectory adjusted by zero point nine three degrees. It’ll miss Anura by about two hundred twenty-one thousand kilometers.”

“And the other segments?”

“Should impact harmlessly on the planet’s two moons.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Well done, everybody.”

Beiana dusted himself off as he stepped toward her. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, Commander. On behalf of my crew, and my people, I thank you.”

“You’re welcome. But your planet’s still in danger, which means our job’s not done yet.” She settled back into her command posture. “I hope you’re feeling lucky—because we’re going back to Anura.”

14

It was all going so well until they crested the hill. After escaping the brush with the mob on the highway, the landing party hadn’t seen another vehicle—or even another living thing—on the rest of their drive into the northern wastes. Despite the increasingly overcast sky and fierce winds, it had seemed to Terrell like they might actually enjoy relatively smooth sailing the rest of the way to the dark energy complex. Then they reached the top of the last rise between them and the remote scientific research facility, and he realized how foolish his assumption had been.

A grim spectacle filled the vale ahead of them: a towering storm of dust clouds laced with pulses of green energy and shimmering patches of distorted light that made Terrell think of mirages. It was shaped like a squat funnel several kilometers wide and capped by a black stormhead lit by titanic ribbons of lightning and extending beyond the horizon in every direction.

Taryl stopped the transport in the middle of the road. Her jaw went slack as she marveled at the decidedly unnatural storm that swallowed the highway less than a kilometer away, then she turned her wide-eyed stare at Terrell. “Sir, tell me we’re not driving into that.”

“Would you believe me if I did?”

She winced and sighed at their predicament. “No.”

The trio in the backseat crowded forward for a better look. Hesh activated his tricorder, while Ilucci and Doctor Kavalas were content to gape in wonder at the tempest.

The Austaran scientist seemed the most amazed by what was transpiring outside. “What is that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“If I had to guess,” Ilucci said, “I’d say that’s the wild edge of a null space created by the intersection of wave fronts from the improbability field your generator’s putting out.”

Hesh switched off his tricorder. “Precisely correct, Master Chief. There is a quarter-kilometer radius of null space around the generator facility. However, the intersection of all its rebounding wave fronts and their harmonic echoes has created this rather perilous barrier zone. Readings from within its area of effect are . . . erratic, to say the least.”

Terrell noticed the uncharacteristic imprecision of Hesh’s report. “Erratic, Lieutenant? In what sense? And would you characterize the barrier zone as dangerous?”

“Dangerous? Absolutely, sir. Some of the peculiarities I’ve detected inside the zone are severe fluctuations of gravity, random shifts of atmospheric molecules, temperature swings, and highly unpredictable electrical discharges ranging in severity from mildly uncomfortable to fatal and even catastrophic. Any attempt to pass through the barrier will be extremely perilous.”

Taryl aimed a sour look at Hesh. “Remind me to never ask you for a pep talk.”

Terrell appraised the threat posed by the maelstrom. “Doctor, how well insulated are these transports? Can they stand up to a lightning strike?”

“It would depend on the lightning.”

Far from an endorsement, but better than nothing. Terrell knew there was naught to gain by turning back, which left him no other path but to continue forward. “Time to run the gauntlet. Ensign, take us in, as fast you can. If we’re lucky, we’ll punch through the storm before it has a chance to do too much damage, and then we’ll be safe on the other side.”

His proposal earned a skeptical sidelong look from Taryl. “And if we’re not lucky?”

“Then if we live through this, you get the rare privilege of saying ‘I told you so.’ ”

A shrug. “Can’t ask for a better deal than that.” She stomped on the accelerator.

The transport leapt forward and hurtled downhill, speeding straight into chaos.

The trio in the backseat hunched low and tightened their safety belts.

Terrell gripped the armrest of his door as the edge of the barrier loomed, its wall of wind and smoke screaming like a banshee. Then the transport slammed through the outer layer and was swallowed by the madness within.

Forked bolts of sickly green lightning stabbed at the exterior of the transport, which wobbled and swerved, a prisoner of the wild forces at work inside the barrier zone. The tail end of the vehicle slipped one way while the nose was pulled in another, and then everything went upside-down. Nausea and vertigo assailed Terrell as gravity reversed itself. The transport rolled and twisted in midair, and the impenetrable curtain of swirling dirt and dust that surrounded it made it impossible for Terrell to tell which way was down. Then he felt gravity’s irresistible pull and he knew, but it was too late to do anything about it.

The transport plummeted back to the ground and landed with a jarring crunch that caved in the roof and shattered all its windows. Terrell shut his eyes as a fierce blast of wind-driven sand scoured his face. He feared to open his mouth to issue orders, but it had to be done.

“Who’s with me? Sound off!”

One by one the others replied, shouting over the roar of the storm. Assured that everyone was still conscious, Terrell set their next objective. “Abandon the transport! Continue on foot!”

Terrell opened his door. Despite the tumult, he heard the other doors open as well. Struggling against the resistance of the wind and his inability to see, he crawled out of the transport. Only then did he realize that, between being blinded by the storm and disoriented by the flipping and rolling of the transport, he no longer had any idea in what direction lay the generator facility. He shouted over the wind, “Hesh! Is your tricorder working?”

He couldn’t see Hesh, but he heard him holler back, “Negative!”

Someone’s hand closed on Terrell’s. Then he heard Taryl say, “Join hands!”

He reached out and found another hand. Hoarse from fighting to be heard above the gale, Terrell yelled, “Is anyone not holding someone’s hand?” No one replied. “Taryl, lead on.”

The tug of her hand guided him away from the transport. After half a dozen steps, a bolt of violet lightning danced over his legs and torso. Terrell blacked out for half a second, then he regained awareness to find he was being carried. He squinted against the bite of the dust storm, and then he and the rest of the landing party tumbled en masse into open air.

All of them hacked and spat dust from their mouths.

Taryl coughed and glowered at him with bloodshot eyes. “Told you so.”

In between ragged coughs, Terrell took a head count and confirmed everyone else was still with them. No fatalities. So far, so good.

Behind them raged the madness of the distortion front. Before them stood the serene, institutional architecture of the dark energy plant. The orbital pictures Terrell had seen had depicted a circular generator facility, surrounded by an asymmetrical octagon of paved ground protected by a tall perimeter fence. From what he saw now, the inner edge of the storm’s eye was within that perimeter, which meant the fence had likely long since been torn away.

Just as well. I was in no mood for climbing.

He got up and dusted himself off. “Come on, folks. Let’s head for the main building.”

The others picked themselves up and followed him toward the largest of the handful of aboveground structures that topped the mostly subterranean facility. Tattered and beaten up, they all limped forward, but no one complained. After a couple of minutes’ walk they reached the lone door of the main building. Terrell tried its lever handle. It was locked.

Hesh fumbled for his tricorder. “Maybe I can generate a sonic pulse that will—”

Terrell drew his phaser and shot out the lock with a single blast.

The door sagged, so Terrell kicked it in. It rebounded off the wall of the corridor inside, then yawned open ahead of him.

He led Kavalas and the landing party inside. “Let’s go see what makes this mess tick.”

•   •   •

“Holding at maximum comm range from the planet, Commander.”

Theriault sat forward in the command chair. The Sagittarius was millions of kilometers from Anura, so far away that the planet appeared on the viewscreen as little more than an unusually large, bright point of light nestled among thousands of other visible stars. If not for a series of signal boosting comm-relay buoys they had deployed earlier, on their way out to confront the comet, they would be entirely beyond communications range with the planet, which lacked the technology for faster-than-light subspace radio.

“Chief, any signals from the landing party?”

Razka worked the controls at his station. “None, sir. The comm relays report no recorded messages or even attempted signals from the surface.”

Even before Sorak swiveled his chair in her direction, Theriault knew what he was going to say. “Commander, we are five minutes past the landing party’s check-in time.”

“Thank you, Mister Sorak. I know how to read the chronometer.” His narrow-eyed look of disapproval suggested he was stifling a strong urge to remind her of the captain’s orders to take the ship to safety if the landing party failed to check in. “Chief, hail the captain.”

Anxiety twisted like a cold fire deep in her stomach while she waited for Razka to raise Terrell or any other member of the landing party. After more than a minute of failed attempts, the chief turned toward her. Despite his reptilian features, she read his expression as one of regret. “I was unable to reach the landing party, sir.”

“Interference?”

“Uncertain. There was some background noise on the channel, but other times it just went quiet. It’s possible one or more of our intermediate relays may have failed.”

The prospect of abandoning the landing party anguished Theriault. As their friend and shipmate, she wanted to charge back to the planet and do whatever she could to help them resolve the Austarans’ global crisis. But as an officer and the acting commander of the ship, it was her duty to protect the Sagittarius and all aboard her. And she had her orders.

“Helm, come about and set course for the nearest starbase, warp six.”

“Warp six, aye.” Nizsk keyed commands into her console. After several seconds, she sat back and was quiet and still for a moment. Her mandibles clicked a few times, but her universal translator module offered no interpretation, leading Theriault to suspect that Nizsk was engaging in the Kaferian equivalent of clicking her tongue in confusion. Then the ensign turned to look back at her. “Sir, the ship is not responding.”

The error report drew concerned looks from Razka and Dastin. Theriault did her best to mimic Sorak’s seemingly unflappable veneer of calm. “Is it possible there’s a malfunction in the helm console? Maybe something we can bypass?”

“Negative, sir. Based on these readings . . . the warp and impulse engines are offline.”

It was the worst news Theriault could imagine. “Let me guess: the improbability field.”

Dastin shook his head in frustration. “It can’t be! We’re way out of—” His angry disbelief melted into pained realization. “This is another one of those ‘effect precedes cause’ moments, isn’t it?” Theriault nodded, and Dastin’s shoulders slumped. “I hate this place.”

Theriault thumbed open the channel to the top deck. “Bridge to Engineering.”

“Threx here.”

“Please tell me our engines didn’t just go offline for no reason.”

“They didn’t. I’m sure there’s a reason, we just haven’t found it yet.”

She noted an alert signal from Dastin’s console but stayed focused on her discussion with Threx. “So, you’re confirming we’ve lost main power?”

“For now. Both the warp core and the impulse core stopped dead and went cold.”

His emphasis on cold alarmed Theriault; she knew that word had a specific and dreaded meaning in the jargon of Starfleet engineers. “How long to restore main power?”

“At least two hours. The good news is, the batteries kicked in just like they were supposed to. So at least we still have computers, comms, and life support.”

Dastin cut in, “But not shields—which is a damned shame, because we’re about to need ’em.” He relayed his latest sensor readings to the main viewscreen. The image snapped to a filtered view of Anura’s parent star. “Cavino is on the verge of a major coronal mass ejection. And before you ask, this is no sunspot, no solar flare. In about ninety minutes, that star’s going to spit out a chunk of its surface on a direct heading for us—and for Anura.”

In spite of dreading the answer, Theriault asked, “How big a chunk?”

“Big enough that we can’t escape it without impulse power, and hot enough to melt us into slag from half a million kilometers. And the icing on the cake? It’ll cook Anura to a cinder.”

Theriault shook her head in disbelief. How many death sentences could a planet get in one day? And how many could it dodge before its luck ran out?

She looked down and realized the intraship comm channel was still open. “Threx, find some way to bring main power back online. I don’t care what it takes. Feel free to use sticks and stones, harsh language, or just get out and push. But get those engines started. You copy?”

“Five by five, Commander. We’re on it.”

“Keep us posted. Bridge out.” She thumbed off the channel, then opened another to sickbay. “Bridge to Doctor Babitz.”

“Babitz here.”

“Doc, do me a favor. Have Nurse Tan Bao brief the astronauts in the mess hall on how to use our escape pod.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Let’s just say things are going about as well as usual for us. And just in case they stay that way, I want our guests to have a fighting chance to survive.”

“Understood. We’ll take care of it.”

“Thank you. Bridge out.” She closed the channel and looked up to find Dastin standing beside the command chair. “Please tell me nothing else went wrong.”

“Not yet.” He shot a despairing look at the main viewscreen. “We’re having a lot of luck today. All of it bad.”

Theriault looked up at the man she had come to think of as a thorn in the paw of her command and, realizing she might soon die at his side, succumbed to gallows humor.

“Why should today be different from any other day in Starfleet?”

•   •   •

Nothing about the interior of the generator facility was what Terrell had expected. Most of the architecture he had seen in the capital city displayed a cultural preference for gentle curves and circular accents. In contrast, everything inside the research facility appeared to have been crafted with an eye toward hard angles, hexagons, and octagons.

His footsteps and those of the others in the group echoed down the long passage from the entrance to the control center. Few doors broke the monotony of bare walls in the wide corridor. Those that Terrell did notice were unmarked and gave the impression of having been locked since the day they were installed.

Doctor Kavalas walked at the head of the group. He seemed ill at ease. His eyestalks were in near-constant motion, swiveling to and fro, as if he expected the landing party to come under ambush at any moment. Even when they arrived at the door to the control center, he remained unsettled. “I hope my access code still works.” With one trembling hand, he entered his code on a touchscreen on the wall beside the entrance. Low thunks from inside the door’s jamb signaled the retraction of thick metal bolts. Kavalas opened the door. “This way.”

Terrell and the others followed him inside the command center. It was spacious, with a lofty ceiling above four slightly curved tiers of workstations. Two flights of deep, short stairs flanked the workstations, which faced a window several meters wide and nearly four meters tall that looked out on a dim sprawl of complex machinery. Above and on either side of the window were large, flat-panel display screens, all of them dark.

Hesh eyed the control center with a curious frown. “Doctor Kavalas? I recall you saying this facility was remotely controlled. Why, then, are there workstations here?”

“It was originally planned as a manned facility. Because of a belated safety evaluation, we added the remote command-and-control site after construction was nearly complete.”

Ilucci took a look around, then turned toward Kavalas. “Where’s the ‘on’ switch?”

“That, I fear, is part of our quandary.” He started up the nearest stairs and beckoned the engineer to follow him. “All systems in this facility were remotely operated through our interface with the master console, which is located on the uppermost tier, in the center position.”

As the pair climbed the stairs, Terrell summoned Hesh with a nod. He waited until the science officer had hurried to his side, then instructed him in a confidential register, “Run some scans with your tricorder. Check out the machinery on the other side of the window and see what you can learn about the systems in this room.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And silence your tricorder. Let’s keep this discreet.”

“I understand, sir.” Hesh adjusted his tricorder and stepped away from Terrell. He took up a position in front of the enormous window and its view of industrial hardware.

Terrell looked around for Taryl. He found her stalking the room’s far perimeter, with her eyes piercing its shadows and her hand resting nonchalantly on her phaser. Satisfied she was on top of her duties, he left her to them and climbed the stairs to catch up to Ilucci and Kavalas.

At the top of the stairs, he found the engineer and the scientist staring, wide-eyed and silent, at the so-called master console. “What’s the problem, gentlemen?”

Ilucci reached out and passed his hand through the console as if it were a hologram. “You tell me, Skipper. Apparently, it’s not supposed to do that.” He waved his hand through it again, and this time the console flickered and faded like a ghost losing its grip on the material world.

“Stop.” Terrell looked toward the window and lifted his voice. “Mister Hesh! We need you up here! On the double.” Hesh held his tricorder away from his hip as he sprinted up the stairs. Once he was at Terrell’s side, the captain pointed at the spectral console. “Scan it and tell me what we’re dealing with. Was the console removed and replaced with a hologram?”

It took several seconds for Hesh to run a series of scans with his tricorder. “No, sir. I think the console is still there, but it appears to have shifted out of phase with this reality.”

His observation made Kavalas recoil and blink in wonderment. “It’s done what?”

Hesh looked at Terrell. “Permission to explain, sir?”

Not wanting to confess his own failing recollection of advanced physics, Terrell granted Hesh license with a wave of his hand. “By all means, Lieutenant.”

The diminutive Arkenite faced Kavalas. “Are you familiar with the premise that all matter is composed of energy particles vibrating in a multi-dimensional matrix?”

“I’ve read some papers on the notion, yes.”

“Well, one aspect of that theory holds that the reason we are able to interact with our physical universe is that the particles that constitute our bodies, and those that constitute the universe around us, all vibrate on the same quantum frequency. However, it is possible, using precisely calibrated fields of subspatial distortion, to shift matter and energy into differing frequencies of phase. If those differences become great enough, particles that exist at one frequency would become invisible and intangible to those existing at another.”

Kavalas impatiently flapped his long-fingered hands. “Yes, yes. This was part of our premise for how to extract dark energy from the universe—that it was out of phase.”

“Well, if the phase variance is subtle enough—say, a few millicochranes—then an object might still be visible, and even subject to such effects as gravity, while becoming intangible.” He nodded at the ghostly console. “Like this, for instance.”

Ilucci extended his hand toward Hesh. “Sir, can I borrow the tricorder for a moment?”

“Of course, Master Chief.” Hesh handed it to him.

Holding the tricorder, Ilucci activated its scanning functions and began a slow perambulation of the control center. “Doctor Kavalas, I notice that window is made out of transparent steel. Is that a common material on your planet?”

The question seemed to exacerbate Kavalas’s discomfort. “No, we had it fabricated by special order for this facility.” He watched Ilucci stalk the room’s perimeter. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.” He pointed the tricorder at a bank of workstations. “Back in your tribune’s office, you said you were racing against a competitor that’s working on a matter-antimatter power system.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

The chief engineer stopped. “For what? Even where we come from, most planets get by just fine on fusion power. Why the rush to harness dark energy or antimatter?”

Kavalas wilted under the heat of scrutiny. “To power a faster-than-light star drive.”

“So, you don’t currently have FTL technology?”

“We have ideas. But most require more energy than we can generate.”

Ilucci marched back up the steps and handed the tricorder to Hesh, then he confronted Kavalas. “Then I’d like to know why half these consoles have subspace coils in them.” He looked at Terrell. “Sir, shifting matter out of phase is a possible side effect of a miscalibrated warp coil. We use miniaturized subspace coils to speed up our computers and make FTL computations. No other technology I’ve seen on this planet suggests the Austarans should have this kind of science. But all the workstations in this room have FTL processors.” He pointed at the phase-shifted master console. “And here’s the kicker: I can’t think of a single way for one of these coils to malfunction that would produce an effect like this—not unless it was designed to do so. But since there’s no good reason the doctor or his partners would put in a feature like this, I have to wonder if maybe they built it without realizing what they’d done—and, if so, how.”

Persuaded that he and his crew had uncovered something that Kavalas and his peers had hoped to keep secret, Terrell faced the scientist. “Doctor? How do you explain this?”

Kavalas slumped against the wall like an exhausted boxer collapsing into the ropes. “Your engineer is correct. We didn’t design these systems. A secret cabal of government scientists stole its schematics from the computers of an alien vessel that crashed on our world more than a century ago.” His voice quavered with embarrassment. “It took us this long to develop the materials science and fabrication technology to build this facility.” His eyes swiveled toward the great window, and his countenance darkened in shame. “Only after we’d turned it on did I realize . . . it had been a trap all along.”

15

A blur of motion on the edge of her vision made Theriault look at Razka, just as his overzealous swiveling of his chair nearly threw him from it. He glossed over his momentary failure of grace with pure excitement: “Commander! We’ve made contact with the landing party!”

“On speakers.” Out of habit she turned her eyes upward in anticipation of hearing the captain’s voice filter down from the overhead.

Captain Terrell’s baritone cut through a harsh crackling of interference and some high-frequency oscillations. “Terrell to Sagittarius. Do you read me, Sagittarius?”

She raised her voice to pierce the noise. “We read you, Captain. Go ahead.”

“Things keep getting stranger by the minute down here, Number One.”

Theriault frowned at the image of Cavino’s turbulent heliosphere. “Trust me, sir. We sympathize. Are you and the landing party all right?”

“So far. We had a rough brush with some locals, but no one got hurt. Now we’re at the dark energy research facility, and we’ve learned some new facts about its construction. For starters, the Austarans stole its design from an alien vessel that crashed here over a hundred years ago. And it seems those plans were booby-trapped.”

That lifted Theriault’s brow. “I don’t suppose it’s still under warranty?”

“I doubt it, Number One. And even if it were, the Austarans wouldn’t know who to ask for service. Mister Hesh and the Master Chief have made some detailed scans of the components and materials used to build this place. Have Dastin run them through the ship’s computer, see if he can scare up a match from the databanks.”

Dastin stepped away from his console to join the conversation. “Sounds like a long shot, sir. This far from explored space, there could be any number of starfaring civilizations. It’s just as likely those plans came from one we’ve never met as from one that we have.”

“We won’t know until we look, Lieutenant. Hesh and the Chief are sending up their scans on the data subchannel. As soon as you have them, start your analysis.”

“You got it, Skipper.” Dastin nodded at Theriault, then retreated to his post.

Theriault noted the flashing lights on Dastin’s console, which indicated the upload of data from the landing party had started. “Sir? Do you and the landing party have a plan for shutting down the generator any time soon?”

“Not yet. I’m hoping Mister Dastin might scare up some fresh leads for us.” A pause, and then he asked, “Why? What’s gone wrong now?”

She was loath to compound the pressure on the captain and the others by heaping more bad news onto them, but they had a right to know about the threat that faced them all. “There’s a major disruption on the surface of Anura’s star. Sensors indicate it’ll cause a huge coronal mass ejection in under two hours. Based on its size and projected trajectory, it’s gonna cook Anura down to sterile glass. And we’re sitting directly in its path.”

“In that case, forget about analyzing our scans and get the ship to safety.”

“We can’t. The warp and impulse cores both went cold without warning, and it’ll take more time to jump-start them than we have. So unless we help you shut down that generator, we’re as good as fried when that CME hits us.”

To her surprise, she was sure she heard Terrell laugh. “Never rains but it pours, eh?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Number One . . . have you briefed your astronaut guests about the CME?”

The question made her uneasy. “Not exactly. I had Babitz and Tan Bao show them how to use the escape pod, but we haven’t told them why. I wasn’t sure it’d be good for their morale.”

“Let their commander worry about their morale. Your responsibility as their host is to keep them informed of events relevant to their situation. The potential destruction of their homeworld definitely qualifies.” His affect took a turn for the somber. “I know you don’t care for doling out bad news, Number One. You never have. But it comes with the job.”

It was a simple truth but one Theriault had hoped to skirt. “I understand, sir. I’ll inform their CO immediately.”

“Thank you. But don’t rob them of all hope. After all, I’m still optimistic enough to think that Hesh and the Master Chief might have a few more tricks up their sleeves.”

“That makes two of us. We’ll let you know if we find anything useful.”

“What more could a captain ask? Godspeed, Number One. Terrell out.”

The channel closed, and the sudden absence of its undercurrent of howling static left an eerie lacuna in the ambience of the bridge. Charged with a promise to keep, Theriault stood and turned aft. “Mister Sorak, you have the conn.” He moved forward and took over the command chair as she left the bridge—and wondered every step of the way aft what she was going to say to the eight stranded astronauts in the Sagittarius’s mess hall.

•   •   •

The landing party and Doctor Kavalas huddled around the semi-transparent master console. Ilucci scratched his beard, Hesh continued to run scans with his tricorder, and Terrell stood back with his arms crossed, considering their dilemma. Given their dearth of options, the group had stood in quiet contemplation for over a minute. Kavalas repeatedly flexed his hands into fists as if he were kneading an invisible wad of dough, while Taryl remained the farthest from the console, with her hands folded in an at-ease pose behind her back.

Terrell broke the spell of silence. “We need to start somewhere, people. I want to hear suggestions, no matter how outlandish they might seem.”

Awkward glances traveled around the huddle. Hesh lowered his tricorder. “I would feel more confident making a recommendation after we see the report from the ship’s computer.”

“As would I,” Terrell said. “But we can’t be sure there’s anything in our databanks about this technology. It certainly doesn’t look Klingon to me, and that’s the only interstellar power I can think of that might have had a ship operating in this sector a hundred years ago.”

Taryl unfolded her hands and faced Terrell. “Sir, we might want to consider that the most useful course of action available to us would be to transmit a warning to the galaxy at large. To tell anyone who can hear us to avoid this technology because of its inherent dangers.”

“A noble sentiment, Ensign, but we can barely get signals to and from the ship. And without main power for the transceiver, they can’t get a signal out on subspace. Besides, we could do more harm than good by broadcasting news of this technology.” Terrell shook his head. “No, we can’t count on the ship’s computer to save us, and we can’t even send out a call for help. But I’m not prepared to throw in the towel. Not yet, anyway.” He stared at the phantom console, as if peering into its phase-shifted ghost would suddenly reveal the truth of its inner workings. “If there’s going to be a solution to this mess, it’s going to be found here—and the five of us need to do the thinking and the grunt work to make it happen. So think, people.”

Ilucci shook an accusatory finger at the console. “Whatever we need to do, this panel is the key to the whole thing. Otherwise, why booby-trap it to shift out of phase?” He squatted in front of it and sucked air through his gritted teeth. “The trick is making this hunk of junk solid again.” He looked up at Hesh. “Any idea how to make that happen?”

The science officer shook his three-lobed head. “I regret that I do not, Master Chief.”

Kavalas asked, “How was it moved out of phase?”

Hesh thought for a second. “Its subspace field coils were designed to exceed the necessary strength for processor acceleration, and their flux capacitors appear to have been deliberately underpowered so as to permit a phase-state instability to occur.”

Nods of comprehension from Ilucci. “Okay, the key is the field generated by its subspace coil. What if we pull one from another station and rewire it to generate an inverse field? Could we cancel out the phase-shift and force this console back into sync with the rest of the universe?”

“Let me enter some variables into a simulation,” Hesh said, keying data into the tricorder. “Theoretically, yes. But we might risk affecting the phase states of adjacent systems unless we are able to tailor the field to precise specifications.”

At the risk of robbing them of their momentum, Terrell interjected, “There’s something else you ought to consider.” He waited for Hesh and Ilucci to face him. “The people who designed this system were smart enough to build in one booby-trap. Who’s to say they didn’t build in another? For all we know, attempting to force this console back into phase might trigger another trap—and unleash an even worse cataclysm.”

Taryl expressed her skepticism with an elegantly arched eyebrow. “Worse than a coronal mass ejection that bakes the whole planet into a radioactive marble?” A disaffected shrug. “I have to admit, I’d be curious to see what could top that.”

“If it’s all the same,” Kavalas said, “I’d rather we didn’t find out. Captain, as desperate as my people and I are for a solution, I’d urge you and your men to act with caution.”

His protest drew a dubious reaction from Ilucci. “We offer three flavors of service, Doc: fast, effective, and safe. You get to have two out of three. Now ain’t the time to veto fast.”

Terrell raised a hand to signal a pause. “He has a point, Master Chief. There’s a difference between acting with dispatch and acting in haste. Before we do something we can’t take back, let’s make sure we know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”

“Point taken, Skip.” Ilucci struck a calmer note with Kavalas. “Doc, do you still have the original schematics for this console somewhere?”

“Yes, I’m sure we do.”

“Help Hesh get a copy of it on his tricorder. If there’s a secondary trigger hiding in there, one made to detect attempts at a forced phase correction, we should be able to spot it.”

Kavalas bristled. “I thought we agreed trying to force-correct its phase was too risky.”

Ilucci stood from his squat. “No, you made a good case for not attempting it blind. What I want to do is eliminate that uncertainty. Now, I’ve worked on a lot of ships and a lot of bases. And every one of them had a backup plan for what to do when things break. Because things always break. So, would I be correct if I guessed that somewhere in this gray pit of concrete and steel, you have a big room full of spare parts, surplus wiring, and extra tools?”

Kavalas nodded and puffed his vocal sac. “You mean the maintenance depot.”

“Exactly. You know where it is?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Your people might not have known what they were doing when they made this mess, but there’s a chance they left us what we need to fix it.” The engineer gestured toward the nearest exit. “Take us to the maintenance depot, Doc. With a bit of luck, we’ll scrounge the parts we need to build a phase-correction coil—and get your console back.”

•   •   •

Facing the eight refugee Austarans down the length of a table in the mess hall, Theriault was thankful their species exhibited greater cosmetic variation than most she had encountered, or else she would have found it difficult to tell them apart. Each of the stranded astronauts was distinctly different from the others. The three things they all had in common were their triple eyestalks, wiry physiques—likely a prerequisite for space service—and pensive reactions to Theriault’s account of the crisis threatening their planet as well as the Sagittarius.

Commander Beiana, whose golden skin was accented by tapering black stripes that reminded Theriault of a tiger’s markings, regarded her with his enormous green eyes. “So, if I understand you correctly,” he said, his voice processed in real time through a universal translator Theriault had given him, “a group of scientists on my planet stole some technology from a crashed alien starship. They tried to build a generator based on it, but it was made to backfire. Now it’s creating some kind of distortion that’s scrambling the laws of probability, and no one knows how to turn it off. Does that about sum up the situation?”

“Pretty much. Though I’d say, ‘No one knows how to turn it off yet.’ ”

Doctor Pylus said, “Your optimism would be more encouraging if we weren’t sitting in the path of a coronal mass ejection.”

Theriault remained upbeat. “Technically, it’s still just a predicted CME.” Her qualification didn’t seem to impress the team’s senior engineer. His green skin darkened, an apparently involuntary emotional reaction that increased its contrast with his face’s trio of parallel white stripes. Hoping she might yet win him over, she added, “Several possible scenarios suggest that if our landing party can shut down the generator in time, the CME might not happen at all. Which . . . you know . . . would be good.”

“Until the next global catastrophe unfolds,” said a softer-voiced member of the team. Theriault noted the female Austaran’s plain gray skin and jewel-tone emerald eyes and searched her memory for the junior engineer’s name, which came to her just in time to reply.

“I know the situation looks bad, Nasutas, but we’re doing everything we can to help your people find a solution before it goes any further.”

There was suspicion in the golden eyes of the group’s second-in-command, a dark brown male whose visage was adorned by irregular beige spots of varying sizes. “Not that we’re ungrateful, Commander Theriault, but I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t ask: Why are you and your shipmates so eager to risk yourselves for us?”

“I wouldn’t call us ‘eager,’ Major Septen. ‘Willing,’ maybe. But as to why? Because that’s what we do. It’s one of the core values of our culture: to help those in need.”

All the astronauts pondered her answer while slowly puffing out their vocal sacs. She hoped their collective behavior was a sign of appreciation and not a warning.

Beiana looked around the table at his crew, then faced Theriault. “Your surgeon showed us how to use your ship’s escape pod, but we’d rather share our people’s fate than live on after them. If the worst comes to pass, you and your crew should reach safety. We will stay here.”

“A noble gesture, Commander. But I don’t think it’ll make much difference. The pod doesn’t have enough thrust to get clear of the CME unless we deploy it now—but if I try to send six of my crew to safety in advance, those of us left aboard might not be able to hold the ship together long enough to complete our mission. So it looks like we’re staying put, too.”

Perplexed looks passed between the astronauts. Their medical specialist, Doctor Kaolula, a bright aqua-hued male with black spots and sapphire-tinted eyes, asked Theriault, “Your ship normally has a crew of fourteen people, does it not?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why does it have only a single six-person escape pod?”

A baffled shrug. “If I had to guess? It’s either a cynical estimation of how many casualties we’d have to suffer before we’d actually abandon ship, or it’s the dumbest starship-design flaw I’ve ever seen. Personally, my money’s on the latter.”

Beiana regarded Theriault with the mien of one space veteran extending sympathy to another. “Apparently, some concepts truly are universal. So . . . I guess this means escape is no more an option for your crew than it is for mine.”

“Looks that way.” She stood and wobbled a bit, looking for her balance. Doctor Babitz had reduced the gravity in the mess hall to sixty percent of normal to make it more comfortable for the Austarans, whose bodies needed time to adjust to their sudden return from zero gravity. Considering all they had been through in the past couple of hours, Theriault thought, if the astronauts felt overwhelmed or emotional, they were doing an impressive job of hiding it.

“So,” Beiana said, standing with her, “what will you and your crew do now?”

“Our best to fix this mess,” Theriault said. “Even if it means we go down fighting.”

16

The phase compensator had been jury-rigged and jerry-built from a dozen salvaged components Ilucci barely recognized, and half a dozen more he couldn’t identify on a bet. He had been forced to trust the assurances of the frazzled Doctor Kavalas as to the alien components’ capabilities when he and Hesh had raided the facility’s maintenance depot for raw materials.

The engineer sat back from his knee-high, alien-tech Frankenstein’s monster. “That ought to do it. Let’s give it some power.”

Several paces away, Hesh regarded the cobbled-together device with trepidation. “With all respect for your skills, Master Chief, I continue to think it would benefit from an additional layer of insulation around its coil transformer. The deleterious effects of its secondary—”

“We’ve been over this, sir. Our hosts don’t have insulation dense enough to make a difference. We’ll have to hope we can make it work without pushing it past eighty percent.” He beckoned Hesh. “Help me move it into position.”

The two of them picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, thanks to its transuranic-metal power core and improvised lead shielding. They labored to keep it level as they hauled it up the control center’s stairs to the uppermost tier, where Kavalas and the captain stood waiting for them. Taryl, as usual, kept her distance on the pretense of patrolling the room’s perimeter and the surrounding corridors, to keep an eye out for trouble.

When they set the gizmo down in front of the ghosted main console, it landed on the carpeted floor with a resonant thud and a muffled echo underfoot.

Ilucci looked at Kavalas. “Are these tiers hollow?”

“Yes. They share a welded frame, and there’s space underneath for engineers and technicians to make repairs to the workstations’ wiring and other systems.”

Hesh looked at the floor. Ilucci imagined the figurative wheels of the science officer’s imagination turning. Hesh looked at Kavalas. “How large is the gap beneath the platform?”

“Why do you ask?”

Confrontational, Ilucci faced the lieutenant. “Yeah, why?”

“The metal frame might provide a small but perhaps not insignificant amount of additional shielding from the secondary—”

“Stop,” Ilucci cut in. “We don’t have time to rejigger this thing to project upward instead of forward, and I’m telling you to relax about the ‘secondary effects.’ We’ll be fine.” To Kavalas he added, “We’re ready to get this show on the road, so you and the captain should head to the other side of the room, for your own safety.”

Confused, Kavalas did a double take between Ilucci and the phase compensator. “I thought you said its secondary effects would be negligible.”

“They will. It’s the primary effect I’m worried about. I’ve got a pretty good idea what it should do to the master console. As for what it might do to someone on the edge of its emission zone . . . that’s where I’m a little less sure what to expect. So, by the big window, if you please.”

Kavalas and Captain Terrell withdrew in a hurry, ostensibly taking Ilucci’s warning to heart. He kneeled and powered up the phase compensator. “Okay,” he muttered to Hesh, “it didn’t blow up, so we’re doing better than I expected. Patch the tricorder into its control board.”

Hesh manipulated his tricorder’s settings. “Done. I have control of the compensator.”

“All right. Let’s back out of its emission zone and start cycling it up. How far out of phase is the main console?”

“I’m detecting a positive synchronic distortion of point zero zero one nine percent.” He looked up from his tricorder. “Enough to render it immaterial while remaining visible.”

Ilucci ran computations in his head while they backed away from the compensator. “Okay, taking into account the mass of the console, the range of our compensator, and the need to avoid pulling the whole shebang too far in the other direction—”

“Chief?” Hesh sounded almost apologetic. “I can gradually cycle up the power in picocochrane increments until the console becomes solid.”

“Oh.” He masked his relief at being absolved of the need to perform complex mathematical operations in his head. “Well, if that’s how you want to proceed, sir, have at it.”

The gadget’s low hum grew slowly louder and deeper. Hesh nudged the power level upward on the phase compensator while he watched the display of his tricorder.

“Phase variance at negative zero zero zero eight . . . negative zero zero zero nine.”

“Sir? Maybe you could save time by just reporting the last two digits?”

“Will that not be imprecise, Master Chief?”

“I’ll manage, sir.”

“Very well. Negative eleven . . . negative thirteen.” A few meters away, the master console shimmered and for a moment turned more opaque than translucent. “It’s working!”

In the moment it took Ilucci to lift his hand to give Hesh a congratulatory pat on the back, something went wrong. The master console flickered like a cheap hologram, then started to fade even more rapidly than it had before. Ilucci snapped, “Turn it off! Off!”

Hesh scrambled to comply. It took him only a few seconds to shut down the phase compensator, but by the time its thrumming dwindled to silence, the master console was even less visible than it had been before they’d started.

“How far out of phase is it now?”

A glance at the tricorder’s display made Hesh’s face fall. “Point zero zero three one.”

Ilucci swallowed a growl of frustration. He turned away from the device to see Kavalas and the captain hurrying back up the stairs to join him and Hesh.

Terrell asked, “What happened?”

“Well,” Ilucci said, “there’s good news and bad news.”

“Today of all days, Master Chief, that’s the last phrase I want to hear.” He looked at the faded console and frowned. “Start with the bad news.”

“Our attempt to force the console back into phase has pushed it farther out of phase. It must have a safeguard against what we were trying to do.”

Kavalas’s temper boiled over. “I thought you said there weren’t any new traps!”

“Technically, Doctor, this was just an extension of the original trap.” To the captain he added, “Here’s the good news: As Hesh and I predicted, because the console is out of phase from the rest of the facility, it can’t be used to trigger any new surprises.”

The captain crossed his arms and skewered Ilucci with a look. “That’s not really good news, Master Chief. It’s just an absence of worse news than we already have.”

“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Take your wins where you can, that’s what I always say.”

“I’ve never heard you say that.”

“Maybe you weren’t listening.”

A sharp intake of breath signaled the end of the captain’s patience. “We need answers, Master Chief, and we need them now. Do you have any more ideas we can try?”

“Besides blowing this place to hell?” He shrank from the captain’s glare. “No.”

Hesh stepped forward. “I might have an idea, sir.”

“Let’s hear it, Lieutenant.”

“We were able to scrounge parts for a phase compensator. If we can find enough working spare parts, why not build a replica of their master console? If I can gain access to its original operating software, I might be able to debug any software-based traps, while the Master Chief can correct the physical design flaw that facilitated the original sabotage.”

The captain looked at Kavalas. “Would that work?”

“It might. But you can’t just plug it in anywhere. A master console needs a special, dedicated data conduit to operate all of the plant’s systems. That was the only one in here.”

“Hang on,” Ilucci said. “There must be another data conduit like that somewhere.”

The scientist thought it over. “There’s an auxiliary control center farther down the accelerator, but it was never completed.” An embarrassed shrug. “Budget cuts.”

“Don’t get me started,” Ilucci said. “Doc, get Hesh a copy of that source code. Captain, I need you and Taryl to help me raid the junk pile for parts. We’ve got a master console to build.”

•   •   •

Every channel’s news was worse than the last, but Beiana kept cycling through them. He and the rest of his crew were huddled in front of the bulkhead comm panel in the Sagittarius’s mess hall. They used its controls as Theriault had shown them, to patch into the handful of audio and video signals the ship was able to intercept from the planet’s satellites. The transmissions were weak and intermittent, but they painted a consistent portrait of a world on the verge of annihilation.

On the screen, a tidal surge of churning gray seawater roared through the streets of a coastal metropolis, sweeping away vehicles, debris, and people. It tore the façades from buildings and pushed the broken hulls of dozens of small watercraft up the main boulevards.

Professor Mufungo breathed a pained sigh. “Change it, please.”

Beiana fiddled with the wall panel’s controls. The screen turned gray and a male voice was barely audible behind a low scratch of cosmic background noise. “A major earthquake struck the Enolo Peninsula twenty-one minutes ago, causing widespread damage in the northern district capital of Sillum. Aftershocks continue to plague the region, which remains in the grip of an as-yet-unexplained freak summer snowstorm. Evacuations of the peninsula are ongoing as—”

A squelch of noise as Beiana changed the channel in search of better tidings. The image of a female Austaran’s orange face filled the screen. “—provided no explanation for the error, which appears to have affected the entire global financial network. Leading economists find themselves locked in debate as to whether the erasure of the world’s public and private debt records will lead to economic revival or collapse, but so far the government has declined—”

Septen changed the channel. “I bet they’ll still find a way to foreclose on my house.”

The screen flickered, then settled on an image of a wildfire tearing though a remote forest. All the astronauts gaped in shock at the sight of a small village tucked into a glade in the heart of the forest—it was completely intact and surrounded by a ring of trees untouched by the blaze. The newscaster narrating the footage sounded as surprised as Beiana felt. “—described the path of the fire as ‘miraculous.’ Firefighting teams have been unable to reach the tiny hamlet of Keeso, whose only water source is a centuries-old, hand-dug well. Vids recorded by the residents show the wildfire diverging around their village, despite the absence of firebreaks or other—”

Beiana muted the audio. “At least someone’s having a bit of good luck today.”

“That was more than a bit of good luck,” Pylus said.

“Just as our hosts warned,” Nasutas said. “ ‘Disasters and miracles.’ ”

Nelonnuk looked deflated. “And we’re up here, clear of the storm.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Specialist Heelar said. “You heard Theriault. This ship’s in just as much danger as our planet. We might not be in the middle of the mess, but we’re not out of it.”

Doctor Kaolula added, “And let’s not forget, the only reason we’re still here is this ship and its crew. If not for them, we’d already be dead, instead of lamenting our good fortune.”

Beiana showed his thanks to Kaolula with a half-bow. “Well said, Doctor.” To the others he continued, “Now isn’t the time to give in to despair, or beat ourselves up with survivors’ guilt. We were lucky to make it off Xenopus alive, but like Heelar said, we’re still in trouble.”

Septen stewed. “Not as much as people living through earthquakes and tidal waves.”

“Not yet,” Beiana said. “But we need to face reality. There’s nothing we could do to help the ones living through those disasters—at least, nothing that others aren’t already doing. Look at us. If the ship’s doctor hadn’t lowered the gravity in here, I’d bet most of us couldn’t stand up right now. My knees, hips, and back are killing me as it is.”

Nasutas and Kaolula nodded at his words, but Pylus seemed to share Septen’s resentment of their powerlessness. The engineer met Beiana’s gaze. “Is that supposed to make us feel better? Should I be any less upset while I watch my childhood home vanish in a flood?”

“That’s not what I said, Doctor. And I’ll thank you not to presume to know my mind.” Regretting the confrontational turn the discussion had taken, Beiana decided to back away from blame and try to turn his energy in a more fruitful direction. “I know part of what’s bothering me most right now is that I feel so far away from the people I care about. I’m worried that no matter what happens, I might lose them, or they might lose me . . . and I’d never get another chance to tell them what they mean to me. If this is the end, I’m angry I might not get to say good-bye.”

Now there was no dissent, just sad agreement around the huddle. His comrades all retreated for a moment into their own thoughts, no doubt reflecting on those each of them had left behind, the ones they wished they could reach out to one last time.

Pylus looked up at the comm panel on the bulkhead. “If this thing can pull signals in from our satellites, there’s no reason it can’t push a signal back to them—and maybe even down to the surface.” He wore a hopeful expression as he faced the others. “We could record messages—nothing long, maybe just audio, or text if bandwidth is a problem.”

“Yes,” said Professor Mufungo, “that stands to reason.” He glanced at the comm panel. “Though it’s likely this terminal’s capabilities are limited without proper command authorization. We would need the help of the ship’s crew to send any such messages.”

Beiana rested his hand on Mufungo’s shoulder, a gesture of reassurance. “I’m sure they’ll do whatever they can to help. They’ve been friends to us so far—and on a day like this, that’s the best good fortune anyone could ask.”

17

No one is a strong swimmer when lashed to a heavy stone.

The wisdom of that old Arkenite saying, inspired by the same insight as the human expression “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” was brought home to Hesh as he watched his tricorder rip through one tiny segment of code after another, while the dark energy facility’s comparatively primitive mainframe computers lagged far behind in their ability to transmit data. It had taken the tricorder less than ten seconds to analyze the handshake sequence and error-correction subroutines of the mainframe’s wireless protocols. All the delays could now be blamed on the bottleneck of the Austaran system’s narrow bandwidth.

Doctor Kavalas hovered behind Hesh’s shoulder, peeking at the tricorder’s display despite not knowing what any of its symbols meant. “How is it going?”

“Very well,” Hesh lied. “We’re making progress.”

Just as a drop of rain makes progress wearing down a mountain.

Kavalas wandered away and drifted down a narrow lane between towering parallel racks of interconnected server drives. “I really thought I was on the verge of a breakthrough,” he said. “I spent my entire career, most of my life, building up to this moment. But I was a fool.”

He circled around the end of one rack and meandered back up another lane. “When I was young, I thought myself a genius. I dared to imagine I was destined for great things. For fame and glory. I thought I’d be the one to contribute something meaningful to science. Something that would last. Something that would matter.”

Arriving at the end of another lane, he paused. “How could I have been so gullible? So selfish? So reckless?” He hung his head in shame and moved on, down the next narrow path. “It was hubris. I see that now. I thought I was smart enough to steal the secrets of a race whose technology was clearly centuries ahead of ours. I stood on the shoulders of giants and tricked myself into thinking I was their equal.” He stopped in the middle of the electronic jungle and filled the vast room with a rueful sound from his vocal sac. “It never occurred to me that I might be playing into a trap, that I could be the architect of my people’s destruction.”

Hesh found himself torn between compassion for Kavalas’s despair and contempt for his careless overreach. Remembering the teachings of his elders on Arken II, he erred on the side of forgiveness. “You are not the first disciple of science to fall prey to the lures of ambition, Doctor. But your world, while imperiled, is not yet destroyed. With your help, my shipmates and I will do all we can to preserve it. So dwell not on your mistakes. Turn your gifts to finding a solution.”

Kavalas made his way back to Hesh. “Thank you for that dose of perspective.” His affect took on a humble air. “Are all your people so wise as you?”

Unaccustomed to such flattery, Hesh was momentarily at a loss for how to reply. “Among my kind, I am not considered exceptional, in any respect. Not in intellect or experience, not in gifts or achievements.”

“You must hail from a most remarkable world.”

The scientist’s comment brought back the feelings of homesickness Hesh had weathered during his first few months of deep-space service on the Sagittarius. “Indeed. Arken is a place of special beauty. Cities that ride the waves. A world of great oceans and glorious reefs.”

“I meant, your people must be impressive if one such as yourself is counted as average.”

He lost himself for a moment in memories of his sia lenthar, his social bond group of artists and thinkers that had nurtured him through his first two decades. “Yes, they are.”

A double beep from the tricorder. Hesh checked the download status in its display. “It would appear we are almost done. I will have a complete virtual schematic of the master console and the facility’s command information network in a few moments.” He lowered the tricorder. “We should head back to the others.”

Hesh led the glum Austaran out of the mainframe room and down a long, poorly lit corridor back to the control center. It wasn’t long before Kavalas broke the uncomfortable silence between them. “If we are so fortunate as to find a way to shut this machine down and save my world from destruction . . . nothing will ever be the same, will it?”

“Forgive me, Doctor, but I don’t understand your question.”

“I just mean—” His face scrunched as if he were in pain while he struggled to form his thoughts into words. “Even if we save my people from this artificial apocalypse, sooner or later they’ll demand to know its cause. This project won’t be able to stay secret after this. Sooner or later, the world will know that it was my research—my mistakes—that brought us to the edge of doom. My reputation, my career . . . it will all be ruined. My life as a scientist will be over.”

Once again, Hesh suppressed his less charitable impulses, which wanted to excoriate the distraught Kavalas for his crimes of scientific plagiarism, and made himself focus on easing the Austaran’s mind so that he might be able to continue contributing to an eventual solution, rather than collapse into a useless ball of self-pity. “It is difficult to say for certain what the future will bring, Doctor. If you help us resolve this crisis in time, it’s possible that any opprobrium you might endure for instigating it can be outweighed by the esteem you would earn for engineering your people’s salvation. Or perhaps not. What I can tell you is that unless we contend with the matter before us, your fears for the future will almost certainly prove irrelevant. Let go of the past, Doctor, and give no thought to the future. If you want to live, focus on the now.”

•   •   •

Neither of Terrell’s men said anything as they stood over the painstakingly arranged rows and columns of salvaged parts and scanned them with the tricorder. Each new bit of data wrinkled Hesh’s frown into a new crooked shape and deepened the creases of concern on Ilucci’s broad forehead. After watching them fret for over two minutes, Terrell reached the end of his patience. “Lieutenant? Master Chief? One of you say something, please.”

Troubled looks passed between the science officer and the chief engineer. Ilucci feigned deference as he volleyed the query to his shipmate. “You have rank, sir.”

Hesh shook his three-lobed head. “You have seniority, Master Chief.”

Terrell grumbled, “I’m going to break you both down to crewman recruits if I don’t get an answer. Why are you both standing there shaking your heads?”

Ilucci sighed. “Unless there’s another maintenance depot where they keep the good parts, we have a problem. There aren’t enough working components here to build a new master console.” He pointed at the various items arranged on the control center’s floor. “For starters, we’re short by one circuit bus. Then we have three of these subspace coils, but each one has a different malfunction or defect. If I take ’em apart, I can use the good parts to build one working coil—but we’d need two to balance the field and make the console work. Then there’s the interface panel. We have enough parts to build one, but we’re missing a key connection node.”

Now it was Terrell’s turn to shake his head. “There must be something we can do. Do the other workstations have compatible parts we can use?”

“No, I checked. The Austarans equipped this place mostly with their own gear, but to make the dark energy siphon actually work, they needed the alien technology that drove the master console. It’s like having a roomful of apples when what you need is an orange.”

Frustrated, Terrell punched his open palm. “Can we build the parts ourselves?”

“If I had access to the fabricator on the ship, and about six hours to work? Sure.”

Hesh thrust the tricorder toward Terrell. “We do not have six hours, sir. The improbability field is due for another manifold intersection in less than thirty minutes. It will amplify the range and intensity of the field by an order of magnitude, placing the ship at risk and elevating the likelihood of a coronal mass ejection. Furthermore, the fluctuations in probability and their effects on the events already sweeping the planet will become even more intense. Volcanic and seismic activity will escalate, and more exotic phenomena might ensue.”

“More exotic than what we’ve already seen?” Terrell’s imagination reeled. “Like what?”

His science officer’s eyes went wide as he considered the possibilities. “Imagine, if you will, a spontaneous segregation of the atmosphere’s gases, with all of its oxygen molecules gathered in one narrow band of latitude, all its nitrogen in another, its carbon dioxide in another, and so on. Or the sudden, simultaneous decay of all radioactive isotopes on the planet, resulting in a massive release of gamma particles. Or the appearance of a bubble of strange matter that would expand at the speed of light, transforming all matter it contacted into disordered—”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I get the idea.” He turned toward Ilucci. “Time for a Hail Mary pass, Master Chief. I need an idea for how to shut this place down, right now.”

Ilucci was stymied. “I don’t know, sir. I really don’t. I mean, forget what I said before. We can’t just blow the place up. Releasing that much dark energy would be a death sentence for this planet. And I can’t think of any way to lift it off the surface or sink it into the planet’s core without making the situation worse.” He turned and looked through the huge window at the complex machinery of the accelerator ring. “It’s feeding itself, which means we can’t pull the plug.” He mumbled to himself. “Can’t move it. Can’t burn it. Can’t bury it.”

Kavalas, who had been observing Ilucci’s and Hesh’s dismay from a distance, sidled over to Terrell. “Captain? This might be a good time for you and your team to consider finding a way back to your ship—and away from here. Before it’s too late.”

He turned to face the Austaran scientist. “We appreciate your concern, Doctor. But we knew what we were getting into when we came down here. And we’re not giving up this easily.”

“Are you sure? I’m grateful for all you’ve done, and all you’ve tried to do. But you and your shipmates shouldn’t have to die because of my mistake.”

“Neither should your people.”

Terrell’s pep talk for Kavalas was interrupted by Ilucci, who spun on his heel to face them. “We flood it!” He pointed at the machinery outside the window. “Doctor, we may have lost the control interface for this machine, but the rest of its hardware is still intact, right?”

“As far as I know, yes. Which systems are you thinking of, specifically?”

“The power supply lines,” Ilucci said. “You said it took a huge amount of energy to get this system started, but once it tapped the cosmic dark energy potential, it became self-sustaining. Are the power supply lines still connected to the siphon’s core?”

Kavalas was mystified. “No, we cut them during our first attempt to shut it down.”

“Damn,” Ilucci said. “Can we run new power lines?”

“Yes, but I don’t see what good it would do.”

“We can force a current through them.” He turned toward Hesh. “Run a sim for me. Imagine we adjust this facility’s fusion core to produce energy on a frequency calibrated to destabilize the siphon’s core module, set its output to maximum, bank the charge in the capacitors until they’re ready to blow, then push that entire load into the core at once. Would that be enough to disrupt its self-sustaining charge?”

Hesh fumbled with the tricorder for several seconds before his shoulders slumped in defeat. “There are too many variables and unknown factors for the tricorder to simulate.”

“Then use your imagination, sir. What do you think would happen?”

After a moment of intense concentration, Hesh looked at Terrell. “It might work.”

That was enough endorsement for Terrell. “Master Chief? What do you need?”

“Someplace I can tap into the manual controls for the fusion core, and as many high-load power cables as we can find, so we can bypass the safeties and overdrive the capacitors.”

“All right.” Terrell slapped his large hands onto Hesh’s and Kavalas’s shoulders. “You two round up Taryl and go get those cables. I’ll help the Master Chief set up at the fusion core.” Ilucci headed for the door and Terrell followed him, tossing his parting orders over his shoulder. “And be quick! We’ve only got twenty-six minutes until this planet redefines weird.”

As soon as he and Ilucci were out of the control center and alone in the corridor, Terrell fell into step beside him and lowered his voice. “Master Chief, I would rather have a plan than not, and I don’t want you to take this as a criticism—”

“But you’re worried this could backfire?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Sure. I can think of lots of ways for it to go wrong.” He led the way through a pair of double doors to a stairwell, then down the broad steps toward the facility’s sublevels. “I mean, it might not work. Or it might work, but release a bunch of quark strangelets. Or—”

“Stop—‘strangelets’?”

Ilucci sounded winded from trying to talk while jogging downstairs two steps at a time. “Theoretical subatomic particles that could slip into our universe if disrupting the siphon causes a tear in the dimensional barrier.”

Terrell was almost afraid to solicit more detail. “And if they did?”

“They’d transmute every particle they touch into copies of themselves, propagate at FTL speed, and wipe out the universe as we know it—starting with us.”

It was almost too horrific a scenario for Terrell to imagine. “And that seems like an acceptable level of risk to you?”

The engineer brushed off Terrell’s fears with the aplomb of a condemned man. “What do you want me to say, Skip? You want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.”

18

It vexed Theriault that being in command depended so much on one’s ability to sit and wait while projecting confidence and calm. She wanted to be in action, in motion, doing something, anything. Anything other than sitting in the command chair, listening to the subtle music of feedback tones from the bridge’s computers while waiting for the next thing to go wrong.

When the captain was aboard, she could pass the time by moving from one station to the next, coaxing her shipmates along while offering advice or suggesting alternatives. That was expected of an executive officer. It was right there in the title: executive. The job was about getting things done and making sure others got things done. But when she had the conn, the rules were different. As the acting commanding officer, it was unseemly to micromanage. She had to content herself to leave that task to Sorak—who, true to his discreet and reclusive Vulcan nature, chose to let his shipmates labor in peace unless and until they solicited his input.

Thanks a lot, Sorak. Way to make me look like a harpy.

On the main viewscreen, Anura looked serene. The distant orb’s light was as brilliant as it was cold and remote, betraying no sign of the violent chaos plaguing its surface. There had been no new reports from Sorak or Dastin in the past half-hour, for which Theriault was thankful.

The door slid open behind her. She swung her chair around to see Commander Beiana enter. His steps were halting and awkward. Theriault sprang from her chair and moved to meet him. “Commander? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. My joints have just forgotten how to handle full gravity.” He reached out his hand, pressed it against a bulkhead, and set his weight against it. “I need to ask a favor of you.”

Relieved to be in a position to do something, Theriault said, “Name it.”

Beiana held up a yellow data card. “Doctor Babitz helped me and my crew record some brief messages onto this storage device. We’d like to ask you to transmit them home to our families for us. In case we don’t make it back.”

She cupped her hand gently around Beiana’s upper arm. “You’re going to make it home.”

“You can’t know that. And neither can we. But even if we do, there’s no guarantee our kin will still be there when we get back.” His affect took a turn for the morose. “For all we know, they’re already gone. But we want to send these messages home all the same. Will you help us?”

Theriault looked at Razka. “What do you think, Chief? Can we get signals to Anura?”

“I think we can.” He checked the settings of his console. “We’re still on battery power, but radio pulses don’t use that much energy. Plus I’m still tracking a few working satellites in high orbit that can relay our signal to the surface.”

“Okay.” She ushered Beiana to Razka’s side. “Commander? Did Doctor Babitz show you how to format the recipients’ information before you wrote your messages to the card?”

“She did. As long as the backup comm nets on the surface are still operational, you should have all the info you’d need to get these where they’re going.”

Theriault took the card from Beiana. “Good.” She handed it to Razka. “Send these as soon as possible, Chief. And do whatever you can to confirm their receipt.”

He nodded. “Understood, Commander.”

She left Beiana with Razka and returned to the command chair. As she settled into it, Dastin approached her from the other side, his countenance glum. “They’re lucky.”

Brow scrunched, she turned toward Dastin. “How do you figure?”

“At least they have a chance to send messages home.” He nodded at the communications console. “We still don’t have enough power for a subspace signal, and launching the buoy’s probably a waste of time. It doesn’t have enough acceleration to escape the distortion field. Which means no matter what we put on it, it’ll either malfunction or get destroyed by a one-in-ten-quadrillion chance collision with a random chunk of rock.”

It was hard not to share his sense of sadness and envy, but Theriault knew it would be unbecoming an officer—especially one in command—to admit it. She forced herself to preserve her mask of courage. “It’s just as well. We don’t have time to record messages, anyway.”

“Depends on the message. I don’t need long to say ‘Good-bye, Mom, I love you.’ But then, I always did prefer to cut to the chase.” His point made, he returned to his post.

Alone once more in the center seat, Theriault thought of the last letter she had sent home to her parents on Mars. She had signed it “Love, Vanessa,” but had she actually remembered to tell her parents that she loved them? When was the last time she had?

The shallowest man I’ve ever met just made me feel like a bad daughter. A resentful glance at Dastin. Assuming we don’t all die in the next hour, I’ll make him pay for this.

•   •   •

Compared to the impulse core on Starfleet vessels, the fusion reactor inside the Austarans’ energy complex seemed primitive to Terrell. Its output still relied on heat exchange to a steam turbine linked to an electrical generator, rather than the more efficient direct-transfer plasma relay system employed on most Federation interstellar spacecraft. He also doubted its safety. Its shielding looked barely sufficient for minimal protection during routine operation. Would it be able to contain the perilous emissions that would result from pushing it into overload?

Terrell finished removing the last of three wall panels, behind which stood a number of interfaces—some cross-shaped, others circular, and others that consisted of three parallel vertical slits arranged in a manner that described the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Ilucci stood next to him, studying the conglomeration of blinking panels between the clusters of connection nodes.

Troubled by the engineer’s pained look of concentration, Terrell set aside the last wall panel and asked, “Everything okay, Master Chief?”

“Hm? Yeah. It’s just . . .” He let that thought trail off unfinished. Then he threw a worried glance back at Terrell. “I’d feel a lot better about this plan if I knew this relay could handle it.”

“If you don’t trust it, we still have time to abort.” He noted the sound of approaching voices and footsteps, and he dropped his voice to add, “Your call, Chief.”

Before he could answer, Hesh, Taryl, and Doctor Kavalas returned, each lugging a huge and burdensome coil of power cable. Ilucci stepped away from the open panels and met them a few meters inside the door. “All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.” He inspected the cables, which each sported a male connector at one end and a female connector at the other. “Lookin’ good. I see these all have cross-shaped connectors, Doctor. That’s the heavy-duty cabling, yes?”

“As far as I know.” Kavalas nodded at the open interface panels. “The round ports and the three-pronged interfaces are for different kinds of data.”

“That’s what I figured,” Ilucci said. “I’ll secure the connections up here. Taryl, I need you to run the relays down to the accelerator ring. Hesh, you handle hookups down below.” The scout and the science officer nodded in acknowledgment and hurried off through a small access door, down a steep staircase to the accelerator ring sublevel.

Kavalas nodded for Terrell to step aside with him. As soon as they were far enough not to be easily overheard, the scientist shot a fearful look over Terrell’s shoulder at the work going on behind him. “Captain, I continue to have grave misgivings about your engineer’s plan. This entire scheme strikes me as reckless.”

Reminded of his own concerns, Terrell asked, “Why didn’t you say so before, Doctor?”

“Because I don’t have a more viable course of action.” He swiveled one eyestalk toward the interface panels, where Ilucci was plugging in the last of the three power cables. “That said, I fear your engineer’s plan might produce effects that are orders of magnitude worse than those we’re already suffering. His labors could make the distortion field seem minor by comparison.”

It was a dire warning, one delivered with enough gravity to make Terrell second-guess his own decision to proceed. Still, a voice of reason compelled him to seek facts before rendering a judgment. “I understand your concerns, Doctor. What proof can you offer to persuade my team against trying to flood the siphon?”

An abashed aversion of the eyestalks telegraphed Kavalas’s reticence. “None, as such.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t have any empirical proof that would counsel against your engineer’s plan, but neither can I devise any to support it. Lacking a solid rationale for adding fuel to this fire—”

“Let me stop you right there,” Terrell said. “I know I can’t guarantee my team’s actions will yield success, but I can guarantee that doing nothing will lead to disaster. So unless you can show me solid evidence that we’re making a mistake, we need to do something, Doctor.”

Kavalas seemed to pull himself inward. His arms were close to his body, his hands were folded one over the other and pressed to his chest, his chin was down, and even his eyestalks seemed to retract by half a centimeter. It was the most easily parsed stress reaction Terrell had seen in some time. Even the scientist’s voice took on a taut, strangled quality. “Are you sure, Captain? What if you’re wrong? The aliens who booby-trapped the master console could have seen this tactic coming as well. What if trying to overload the system causes something worse?”

“Worse than a coronal mass ejection from your star cooking your planet in two hours?”

That summation of their predicament gave Kavalas a brief pause. “Is it impossible for a planet to spontaneously explode? Or to be abruptly consumed by an instantaneous merging with its parallel-dimension antimatter-universe twin?”

“If my years in Starfleet have taught me nothing else, Doctor, it’s that nothing is impossible. Wildly unlikely to a degree approaching infinity? Perhaps. But not impossible.”

Emboldened, the scientist seized Terrell’s arms. “Then you agree! We need to stop this mad scheme before it pushes us over the brink into the jaws of destruction!”

“Well, I didn’t say that.” Terrell nodded at the accelerator ring. “Your siphon needs to be shut down, on that we agree. But if you want me to halt the only seemingly viable plan I’ve heard for disrupting this chaos engine, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”

From across the room Terrell heard the double beep of Ilucci’s communicator receiving an incoming signal. The chief flipped the device open. “Ilucci.”

Hesh’s voice carried clearly, a testament to the design of the communicator’s speakers. “Master Chief, Taryl and I have hooked up the power cables on the accelerator sublevel.”

“Good. Both of you get back up here. I need you to help me finish the calculations for a controlled power surge, and we can’t risk anyone being near the connection points when we switch this bad boy on. I get the feeling it’s gonna be a hot time down there when we do.”

“Copy that, Master Chief. On our way back up. Hesh out.”

Ilucci closed his communicator and went back to work checking the settings on the console. Terrell faced Kavalas and backed the scientist into a corner. “I know you’re scared, Doctor. Frankly, I’d be worried if you weren’t. But before you try to pull the plug on me and my team, remember this: We’re down here with you, and my ship is currently stuck in orbit, in almost as much danger as we are. If this goes wrong, we’ll die with you. We have no reason to take unreasonable risks with your life or those of your people, because your fate is our fate.”

Kavalas slowly inflated his vocal sac, then shrank it to push the air into his lungs. He closed his eyes for a moment. When they opened, he seemed the slightest degree more calm. “I understand, Captain. Forgive me if I overreacted. Please . . . do whatever you can.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” He turned back toward the interface panels as Taryl and Hesh returned from the stairwell. “Let’s get a move on, folks! We’ve got a planet to save.”

•   •   •

This is crazy! Petty Officer Karen Cahow darted from one panel to another on the engineering deck of the Sagittarius, racing to stay ahead of the ship’s cascade of system failures. They’d tried to power up the warp core and impulse drive using a risky protocol for main engine cold restarts they’d culled from the memory banks, only to unleash a torrent of misfires. I’ve never seen this many unforced malfunctions, not even on rigged training sims.

“Tor! Choke the negative feed! We’ve got an imbalance in the mix!” She increased the flow of deuterium to the intermix chamber, hoping to prevent a breach in the ship’s warp core.

Her crewmate Torvin, the ship’s only true enlisted man, hustled from the plasma relays to the panel opposite hers. She was on the main intermix control, and Tor manned the auxiliary panel. His fingers flew across the controls, but his panic outran his talented hands. “The mag valve’s locked open! I can’t shut it down!”

Threx, the senior engineer’s mate and top dog on the top deck when the Master Chief wasn’t around, came running from the impulse control station. “Talk to me, K.”

“Bad mix! Jammed neg valve!” The engineers had evolved a shorthand for emergencies. In basic training, jargon cost recruits points during sims. In action, it saved both time and lives.

The huge, burly Denobulan engineer sprinted past his crewmates and climbed the warp mix assembly like a wild brachiating primate. He wrapped his tree-trunk thighs around the tubular structure, just above the blocky intermix chamber. His hands moved between his tool belt and the malfunctioning component as he attacked the problem with every trick in his arsenal.

Cahow was torn between watching him—because the best way she had found to learn her craft was to observe her betters—and monitoring the ongoing mess on the intermix control panel. To her relief, the error signals from the valve controlling the flow of antideuterium ceased, and the reaction statistics inside the mix chamber normalized as the automated mix regulators automatically balanced the levels before closing. “That did it,” she shouted to Threx over the din of the engines. “We’re backing off the redline. Emergency shutdown engaged.”

Threx mopped the sweat from his brow with a long drag of his jumpsuit’s sleeve. “Look on the bright side: At least we’re gettin’ our exercise, am I—” A deep ka-bang of impact from the hull overhead interrupted him. He looked around, eyes wide with alarm and brow furrowed in irritation. “Damn, this just never lets up, does it? How much can go wrong in one—”

An ear-splitting boom, a roar of escaping air. Cahow’s ears popped from the violent loss of pressure, which left Torvin, with his super-sensitive Tiburonian ears, writhing on the deck. In the span of a few seconds extended by her adrenaline rush, she felt the return of air as the ship’s automated environmental controls fought to compensate for whatever had just happened.

She looked up and saw Threx pinned to the overhead, even though the artificial gravity hadn’t been disrupted. Sound returned as the narrow, tunnel-like compartment pressurized. Another stab of pain pierced Cahow’s ears, and then she heard the telltale hiss of escaping air, and she realized that Threx was being held by the merciless pull of vacuum, trapped against a tiny breach in the ship’s hull. Then her nostrils caught the odor of scorched metal, and she saw a red-hot ingot of some unknown provenance wedged in the deck less than half a meter from her. One step at the wrong moment, and that thing would’ve killed me.

Above her, Threx screamed in pain. There was no time to ask what was wrong, and it wouldn’t have mattered if she knew. Cahow was no doctor. Assessing his injuries wasn’t her job. She had to free her shipmate and close the gap in the hull, and fast.

“Tor!” She opened an emergency equipment locker, grabbed a pressure mask, and lobbed it to Torvin. “Put it on! Now!” He did as told, and then she tossed him a second one. “Get that one on Threx! Hurry!” She opened an intraship channel. “Engineering to Bridge! Hull breach! We’re going for containment! Tell sickbay to stand by for wounded!”

Theriault replied over the comm, “We read you, Cahow. Standing by.”

Torvin climbed the warp core assembly to help Threx put on the full-head respiration mask. Cahow pulled on her own mask, then hit the emergency containment switch for the top deck’s center compartment. The ladderway hatch slammed down and locked, and then the bulkhead hatches that subdivided the narrow top deck of the Sagittarius slid closed. As soon as the compartment was sealed, she activated her mask’s comm circuit, which connected to all other nearby masks’ transceivers as well as the ship’s internal comm network.

“Threx! Is your mask working?” She waited until she got a weak thumbs-up from the senior engineer’s mate, then she looked at Tor, who also raised a thumb. “I’m shutting off the internal gravity, then purging the atmosphere! Tor, stand by to patch the hull as soon as Threx is clear.” She pivoted toward the master control panel and keyed in the commands. “Here we go!”

Gravity vanished at the touch of a button, and Cahow’s feet lifted off the deck. She found it easy to suppress her body’s natural reflex toward nausea in weightlessness, but over the comm circuit, she heard Torvin gag and choke back a surge of emesis. Then she vented the air from the compartment, undoing the hold of vacuum on Threx, who floated free above them.

Cahow grabbed Threx’s hand and pulled him down toward her. Torvin launched himself with a gentle push off a console’s edge and floated straight toward the roughly four-centimeter hole in the hull. He examined it for a moment, then looked down at Cahow.

“Toss me a quick-patch, will you?”

She opened a tool drawer, retrieved a tube of the binary sealant compound that was fitted with an applicator nozzle, and sent it up to Torvin with a subtle push.

He nabbed it on the fly, jammed the nozzle’s end into the gap in the hull, and filled the puncture in seconds. Then he flipped the tool around and used the ionizer on the other side to rapidly solidify the compound. He finished, turned off the device, and rapped his bare knuckle on the spot repair. “Okay, we’re solid. Let me scan for other damage.” He pushed off the overhead and floated down to his post, where he tapped some queries into the system. After a moment he looked over his shoulder at Cahow. “All green.”

She restored the air pressure first, then pulled Threx to the deck before she reactivated the artificial gravity. She felt its reassuring pull on her boots, pulled off her respirator mask, and thumbed open a channel. “Bridge, top deck secure. We need the doc up here, pronto!”

Torvin stumbled past Cahow to the master console and opened the safety hatches in the bulkheads as well as the ladderway hatch. No sooner was the ladderway open than Doctor Babitz climbed through it, followed by Nurse Tan Bao. Each of them toted a medical satchel and a tricorder. Cahow waved them over and pointed them at Threx. “He’s hurt, don’t know how bad.”

“It’s okay,” Babitz said, “we’ll take care of him.”

The doctor and nurse crowded Cahow away from Threx. She was reluctant to look away until she knew he was all right, but she forced herself to accept there was nothing more she could do for him. Then she turned and found herself facing Lieutenant Commander Theriault. The first officer looked over Cahow’s shoulder at Threx. “How is he?”

“No idea. But I’ve never seen anything put him down. Must be bad.”

Theriault rested a hand on Cahow’s shoulder. “We don’t know that, Karen. Let’s hope for the best.” She paused until Cahow looked her in the eye, then she continued. “Right now, I need you and Torvin to get the ship back to full power, as soon as possible.”

“Without Threx?”

“If need be.” Theriault’s normal joviality was absent. “We’re running out of time, Karen. If we don’t get full power back before the coronal mass ejection, we’re all dead. Even impulse power could make the difference right now. But I need something, and I need it fast.”

The challenge lingered in the air as Doctor Babitz and Nurse Tan Bao passed between them, carrying Threx on a portable antigrav stretcher toward the ladderway.

Cahow felt stymied. “Sir, main power’s out of the question. We tried to cold-start the warp core and nearly blew up the ship. And the fusion core’s a hydrogen slushie right now. I can’t just wave a wand and fix it by saying ‘Abracadabra.’ So unless you’ve got a better idea—”

“Karen, if I knew how to do it myself, I would. But I don’t. Fortunately, pulling miracles from hats is what Starfleet engineers do. And right now we’re in a zone of weirdness that makes two things likelier than not: miracles and disasters. Disasters we’ve got covered. So if you’ve been waiting for a chance to show me your chops as a miracle worker, now’s the time.”

Exhausted, demoralized, and out of her depth, Cahow turned a despairing eye toward Torvin, then looked back at the first officer. “I never claimed to be a miracle worker, sir. Just a tool-pusher. But if there’s a way to restart these engines, I give you my word: I will find it.”

“I know you will.” Theriault patted Cahow’s arm. “I believe in you, Karen.”

She masked her terror with a smile. That makes one of us, sir.

19

Bearers of bad news arrived in battalions, one after another, in Tribune Saranda’s adopted office. Tosc, her chief of staff, did his best to stanch the flow of calamitous reports, but the few hard lines that were still working in her top-floor suite at the Nismul Hotel buzzed nonstop. The whole world had devolved into panic when the news services broadcast vids of the Executive Complex being leveled by a firestorm from the sky. Half the world feared the government had been eradicated with its symbolic edifices, and the other half of the world hoped it. Saranda’s job was to reassure them all that she and her government were alive and doing their best to maintain order in the face of unstoppable chaos.

Tosc handed her his mobile comm. “It’s the governor of Turacol. He says all the rivers in his province are flowing backward.”

“Tell him to reverse the polarity on his hydroelectric plants and muddle through like the rest of us.” She pointed at the buzzing phone on the desk. “Any idea who that is?”

He glanced toward it. “It’s line four—the media.”

“Cut them off. If they call back, blame the distortion field.”

He took care of scuttling the press inquiry while one of their interns, some eager youngster whose name Saranda had forgotten along with a hundred others over the years, hurried into the suite holding up a data tablet as if it held the secret to life and death. “SkyWave is running observer-scope footage of the asteroid strike that destroyed Station Xenopus.”

Cynicism compelled Saranda to ask, “Are they blaming us for it?”

The nameless intern trained a puzzled look on the tablet. “Not yet, Madam Tribune.”

“Then I don’t care what they’re using to fill airtime. What’s next?”

Tosc pointed at the grid of vid screens that had been set up along one wall of Saranda’s commandeered suite. “A wave of brownouts and blackouts is working its way around the planet even as we speak. We’re losing grids in every major city.”

“That’s been happening all night,” Saranda protested.

“This time they’re staying out.” Tosc switched one screen to a technical diagram of the planet’s integrated power network. “Reboot attempts have failed at seven major plants so far, and it’s spreading. The engineers are saying it’s like the laws of physics don’t apply anymore.”

It was a nightmare scenario come to life. “Tosc—if all those grids are down, how are we getting word from those districts?”

“Battery-powered comms,” he said. “But those are failing fast, too.”

As if he had summoned trouble by speaking its name, all the lights in the suite stuttered and went black, along with the wall of vid screens and their handful of computers. The only solace in the gloom was the sudden silence of the comms.

Saranda suppressed her mind’s primitive urge to sink into panic and paralysis. She turned toward her chief of staff, who now was little more than a dark shape in the shadows cast by the twin moons. “Tosc, dig up every bit of power you can find. Keep our comms up, no matter what it takes. We need to know if Doctor Kavalas and his team make any progress at the generator.”

“I’ll do what I can, Madam Tribune.” Tosc slipped away and delegated the legwork of his orders to his gang of subordinates, who scurried into action at his whispered commands.

Isolated by privilege and darkness, Saranda took up a vigil at the suite’s largest window, which faced east. Beyond the horizon lay the promise of daylight. But for the first time in her life she took no joy in the coming dawn, because now the arrival of the new day would also mean confronting the sun—which, according to the crew of the Sagittarius, was building up to a coronal mass ejection that would transform Anura’s parent star into its fiery executioner.

•   •   •

Every passing moment spent adrift made Theriault’s dread more palpable. She watched the stars lie static on the main viewscreen. From the command chair, she was expected to project steady authority, but all she wanted to do was curl in upon herself and deny the facts in evidence. The ship was critically impaired. They were sitting in the path of a looming disaster. And no matter what they did to fix things, it felt as if the deck were stacked against them.

Yesterday we were on a beautiful planet. Life was good. Now we’re counting down the minutes to our own destruction. Why didn’t Starfleet advertise this on its recruitment posters?

Cahow’s voice spilled from the overhead speakers and interrupted Theriault’s maudlin brooding. “Commander? Torvin and I can’t get the impulse reactors or the warp core working. All we can give you is battery power, as long as you don’t push it.”

It was discouraging news. “Will it be enough to get us clear of the CME?”

“Depends. How much time do we have?”

“Less than an hour.”

“Then I’d have to say probably not.”

Theriault stood and stepped forward to lean over Nizsk’s shoulder. “Nizsk? Can you make an emergency landing on battery power and thrusters?”

Nizsk sounded pessimistic. “That would be rough, sir.” She pointed at gauges on her console. “The thrusters are designed for minor maneuvers in vacuum, not full flight control in atmosphere. Even with battery power for the navigational deflector, a landing would be risky.”

Dastin left his post to stand at Theriault’s side. “Do I even want to know why you’re asking Nizsk about landing the ship on thrusters and batteries?”

She met his anxious stare with a hard look. “Do I want to know why you think you have the authority to question me about command decisions I haven’t made yet?”

He pointed at the viewscreen. “If we can risk attempting a landing, we have a shot at dodging the coronal mass ejection.”

“I don’t think we do.” She noted out of the corner of her eye that Sorak had risen from his post and was moving to join their hushed conversation. When he took up a position opposite Dastin, she continued. “The effects of the distortion field are getting worse every few minutes. If we’re counting on the systems we still have to carry us out of its range, I think we’re wasting our time. Now that we’re in this statistical Sargasso Sea, I think we’re in for the duration.”

Sorak arched an eyebrow. “I have to agree with the commander. Considering the nature of the phenomenon that confronts us, trying to limp away would seem an ill-advised strategy.”

Dastin was flabbergasted. “Ill advised? I think it’s the only logical course of action we have! If we can dodge the CME, it’ll hit the planet and frag the dark energy siphon. Once that happens, this lunacy will be over, and we can finish our repairs and go home.”

“Maybe,” Sorak said. “Unless the nonlinear aspects of the phenomenon continue to plague us and this region even after the device’s destruction. The collision of the coronal mass with the planet’s surface might unleash an even greater threat force when the dark energy siphon is destroyed. As appealing an option as retreat might appear, it might be the wrong choice.”

Being confronted with a dryly unemotional counterargument only stoked Dastin’s hysteria. “Are you kidding? Dodging the punch is a bad idea? What’s next? Are you gonna tell me up is down? Hot is cold? That the best way to escape this mess is to charge straight into it?”

He had spoken in jest, but his words gave Theriault an idea. She turned away from him and Sorak to look at the main viewscreen. “Nizsk, magnify the image of Anura, then overlay our scans of the distortion field’s areas of effect.” She, Dastin, and Sorak watched the image onscreen shift to an enlarged view of the Austarans’ homeworld, over which was quickly superimposed a series of computer-generated field grids. “Zoom in on the dark energy siphon.”

Again the screen changed, pushing in closer on the planet’s surface. The computer-generated lines traced new shapes—this time outlining the perimeter of the generator facility. Nizsk rotated her chair to face Theriault, Dastin, and Sorak. “I feel it prudent to point out, sirs, that while the diagram of the distortion field suggests a region of calm around the generator, that eye in the storm, if you will, is spherical in nature. The distortion effect surrounds the facility in three dimensions, including from above and below.”

Energized by an idea, Theriault smiled and nodded. “But not as densely as it does from a lateral vantage, does it, Ensign?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Helm, set course for Anura. Plot landing coordinates just outside the generator facility. Make our approach as direct as possible to minimize our exposure to the distortion field.”

Theriault walked back to the command chair, trailed by the stoic disapproval of Sorak and the fuming disbelief of Dastin. It was the Trill who spoke first. “Are you crazy?”

“No, but you’re bordering on insubordinate.” She settled back into the center seat. “I have no confidence in the ship’s ability to outrun this nightmare, but I have to believe that we might be able to help make a difference if we go to the source of the problem. If we can help the landing party complete its mission, everybody wins. If not, we’re all as good as dead anyway.”

Sorak clasped his hands behind his back. “I would be remiss in my duties if I failed to remind you of the captain’s orders to take the ship and our refugee passengers to safety.”

“Then consider your duty fulfilled,” Theriault said. “But I don’t think the astronauts in our mess will feel much like living if their planet gets glassed. As for the captain?” She was unable to suppress a mischievous gleam. “If he’d wanted a first officer who never thought for herself, he wouldn’t have promoted me. Ensign Nizsk, is that landing approach plotted?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Then take us in.” She gripped the chair’s armrests. “And try to put us down in one piece if you can. Bucking orders I can explain to the captain. Breaking the ship? That’s another story.”

•   •   •

No matter which way Cahow turned, something was failing. Warning lights flashed on the master systems display, so many coming in rapid succession that she couldn’t track them all. A staccato beat of sharp pops and snaps announced the latest in a series of plasma relay overloads.

Cahow coughed and searched for Torvin through dense clouds of stinging black smoke. She saw him at the battery panel, which was open. “Tor! More power to the integrity field!”

“I can’t boost it without compromising flight control!” His hands disappeared inside the space behind the panel. “Maybe if I run a circuit patch!”

A bone-jarring bang rocked the ship and sent them both tumbling forward, toward the dorsal launch tube. They landed splayed across the deck, which fell victim to a steady, violent shuddering. Through the hull and bulkheads came an eerie banshee wail of noise.

Torvin traded a worried look with Cahow. They both knew that sound all too well. It was the scream of the Sagittarius ripping through atmosphere at speeds that would be dangerous even if the ship were at full power. Keenly aware that time was against them, the pair scrambled to their feet and sprinted in separate directions.

He ran to a forward console. “I’ll reinforce the nav deflector!”

“I’ll try to kick-start one of the impulse reactors!”

She heard a sizzling hiss, then caught a whiff of burned optronic cable—half a second before a flash-crack explosion dropped an overhead panel on her head in a shower of sparks. Ducking and dodging, she batted aside the fallen hunk of lightweight metal, then brushed the glowing phosphors off her jumpsuit as she stumbled to the impulse core control panel.

Come on, damn it! She keyed in emergency overrides and every field-expedient trick she knew, but the ship’s fusion reactors refused to engage. Frustration turned to rage, then to panic. She pounded her fist on the panel. You’re supposed to be state-of-the-art tech! Start! If the panel was listening to her silent plea, it gave her no reason to think so.

And then it did. One of the starboard fusion reactors kicked in, its resurrection as random as its earlier failure. It fed power to the impulse coils, which groaned under the strain of slowing the ship’s free fall descent. Within seconds the lone reactor redlined. It was only one of four cores linked to the impulse drive, and it was being asked to bear a stress load that would have been a challenge for all four cores operating in tandem at full power. Danger signs multiplied as Cahow stared in a moment of terrified paralysis. Then she keyed open an internal channel. “Engineering to Bridge! Ease up! You’re gonna blow the only working core we’ve got!”

“Too late!” Theriault hollered over a howl of noise. “We’re past the point of no return.”

“I hope you’re wrong, ’cause we can’t take much more of this.”

“Karen? I hate to tell you this, but we haven’t hit the distortion field yet. It’s coming in about fifteen seconds. So grab something heavy. Bridge out.”

The indicator light went dark, confirming the channel was closed. Cahow muttered a string of her favorite expletives, including a few alien vulgarities whose meanings she didn’t know but whose hard syllables channeled her fury to satisfying effect. Then she lifted her voice to pass along the XO’s warning. “Hang on, Tor! We’re in for some chop!”

Lights and consoles stuttered on and off, along with the artificial gravity—hurling Cahow and Torvin off the bulkheads and into each other, rag dolls caroming in strobe-lit slow motion. Loose tools and bits of debris added sharp edges and blunt impacts to the equation, forcing the engineers to wrap their arms around their heads to shield their faces and throats.

Free fall released them, and they plunged toward the bow of the Sagittarius, landing hard beside each other on the hatch cover for the launch tube. Then the ship’s artificial gravity snapped back on, overriding nature’s hold, and pulled them both face-first to the deck.

Cahow spat out a warm mouthful of blood and grinned at Torvin. “Having fun yet?”

He sleeved blood from his broken nose. “I should’ve been a musician.”

“And miss all this?” She forced herself up and pulled him with her. Staggering like drunks, they hurried back toward the impulse control panel. She pointed him aft. “I’ll keep trying to boot up main power. Make sure the EPS conduits—”

A fast, hard impact flattened her to the deck and knocked the breath from her lungs. It took her a second to realize Torvin had tackled her. She opened her mouth to curse him—and then he lurched forward and draped himself over her head. A flash of white light and blistering heat filled the compartment above them. Next came his yowls of pain, and she caught the stench of burning fabric and flesh. He rolled off her, and she saw his back was on fire.

“Holy shit! Tor!” She leapt for the nearest fire-suppression module and pulled it off the bulkhead. When she turned back, Tor was rolling on the deck, fighting to extinguish the flames, but he couldn’t—burning plasma had adhered to his uniform. Cahow triggered the extinguisher. A spray of white foam coated Torvin, dousing the blaze on his back, and his cries shrank to pained whimpers. She dropped the extinguisher and raced to his side. “Tor! You okay?”

“I’m alive,” he said through gritted teeth, trembling, eyes shining with tears of pain.

“How did you—”

“Heard the”—he winced and groaned—“coil overload.”

Over the years she had seen Torvin’s amazing auditory senses detect all manner of malfunctions and miscalibrations. This was the first time it had ever directly saved her life. She pressed a consoling hand to his cheek. “Hang on, I’ll get the doc.”

He batted her hand away. There was a fierce light in his eyes. “Save the ship!”

She nodded and left him to get back to the master systems display. Working with one eye on the panel and one on her wounded crewmate, she shouted over the din of buckling hull plates and straining engines, “Damn it, Tor! Don’t you die on me!”

If he heard her desperate plea, he gave her no reason to think so.

•   •   •

Nizsk knew not to be distracted by the image on the main viewscreen.

Its angle of view was limited, and its representation of near and distant objects could be misleading when traveling at high speed. Worse, in a turbulent atmosphere of bruised clouds riven by lightning, there was the risk of becoming hypnotized by the lack of a horizon. Without the tug of the planet’s gravity to cue her body’s natural sense of balance, diving into a bank of clouds looked the same as cruising through one during level flight. It could cause her to lose her bearings and delay her reactions at a crucial moment—an error no one on the ship would survive.

Keep my eyes on the helm. Watch my instruments. Trust the readouts.

No matter how many times she told herself that, it failed to convince her. Too many systems had malfunctioned because of Anura’s distortion field, and too many of her flight control readouts had become unreliable. How could she trust the ship and all the lives aboard it to automated gauges that could be telling her a different lie at every moment?

Don’t look at the screen. Don’t look—

Forks of violet lightning bent across the sky in a flash, then vanished. Thunderstrokes rocked the little scout ship as it pushed through the maelstrom. Nizsk stared at the sullen storm head racing up to meet them and tensed as if it were a mountainside. Then the ship arrowed through it, quaking from bow to stern, its hull plates rattling against one another.

She tore her eyes from the viewscreen and strained to make sense of the helm’s jumbled readouts. Several subsystem monitors scrolled blocks of random digits and machine-language symbols, unbroken cascades of gibberish. The attitude controls were sluggish at best, not that Nizsk had any clue how to apply them based on her console’s data.

Wavy ripples of interference warped the image on the viewscreen, and then the whole scene broke apart into static. That was all Nizsk could take. She swiveled her chair far enough to turn her torso to face Theriault. “Commander, my flight instruments are scrambled. I can pilot the ship manually, but I need a forward view on the screen to do so.”

The first officer snapped at Dastin, “Get the viewscreen back! Whatever it takes!”

“On it!” He lurched away from the sensor post to an auxiliary command station and began his own struggle against a fouled computer interface. Around the bridge, command systems went haywire. The same nonsense string of computer code that clogged the helm readouts took over half the overhead display screens. Entire consoles flickered, as if at random.

It was madness—and, most insane of all, Sorak and Razka were acting as if this were nothing unusual. Nizsk chalked up Sorak’s sangfroid to his Vulcan discipline, but Saurians had no Kolinahr training to call upon, so how was Razka staying so calm when all around him was degenerating into chaos? At least Theriault and Dastin exhibited some degree of alarm that felt apropos in the moment.

Nizsk’s mental digression was cut short as the viewscreen snapped back to an image of the tempest raging outside. “Establishing manual helm control,” she declared. “I need a topographical overlay, please.” While she waited for the virtual wireframe of the planet’s surface to be added to the viewscreen, Nizsk transmitted a manual sensor check—a “ping,” in old Starfleet parlance, she had learned—to scout for obstacles and establish their actual altitude.

Assuming these systems are working at all.

Behind her, Theriault called over the mournful cry of wind and the ship’s barely functional impulse engine, “Helm! Status report!”

“Sensors indicate we remain on course, in a hard dive toward the facility. Altitude, five point six kilometers and falling fast.” She silenced an urgent alarm on her console. “Navigational deflectors failing. We might be in for some turbulence.”

“Keep her steady, Ensign! How long until we break through the clouds?”

Dastin answered, “Eighteen seconds! But right after we do, we’ll hit the inner edge of the distortion field. And if you thought the start of this ride was bad, you’re gonna hate the end.”

Mad bolts of blue lightning stabbed at the ship. They leapt from the darkness and cocooned the scout ship in a web of creeping electric tendrils that dominated the viewscreen. Then the ship slipped free of the storm, pierced a glowing veil of light, and plummeted toward the surface, which was suddenly much closer than Nizsk had expected. She tried to slow their descent, only to find herself betrayed once again by the helm’s erratic performance.

“Braking thrusters are not responding,” she announced.

Ever a professional, Theriault stayed cool as she issued what might well prove to be her final orders. “Chief, warn the captain we’re coming in hot, and coming right at him.” Her next words resounded from the ship’s overhead PA system: “All hands, brace for impact!”

20

The rest of the landing party was out the door before Terrell could tell them to stay inside, so he did the only thing he could: He followed them. Three long strides outside the exit, Ilucci, Taryl, and Hesh had all come to a halt to stare straight up. Terrell stopped and tilted his head back to gaze skyward. That’s when he saw a fireball plunge through the lightning storm.

Not again. Seeing the Sagittarius wreathed in fire resurrected unpleasant memories for Terrell of his ship’s crippling crash-landings on Jinoteur and, more recently, on Arethusa. Rooted in place, it took him a moment to recover his wits. “Everyone back inside!” He swung his arm to shepherd them back through the door. “We need to take cover!”

Taryl pointed at the blaze. “Look!”

They all turned as one and faced upward. The nimbus of flames evaporated to reveal the Sagittarius. It corkscrewed through the air for another second, then its nose shifted by the smallest degree, signaling a break in its wild nosedive. Its forward maneuvering thrusters fired, and a resonant hum filled the air as the ship’s impulse engines struggled to lift it out of free fall. Terrell clung to his doubts for the ship’s safety until the last moment, when it leveled out, showing its extended landing struts, and its ventral braking thrusters vomited burning plasma.

He winced at its booming touchdown, a brutal landing that sent great tremors through the ground and kicked up an expanding oval of dust that swept over him and the landing party. Half-blind and fighting to breathe, he waved away the choking haze and staggered toward his ship. Ilucci and the rest of his team lurched along on either side of him. He pulled his communicator from his belt and flipped it open. “Terrell to Sagittarius! Report! Is everyone okay?”

“Depends,” Theriault said. “Are we using a sliding scale of ‘okay’?”

He closed his communicator. She’s cracking jokes. They’re fine. Though he couldn’t see the ship, he heard the hydraulic whine of its ventral ramp being lowered open, and a few seconds later he saw a cool blue glow of light that he recognized from the working lights in the ship’s cargo bay. Moments later, the cloud dispersed, and he saw Theriault descending the ramp to meet the landing party. “Rolling out the red carpet, Number One?”

“More like buying time to mop up before you see the mess we made.” She tensed in fearful expectation. “Sorry I landed against orders, but we didn’t really have a choice.”

Terrell didn’t know where to start. “No complaints from me.” Ilucci, Taryl, and Hesh sprinted past them, up the ramp. “Turns out Ilucci needs some of his tools.”

Ilucci shouted down from the ramp, “I also need my team, Skip!”

“Roger that, Master Chief!” To Theriault he added, “Get the engineers down here.”

“Torvin and Threx are in sickbay. Doc says Tor might be okay in a few hours.”

“All right, just Cahow, then. But get her now. Every second counts.”

Theriault stepped away and opened her communicator to summon Cahow. Terrell hurried up the ramp into the cargo bay, where Hesh, Taryl, and Ilucci raided storage crates for parts and tools. The chief engineer hurled aside unwanted items with a vengeance while barking orders. “Hesh, get a phase discriminator! Taryl, find me a plasma buffer!”

Reluctant to get in the middle of their salvage scrum, Terrell stood back and asked, “Anything I can do to help?”

“Not unless you’ve got a gravitic resonator in your—hang on.” He dived into a deep crate and came up with a hefty and peculiar-looking gadget. “Got it!” He landed on his feet as Cahow slid down the ladder into the cargo hold. “Karen! Grab that bag of tools and follow me. Taryl, Hesh, follow us as soon as you find those parts.”

Hesh held up his own scavenged prize. “Right behind you, Master Chief.”

“Coming,” Taryl said, pulling a cylinder-shaped device from another crate.

“Let’s move!” Ilucci led the others down the ramp and back toward the research facility. “We’ve got nine minutes to cause a controlled overload without blowing ourselves up.”

•   •   •

If there was one thing Ilucci had learned was essential to serving as a Starfleet chief engineer, it was to never let on when he had no idea what the hell he was doing.

Half the components and subsystems in the Austarans’ dark energy reactor were utter mysteries to him. He had never seen technology remotely like this: exotic materials, incomprehensible wiring schemes, parts with no discernible function. Devising a plan to sabotage this Byzantine monstrosity without provoking a global cataclysm an order of magnitude more swift and certain than the one already unfolding was a matter of guesswork. The only things more baffling than the facility’s hardware were its firmware and software, neither of which made any sense to him.

Not that he could say any of that.

If he had more time . . . if the planet wasn’t in imminent danger . . . if there was even an inkling of a better idea in play, he wouldn’t be risking everything on this mad gamble. He knew it wouldn’t take much to turn a controlled overload into a world-shattering explosion. On any other day, he would never take such a wild risk with so much at stake. But then he thought about the probability warping distortion field produced by the facility’s core, and he figured that in this one instance, he might actually have a fifty-fifty chance of success.

Better odds than I had at that casino on Carillon, he reasoned.

The captain and Doctor Kavalas watched from a few meters away as Ilucci stood back from the open interface panels in the reactor control room. He followed the cables from the tap he and Cahow had jury-rigged to help the interface panel better manage the immense power loads he was about to shunt through it. “Karen, is the plasma buffer hooked up?”

“Yes, but the discriminator’s being difficult. It’s set right, but it won’t—” He cut her off by kicking the discriminator, which purred to life. She glanced at its status display. “That did it.”

“First rule of engineering,” he muttered, knowing she’d fill in the rest by rote: If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it had to be replaced anyway. He turned to shout over his other shoulder, “Hesh! How’re we doing on the gravitic resonator?”

The science officer’s voice echoed up the stairwell from the accelerator ring sublevel. “Up and working, Master Chief! We’re heading up!”

“All right,” Ilucci said, surveying their rush-job handiwork. “If this works the way I think it will, we should be able to boost the jolt to the dark energy siphon by about three hundred percent without increasing the strain on the fusion reactor.” He frowned at the primitive-looking interface components. “As long as that hodgepodge of antiques—”

“Antiques?” Kavalas scowled with wounded pride. “That rack is state of the art!”

“My mistake,” Ilucci said. “As long as that hunk of junk doesn’t melt down when we throw the switch, we might just bring this little nightmare to an end.” He hooked a thumb over one shoulder. “Everybody out! Now! Get back to the control center, it’s shielded.”

Terrell stepped over to Ilucci’s side. “What about you, Master Chief?”

“No time to rig a timer, Skip. Someone’s gotta throw the switch. Might as well be me.”

The captain downplayed the moment in his usual low-key fashion. “See you topside when it’s done, Master Chief.”

“Copy that, Skip.” He held up his communicator. “Ping me when everybody’s secure.”

Terrell followed the others out of the reactor control room, all of them moving at a quick step. Ilucci plodded over to the interface panel and rested his hand on the master toggle for the relay he and the others had set up. A timer on the interface board counted down the seconds remaining until the next major collision of distortion wave fronts.

Why do we always cut these things so goddamned close?

Seven seconds on the clock and his communicator beeped twice.

He flipped it open. “Ilucci.”

“All set, Chief! Go!”

Ilucci switched the heavy toggle from OFF to ON, then leapt away from the interface panels to hit the floor and cover his head with both arms. He felt every exposed hair on his head and forearms stand on end, dancing in the supercharged atmosphere, and a galvanic tingle skittered over his flesh like a million fast-moving insects. Even through his closed eyes he saw a white-hot flash, but the meltdown of the interface was much quieter than he expected. A muffled bump and a fwoosh of flames, followed by a hiss of automated fire-suppression systems kicking in. Scalding motes of burned wiring and shattered transistors rained down on him like pyroclastic ash from a volcano made of computer parts. He swatted the burning bits of debris from his arms and the back of his neck, then looked up to survey the damage.

Twists of smoke snaked out of the phase discriminator. Green flames licked up the sides of the plasma buffer, which had cracked around its middle. Blackened circuit boards and molten wiring were all that remained of the interface panels for the reactor controls. Overhead, light fixtures flickered behind an obscuring blanket of smoke. It was a discouraging display.

He opened his communicator. “Ilucci to Captain Terrell. Did it work?”

The captain was not in good spirits. “Hard to say, Master Chief. As soon as we put out the fires in the first-tier workstations and get the lights back on, we’ll try to find out.”

That was a bad sign. Ilucci hightailed it back to the main control center, where the situation was just as the captain had described. The lowest tier of workstations had been reduced to blackened husks. Scorch marks on the floor corresponded to blown-out lighting fixtures overhead. Taryl wandered the room with a fire extinguisher, dousing the last stubborn embers as she went. Hesh and Cahow worked together at a station on the third tier, comparing notes in hushed tones while the captain tended to a minor burn on Doctor Kavalas’s hand.

Ilucci thought it best to steer clear of the captain until he had more constructive news to share. He made his way up the stairs to Hesh and Cahow. “What’s the word?”

Cahow glared at him through a loose, soot-stained lock of her flaxen hair. “Let me put it this way, Master Chief: You were half-right. It caused a catastrophic shutdown.”

Hesh added with equal disillusionment, “Unfortunately, a feedback pulse caused a fatal error in the fusion reactor, which is now in meltdown. The dark energy siphon, however, remains active and is on a buildup to another major wave front collision in twenty-nine minutes.”

Ilucci looked around the room and felt the weight of everyone’s baleful looks. All he could think to do was show his empty hands in a pantomime of surrender. “Sorry, guys.” A despondent sigh. “It sounded like a good idea at the time.”

21

The captain had called for all hands on deck, and that was exactly what he was getting. Theriault watched the procession enter the control center. Sorak, Dastin, and Razka led the way. Behind them followed the eight Austaran astronauts. Then, to her surprise, bringing up the rear of the procession was Crewman Torvin, who shuffled along, wincing with every step he took. The others she let pass by, but him she intercepted. “Crewman? What are you doing here?”

“Reporting for duty, sir.” He swallowed a low groan of discomfort.

She nodded for him to step aside with her, to talk in private. “You should be in sickbay.”

An adamant shake of his head. “I’m okay. Doctor Babitz patched me up.”

“And did she clear you for duty?” The abashed look on the young enlisted man’s face gave her the answer. “You left against medical orders, didn’t you?”

It was obvious to her that he was in pain and keeping himself in motion by force of will alone. “I won’t lie, sir. The burns on my back hurt. They hurt a lot. But I can still help. I know we don’t have a lot of time. So if I’m gonna die, I’d rather be up and working when it happens.”

How could she send him back to the ship? She nodded toward the group. “Fall in, Tor.”

“Aye, sir.” He navigated around her in halting steps and joined the others.

She followed him to the huddle, whose ranks had swelled to the point of being unwieldy. Including herself, ten of the fourteen members of the ship’s crew were present, plus the eight astronauts and Doctor Kavalas. She found her place beside Captain Terrell in the middle of one side of the group’s irregular oval. “Okay, we’re all here, and the clock’s ticking. Master Chief, I need your sit-rep on the attempt to overload the dark energy siphon.”

Ilucci crossed his arms, apparently uncomfortable being the center of attention at that moment. “Well, to be blunt, I kind of humped the bunk on this one. Instead of knocking out the dark energy core, it looks like my surge from the fusion reactor pumped it up a level. So instead of having just under an hour until its next major spike in output, we have less than twenty minutes.” His report was met by heavy, disapproving silence. As he stepped back, he muttered with self-directed sarcasm, “Please, no applause. Just throw money.”

Filling the void of attention in the center of the gathering, Sorak stepped forward. “We have just under twenty minutes to counteract the effect of the improbability field being produced by the dark energy core. After that, the buildup to the coronal mass ejection from Anura’s parent star will be irreversible. Approximately three minutes after that, the ejection will commence. Once it separates from the star and begins its journey, there will be no stopping it.”

Dastin was glum. “Sounds like we have just enough time to kiss our asses good-bye.”

Taryl looked stunned. “So? That’s it? We’re giving up?”

“The hell we are,” Terrell said. “We have nineteen minutes left, and I mean to use them.”

The astronaut commander made an odd clicking noise that Theriault interpreted as his species’ version of a sarcastic laugh. “Doing what? Cutting my people’s time in half again?”

Terrell was undaunted by Beiana’s cynicism. “Commander, I know things look bad. We have no hope of escape, and we seem to have no solution to the problem. But fighting amongst ourselves won’t accomplish anything, and neither will sticking our heads in the sand. And in case you haven’t noticed, my crew and I are in just as much danger as you are. So if you think we lack the proper motivation to find a solution, I assure you—you’re mistaken.”

Ilucci piled on with nigh-manic optimism, “That’s right! This ain’t over! Was it over when the Romulans invaded Organia? Hell, no!”

Theriault mumbled to Terrell, “Romulans?”

“Forget it, he’s rolling.”

Ilucci continued, “And it ain’t over now! We’re gonna beat this thing! I guarantee it!”

Beiana blinked at Ilucci, then turned away. “I hope you’re right.” He asked the group in a more hopeful tone, “What comes next?”

Dastin grumbled, “With our luck? A supernova.”

Theriault turned to reprimand him for stooping to gallows humor in front of the Austarans, only to have her rebuke cut off by one of the astronauts.

“I’ll take that bet,” said Major Septen. “I think the planet will break like an egg.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said astronaut Nasutas. “My money’s on volcanic apocalypse.”

“You’re all wrong,” Pylus the engineer said. “The way this day’s been going? I’ll bet whatever’s left of my beach house that our planet’s antimatter twin appears, resulting in their instant and spontaneous mutual annihilation.”

Mufungo interrupted with raised hands. “Hold on! How are we supposed to collect on these bets if the planet vanishes in a flash of free radicals?”

“Don’t spoil the fun,” Beiana told the professor. “It’s the end of the world! Live a little.”

Specialist Heelar raised her hand. “Can I put a month’s salary on our star imploding into a black hole before it releases the CME, then sucking our planet to its doom in a singularity?”

Engineer Nelonnuk clapped his long-fingered hands. “Yes! That’s what this apocalypse needs—a flair for the dramatic. Nicely done, Heelar.” She took a bow at his sardonic praise.

Theriault turned in dismay toward the captain. “Please tell me we’re not going to spend the last eighteen minutes of our lives making uncollectible bets on how we’re all about to die.”

Terrell sighed. “What do you want, Number One? It’s the end of the world. Live a little.”

•   •   •

Overwhelmed by the pessimism in the control center, Torvin backed out of the huddle and slipped out the door to the corridor outside. He couldn’t understand how the Austarans could be so cavalier about death. Not just their own, but that of their whole world, every last member of an intelligent species. It was too vast, too horrible a tragedy for him to grasp.

The last thing he wanted to do was cry, but he felt tears escape the corners of his eyes. He sleeved them away, but more followed. Between the anguish of confronting his own ending and that of his friends on the ship, as well as billions of innocent souls, and contending with the stinging pain that engulfed his back from the nape of his neck to the bottom of his spine, he was running out of strength to rein in his emotions.

All his life he’d been mocked for being too sensitive, too empathic, too quick to show his feelings. Other young males on Tiburon had called him hurtful names that implied his maleness was a sham. Even within the supposedly enlightened ranks of Starfleet, his masculinity had been impugned by other recruits since his first day at basic training. Never once had he understood. Why were people so threatened by his ability to feel strongly? Or by his desire to love deeply and live his life open to the emotions of others? Why were so many people so afraid of showing grief, or fear, or compassion? When did stoicism become such a precious commodity?

He felt his survival instinct trigger an upswell of rage in his heart. It wasn’t fair that he had to die so young, when there was so much more he wanted to do with his life. But as quickly as the heat of anger had shored him up, the chill of nihilism tore him back down. Who was he to complain of unfairness? What was more fair than death? Sooner or later it came to everyone and everything. The universe itself would eventually decay irreversibly into entropy, and, if science was to be trusted, even time itself was destined to expire.

His ultrasensitive Tiburonian ears heard the approach of soft footfalls. He noted the implied weight in each step’s echo, the tempo of the stride, and knew at once who it was. Embarrassed by his unraveled state, he wiped the tears from his cheeks and composed himself. When he felt ready to meet ridicule head-on, he pivoted to face Ensign Taryl. “Sir?”

A confused wrinkling of her green brow. “Tor? I saw you leave. You okay?”

“I’m fine. I just”—a deflective shrug—“I just needed some air.”

She didn’t seem convinced. “There’s no shame in being scared.”

Too many times he’d fallen for such verbal traps. He refused to take the bait again. “Scared? No. I’m just tired. And the burns on my back are still a bit raw. But I’m okay.”

Taryl eyed him with naked skepticism. “Are you? ’Cause your eyes look a bit redder than usual. I mean, I’m not saying you were crying—not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

He averted his eyes from hers. “Is there something I can do for you, sir?”

Now she was upset. “See? This is why I don’t get involved with other people’s problems. I came out here looking to help, but all I get is attitude instead of gratitude.”

His fear and shame turned to guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk about it. It’s just, y’know, a private moment. It’s all going wrong, and it feels like there’s no way out, and—”

“I get the point, Tor. But in case you tuned out, the rest of us are gonna die, too.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just—” He forced himself to hold back. Experience had taught him the dangers of oversharing. It was an error he wasn’t eager to repeat.

Taryl wasn’t content to let him leave his confession unfinished. “It’s just what?” She stepped in front of him and forced him to look into her eyes. “It’s just what, Tor?”

He looked into her dark eyes and wondered if he could dare to speak his truth. Even after years of serving with Ilucci, Threx, and Cahow, he had never felt comfortable baring his inner life to them. They had been through more life-or-death crises than he’d ever thought he would face in one lifetime, yet he remained afraid of what they might say if they knew what really kept him awake at night. As much as he had longed to reveal his deepest feelings to the ship’s former pilot, the beautiful Andorian zhen Celerasayna zh’Firro, she had died during the Battle of Vanguard without ever knowing how keenly he had pined for her.

After all that, could he really risk revealing his feelings now to Taryl, an avowed misanthrope whose beauty had nonetheless beguiled him?

His inner voice broke through his mental din of doubt and fear. You might be dead in sixteen minutes. If you can’t be true to yourself now, then when?

He took a breath and swallowed hard. “It’s just that . . . I’ve never been in love.”

She stared as if in shock, then she laughed. He took it for a cruel, derisive snort—but before he could retreat, her surprise softened into a compassionate smile. “So? Neither have I.”

It was impossible to believe. “You? You haven’t? But . . . you’re so beautiful.”

His compliment made her eyes shimmer with tears. “I come from an ugly place. Where I grew up, no one believes in love. Passion? Pleasure? Sure, for a price. But love? Never.”

She looked different all of a sudden. Stripped of her emotional armor, she looked almost wounded. In that moment, she seemed more vulnerable than she ever had before.

To Torvin, she looked even more gorgeous than she had moments earlier. She was no longer just an ideal he adored from afar; she had become real.

He knew he could trust her.

“I know I’m going to die someday. Maybe today. But I think I’d find it easier to face the end if I had one moment of genuine affection to look back on. One moment of real connection with another soul to make me think this life was worth it, even if it got cut short.”

She palmed her own tears from her eyes. “You mean like a first kiss?”

“Exactly.” He looked up at Taryl, who stood several centimeters taller than he did. “But I guess the odds against a moment like that at a time like this are a billion to one.”

Taryl seized the front of Torvin’s jumpsuit, pulled him toward her, and kissed him.

It was no fleeting peck, no friendly snog on the cheek. It was a real kiss, one full of passion and lust for life, the sort of lip lock that would drive a poet to write an epic ballad or make a bishop kick in a stained-glass window, the kind of kiss that could raise the dead.

Her emerald lips parted from his, and he was left breathless in her embrace.

Then she gave him a small shove that rocked him backward on his heels. When he recovered his balance and found his feet, she flashed a smile he would remember forever.

“Must be your lucky day, Crewman. Now get back in there. We have a world to save.”

•   •   •

Out of the corner of Terrell’s eye, he saw Taryl lead Torvin back into the control center, like a border collie rounding up a stray sheep. As the mismatched duo walked back toward the rest of the group, the round-robin discussion caromed between panic and despair.

Ilucci paced in a small circle while massaging his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. “It feels like we’ve tried everything at this point.”

“If we had tried everything, we’d have found a solution,” Kavalas said. His petulant reply drew angry stares from most of the Sagittarius’s crew and glum looks from the astronauts.

Theriault stepped forward, with her hands raised and palms out, and tried to impose some diplomacy on the proceedings. “Let’s think this through. What have we ruled out?”

“Tractor beams can’t lift the generator off the surface,” Sorak said, “because we are unable to maintain an accurate lock when subject to the distortion field.”

Masking his melancholy with gruffness, Dastin added, “We can’t destroy the dark energy siphon with phasers or torpedoes without cooking off the planet’s atmosphere.”

Cahow dragged her finger through a layer of soot that had collected on top of a workstation’s console monitor. “We can’t overload the siphon without blowing out the complex.”

“We can’t force the master console back into phase,” Ilucci said. He kicked a loose piece of scrap tech across the floor. “And we’ve proved there aren’t enough working spare parts here to build a new one.”

Chief Razka watched the piece of circuit board kicked by Ilucci tumble past his feet. “Could we fabricate the missing components on the ship?”

A dismissive shrug from Ilucci. “Sure, if we had an extra six hours.”

The parade of bad news left the astronaut commander beaten down. “Are you telling me this facility doesn’t have a backup command center?”

Kavalas seemed to take the question as a personal slight. “Are you really that surprised? Tell me, Commander Beiana: How many replacements did Station Xenopus have for its core command module? If it had been struck by debris or—”

“It was struck by debris,” Beiana cut in. “And an asteroid storm. Both summoned by this high-tech monstrosity you switched on without a backup command-and-control system.”

“Who are you to question my—”

“Enough!” Terrell bellowed. “We don’t have time to waste on blame!” He stepped between Beiana and Kavalas, then pivoted to direct the rest of his remarks to everyone. “We need to work together and find a solution to this problem or we’re all going to die. If you all want to point fingers and lob insults after we’re done, that’s fine by me. But I’d rather not die today if there’s anything we can do about it. So focus, people!”

The room fell silent for a few seconds.

A small voice piped up. It was Hesh. “I might have a solution, sir.”

“Lieutenant, if you’re gaslighting me—”

“I am not familiar with that term, sir, but if I might react to your tone, I assure you that I am quite serious. This facility does not have a functional auxiliary control center, but that does not mean it was designed without one. As Doctor Kavalas told us earlier, a backup control center was planned and started, but never finished. It was abandoned, just like the tiers of workstations in this room.” He pointed at Kavalas. “Does that partial auxiliary control center have links to the facility’s data systems?”

“Yes, but there’s no power to that section of—”

“Irrelevant, Doctor. The power will come from the ship. As will the control.”

That claim perked up Terrell’s ears, as well as those of the rest of the crew present. Eyebrows raised to their apex, Terrell asked Hesh, “Come again, Lieutenant?”

Hesh held up his tricorder. “Thanks to Doctor Kavalas, I have the complete schematics and the operating code for the master control console, both its software and its firmware. Though this tricorder lacks the requisite processor power to simulate the master control console and generate sufficient power to control the facility’s attendant systems, the ship’s main computer core does. If I simulate the master console in a holographic matrix generated by the ship’s faster-than-light core, even with only partial impulse power, we will possess more than enough energy and processor speed to take control of this facility with a virtual terminal.”

Theriault recoiled from the idea. “Whoa! Tell me this won’t risk shifting the ship out of phase like that master console!”

“It won’t.” Hesh pointed at his tricorder. “We have already debugged the operating code for this system. Furthermore, the phase-shift was dependent upon a deliberate design flaw in the Austarans’ original console—a flaw that does not exist in our ship’s command systems.”

Looking unconvinced, Kavalas stepped into the middle of the gathering, his hands waving dismissively. “You’re overlooking something, Mister Hesh. We can’t patch into the backup control center from here. We would need a new hard-line connection to its systems.”

The scientist’s protest provoked a confused scowl from Ilucci. “So? Why not patch in from the data node down the corridor?”

“You mean the one you burned to a crisp with your ill-considered overload attempt?”

If the Master Chief had a witty retort, it withered on the vine. He lowered his hand, shut his mouth, and let the accusation go unchallenged.

Terrell had bigger concerns than his chief engineer’s pride. He turned toward Kavalas. “If that’s been destroyed, what’s the next closest access point that lets us control the system?”

“We’ll need to run a hard line all the way down to the backup control center on the accelerator sublevel, three hundred meters to the right from the bottom of the access stairs.”

Ilucci looked up, his countenance hopeful. “I saw at least that much data cable in the maintenance depot. Tor, you can rig an adaptor to let our computer talk to their network. Karen, I need you to supervise the patch into the ship’s computer. Hesh, get back to the ship and whip up that virtual command panel, on the double. Captain, if you and the rest of the team could make sure the lines don’t get severed or tangled between here and there, I’ll run the rest of the cable down to the backup control center and handle the patch-in.”

This was a plan Terrell could get behind. “Sounds good, Master Chief. Get on it. Everyone else, you have your orders! Move out!” His crew dashed into action.

Kavalas grabbed his arm. “Captain! This is madness! Your engineer Ilucci could be killed if he’s still on the accelerator sublevel when the system crashes!”

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, Doctor.” He pulled his arm free. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have ten minutes to save your planet.”

22

Stupid short legs. Hesh cursed his anatomy—not for the first time—as he lagged behind Lieutenant Commander Sorak, who sprinted onto the bridge of the Sagittarius several seconds ahead of him. Even though the Vulcan man was many decades older than Hesh, he had outpaced him handily, thanks to his species’ naturally superior strength and stamina.

Hesh arrived in time to hear Ensign Nizsk plead from the command chair, “What is happening, sir?” The insectoid navigator-pilot looked uncomfortable in the center seat, which had been tailored to the physiques of humanoids—an unintentionally discriminatory aspect of its design that Hesh resolved to mention in one of his future memoranda to Starfleet Command.

“Mister Hesh is going to configure a virtual command console for the malfunctioning alien dark energy facility using our ship’s computer.” Sorak moved to his usual station, the aft console beside the entrance. “Shut down all unnecessary systems and route all available power to the main computer, at once.”

Nizsk hurried to her normal post. “Sir, does that include life support?”

“Affirmative, Ensign,” Hesh replied as he crossed the bridge. “We are on the planet’s surface, so we can draw air and moisture from the atmosphere. Shut down all systems except communications and the main computer.”

“And antimatter containment,” Sorak added.

“Understood, sirs.” Nizsk settled back in at the forward console and set herself to work, while Hesh pondered why a Starfleet vessel would even permit its crew to shut off magnetic containment of its antimatter fuel supply, short of a self-destruct order.

Leaving that mystery unresolved, Hesh settled in at the sensor console, a post he knew well, and set himself to work reconfiguring it into a virtual control console for the Austarans’ dark energy nightmare. “I am uploading the schematics and software for the master console from my tricorder now,” he announced, more for Sorak’s benefit than for Nizsk’s. “It will take a few moments to reconfigure the interface into Starfleet-standard alphanumeric data sets and command groupings.”

Sorak’s hands flew across his console and the next one adjacent, making adjustments so swiftly and subtly that Hesh had no idea what they might be. “All nonessential systems confirm shutdown. Impulse core is at twenty-nine percent capacity. All battery reserves available.”

“Routing reserve power to the computer core.” Hesh flipped the toggles on his console. “The change in consumption will be minimal at first. After the rest of the crew hooks us up to the generator, however, the drain on our system will be heavy and sudden. Stand ready to modulate the strain on the primary juncture.”

“Ready,” Sorak said. An alert beeped on his console. He tucked a small transceiver into his ear, thumbed open a channel, and listened for several seconds before replying to whoever was on the other side of the signal, “Acknowledged. Stand by.” He swiveled toward Hesh. “The captain says the Master Chief is on his way to attach the data cable at the emergency node. Commander Theriault confirms the connections have been made at the computer core. Crewman Torvin is working on the signal adapter. Where do we stand with the virtual command panel?”

Hesh continued feeding data from his tricorder to the ship’s computer and watching the virtual model take shape on the system display screen above his head. “Almost ready, sir. I should have a working model of the master control console in ninety seconds.”

“For all our sakes, Lieutenant, I hope your estimate proves correct.”

Turning his back on Sorak, Hesh hunched over the sensor console and swallowed the sour bile welling in the back of his throat. “I hope so, too, sir.”

•   •   •

Never had one Tiburonian been asked to do so much for so many with so little. Torvin sat cross-legged on the floor of the fusion reactor’s control room, cobbling together seemingly random pieces of alien technology and scraps of Starfleet equipment from the hold of the Sagittarius. The idea was that, once assembled, this hastily imagined contraption would enable the data feed from the ship’s computer core to be understood by the hardware in the facility’s accelerator ring.

At least, that was what Hesh had said. Torvin wasn’t so sure. Everything about this improvised adapter had him expecting a meltdown of epic proportions when it was switched on. There were too many circuits and not enough heat sinks. Too many inputs and not enough buffers. It promised a data-transfer bottleneck more severe than any he’d ever seen.

Not my fault, he reminded himself. Not my design. For a fleeting moment he had thought about voicing his reservations, but then he realized he had no better idea, no superior suggestion, and if there was one thing the Master Chief hated above all else, it was critics without solutions.

He fumbled through the assorted tools scattered around him on the floor. Where’d I put the damned icospanner? His hand recognized its shape before his eye found it, and he lifted the precision instrument into place to complete the load-balancing procedure for the adapter.

He worked faster than he could think, proceeding on little more than instinct and muscle memory. In the back of his mind kindled a spark of fear, waiting for one final huff of misfortune to coax it back into full flame. He pretended it wasn’t there, that he wasn’t being driven by his terror at the prospect of confronting the great nothing on the other side of existence.

The astronauts from the space station stood inside the stairwell to the accelerator ring sublevel, paying out slack from the coil of data cable in front of Torvin. The Austarans’ job was to keep the coil from snagging or crimping—not because anyone feared it might fray or that such kinks would impede its ability to transmit signals, but because they were all aware of just how far Master Chief Ilucci needed to haul the end of the cable to reach the backup control center, and precisely how limited their supply of cable was.

Dastin charged through the door on the other side of the reactor control room, dragging the end of a long spool of duotronic data cable. He paused just inside the control room and fixed his manic gaze on Torvin. “Where does this go?”

Torvin waved him closer. “Here, sir!” He extended his hand.

Dastin hurried forward and passed the cable to him. “We still have a few meters of slack if you need it.”

A fast nod. “We might. Thank you, sir.” Torvin tucked the end of the duotronic cable under his arm while he finished his final adjustments to the adapter’s internal wiring. Once he was satisfied that it might not erupt into sparks and degrade into molten sludge at the first surge of power and data, he looked back at Dastin. “Sir, can I borrow your tricorder?”

“Whatever you need.” Dastin lifted the strap of his tricorder over his head and handed the scanning device to Torvin. “It’s got an open channel to the ship.”

“Excellent.” He checked the firmware and software in the adapter against the code from Lieutenant Hesh’s tricorder, to make sure no errors had slipped in. The comparison was done in the blink of an eye. “Looks good.” He plugged the duotronic cable into the adapter.

His work finished, Torvin froze. He had no orders beyond that moment.

Dastin trained his wide-eyed stare on the adapter. “So . . . is that it?”

“For now. Until the Master Chief plugs the native cables into the backup node.”

The lieutenant nodded. “Then what happens?”

“It either works like a charm, or we all die.”

“Oh.” Dastin seemed okay with that. “So we have a fifty-fifty chance.”

Who was Torvin to deprive an officer of hope? “Yeah, sure. Let’s go with that.”

•   •   •

Ilucci had half a dozen colorful metaphors to describe how hot the accelerator sublevel was, but not one was suitable for sharing with polite company. Sweat poured down his forehead and trickled through his eyebrows and beard. Pushing forward into the stifling swelter, a heavy bundle of data cables wrapped around his left arm, he struggled to draw breath. Each inhalation felt like fire in his chest. With every step he took down the long gradual curve of the sublevel, the harder it became to his lift his feet and soldier on.

A tendril of white-hot electricity leapt from an uninsulated coil along the side of the tunnel. It danced down his side, prickling him with its stinging touch. As the jolts of pain abated, he was left with numb patches on his arms, legs, and torso—just as he had after the last five shocks he’d endured since venturing into the sublevel.

He glowered at the exposed components surrounding him.

I’m really starting to hate this place.

Turning back wasn’t an option. Too many people were counting on him to see this through. His captain. His shipmates. The astronauts. And an entire species, eight billion strong, who had no idea what was happening to them or even that he was here.

A chartreuse fork of lightning sprang from under his feet and seized hold of him.

The next thing Ilucci knew, he was lying on the floor of the tunnel. He blinked twice but couldn’t make his eyes focus. His limbs felt like super-heavy rubber.

Crap. How long was I down?

He lifted his left arm and met resistance. The data cables remained securely coiled around his beefy forearm. He brought his right hand to his throat and checked his pulse.

Weak and irregular. Something’s wrong. Heart’s messed up. Not good.

Grumbling vulgarities, he sat up. Violet spots clouded his vision. Very not good.

Standing was a Herculean labor. On his feet, he swayed like a willow in a storm. He made his feet carry him forward in clumsy, stumbling half-strides, weaving like a drunkard. Through it all, his surroundings refused to be still: They swam and rolled, churned and doubled.

Something caught his right foot. He tripped and fell.

Sharp, brutal pain in his knees, a sharkbite of metal into flesh that cut through his mental haze and sharpened his wits. Feel it, he told himself. Follow it. You can do this.

One hand on the floor, he pushed himself up. He stood and took a moment to inventory his wounds. The knees of his olive jumpsuit were torn open, just like the flesh on his kneecaps. Figures. I just had this pair washed.

He pushed forward, three more halting steps. Then he paused, awash in confusion.

Where am I going? What am I doing down here? He looked at the cables around his arm. I need to patch these into something. But to what? And where is it? He looked back, over his shoulder. What if I passed it? How would I know? Something in his subconscious made him trudge ahead, and he decided to trust it. Can’t stop now. No second-guessing. Go forward.

Moving on was an act of faith, but it was all he had. He needed to trust himself. Even a quick look around revealed no obvious place to connect the wires he was dragging while paying out slack behind himself. If I’d found it already, I’d have known it. Which means it must be ahead of me. I have to believe that.

Two minutes of half-blind staggering later, he found what he had come for.

It was an open door that led to a circular chamber with a recessed center. Stairs led down into the concavity, to a singular round panel that dwelled there, apart from all the others. Certain this must be his destination, Ilucci weaved and blundered toward it. He navigated the first two steps of its staircase with uncertainty before pitching head-first the rest of the way down.

At the bottom he found himself in a tangled heap. Ferric, salty warmth on his lower lip made him sleeve it dry, only to see a crimson bloodstain mar the arm of his jumpsuit.

He used a nearby console to pull himself to his feet. Then he lurched toward the round console in the center of the lowest level of the peculiar room. The alien characters inscribed on the panel meant nothing to him, but he recognized the shapes of its inputs as the female access ports for the assorted male connectors on the cables snaked around his left arm.

Bingo.

In exaggerated motions he unwound the cables from his arm. Lifting each plug one at a time, he guided them into their respective receiver ports on the round console. After the last of the cables was firmly attached, he reached back to the pocket on his jumpsuit’s waistband and pulled out his communicator. He tried to open its antenna grille with a flick of his wrist, only to drop the device. He crawled across the floor in pursuit of it, then pried open its grille with fumbling sausage-fingers before opening a channel. “Ulicci . . . I mean . . . Ilucci to Hesh.”

The science officer’s voice was loud and sharp through the tiny device’s speaker. “Go ahead, Master Chief.”

“Hooked up. Good to go.”

“Understood. I will notify Crewman Torvin. But I urge you to expedite your retreat from the sublevel, Master Chief. We need to force the shutdown in less than four minutes, and there could be severe side effects inside the accelerator ring.”

“Don’t worry ’bout me,” Ilucci said, slurring his words like a drunk. “Just do it!”

“But if you’re still on the sublevel when it purges its charge—”

“I’ll be clear, just get it done.”

“Aye, Master Chief. See you on the ship. Hesh out.”

Ilucci closed his communicator and tottered toward the stairs to the exit.

He tripped over the first step and landed face-down.

Suddenly, the path back to safety looked a good deal longer than he’d expected.

•   •   •

Considering the Sagittarius was parked on a solid Class-M planet, the mayhem that possessed its master systems display in main engineering left Cahow speechless. Every duotronic switch in the ship was overwhelmed by the data feed from the dark energy lab. The Austarans had coupled their data- and power-transfer protocols, probably to facilitate easy hot-swapping of replacement components and stations. The result was a signal muddled with a flood of raw energy, one the ship’s data network wasn’t designed to filter out, and that couldn’t be separated from the information portion of the signal in the scant minutes they had to finish this task.

Relays were burning out all over the ship. Warning lights flashed on the board for the main computer core. Cahow keyed in cross-circuit commands to distribute the load, but the errors multiplied faster than she could improvise solutions.

There’s got to be something I can do. Some way to keep it from frying the computer.

She heard shuffling steps on the deck behind her. A quick turn and she faced Threx, whose face had paled because of blood loss. Despite looking a lot like a bearded corpse, he forced a smile. “What’s the word, K?”

“The usual. Everything’s broken and we’ve got four minutes to live.”

“Plenty of time.” He slumped against the bulkhead. “Spell it out.”

She pointed from one redlining gauge to another. “Data feed from the complex comes with phantom power. As in, a flood of it. We’ve got burnouts galore.” She nodded at the board for the computer core. “Circuits are tripping like crazy. If we don’t rein this in, we’ll lose the core—which we need to simulate a master control node for the complex.”

He grunted. “Can’t we filter out the phantom power with an adapter?”

“No time and not enough parts. Plus we’d need a whole new load of firmware, since they bundle power and signal. For now, proceed on the assumption the two are welded together.”

“Inconvenient, but okay.” He blinked at the board, then squinted, apparently due to difficulty focusing his eyes.

Noting his struggle for visual acuity, Cahow asked, “Should you be out of sickbay?”

The hulking, hairy senior engineer’s mate grumped, “I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I asked you. If I tell Doctor Babitz you’re up here—”

“She’ll call me ‘a stubborn Denobulan pain in the ass,’ just like she did when I walked out of there.” After a moment, he added, “Okay, limped out of there.”

A flurry of new alerts marched across the display. Cahow suppressed her impulse to shoo him away. “Putting aside your poor medical judgment, any ideas what to do about this?”

“Not yet.” Another hard squint. “How hot is that signal from the complex?”

Cahow pointed at a gauge that showed the minor fluctuations in the power load over the data line. “Hot enough to melt its way through our safety buffers in the next minute.”

“Yeah, that’s not good. They’re like corks holding back an ocean.”

“Exactly. So how do we fix it?”

His eyes fluttered closed, and his head drooped forward.

“Threx!” Her shout snapped him back to a state of forced alertness. “You okay?”

“Nothin’ a shot of vivicin wouldn’t fix. Or maybe a cup of the Master Chief’s java.”

“Tell me about—” The idea struck her fully formed. “That’s it! The safeties are burning up because we’re trying to throttle the phantom power load. If we want to protect the core, we need to balance the load, not block it!”

The brawny engineer looked worried. “Do I want to know what you’re planning?”

She was already throwing switches and reconfiguring the capacitors and buffers around the computer core. “We can’t get a clean signal from the complex, or send it one it can use, unless we operate on its level. Instead of trying to strip the phantom power from the feed, we need to increase the power level inside our core to match it, or at least get as close to it as we can. And we need to send back our commands with the same power behind them.”

With her right hand she increased the power output from the impulse core, and with her left she recalibrated the subspace coil inside the computer core to absorb the excess input energy. In between steps she shot a pointed look at Threx. “You gonna lend a hand?”

“I’m not sure I can lift a hand, much less lend one.”

“Then shuffle to your left and stop blocking my light. I have work to do.”

He would have been within his rights to cite her for insubordination, but all he did was chuckle. “Is that any way to talk to your superior?”

“No, but luckily for me, Master Chief’s not here.”

Threx laughed until a hacking cough made him stop. “And have you considered the possibility that pushing that much juice through the core might melt it down?”

“Sure I did. But since the alternative is certain death, I’m doing it anyway.”

“Huh.” A shrug and a nod. “Works for me.”

•   •   •

Surrounded by timers counting down, sensor readouts showing the distortion field ramping up, and system displays reporting the data link between the Sagittarius and the dark energy complex as “incomplete due to signal error,” Hesh felt as if he stood in the center of a storm no one else could perceive. He wanted to snap out orders like the captain, or demand updates like the first officer, but it wasn’t his place to harangue others. His job was to configure and operate the virtual master console for the complex, but until everyone else finished their work, his task would remain halted two steps shy of completion.

Doctor Kavalas paced behind him, his scaly green hands pressed against the side of his head, as if he feared it might swell and pop from anxiety. Whatever he was mumbling, the ship’s universal translator apparently wasn’t hearing it clearly enough to attempt to parse it.

He looked over his shoulder at Kavalas. “Be still, Doctor. Pacing will neither expedite our peers’ efforts nor facilitate our own.”

The normally polite-to-a-fault Austaran glared at Hesh. “My planet is two minutes away from a point of no return that leads to complete destruction. I pace rather than scream. Accept it.”

It was a compelling argument. Duly corrected, Hesh turned back toward the sensor console—and was elated to see the system diagnostics report that the data link to the complex was fully operational. “Doctor! The engineers have solved the signal problem. We are online.”

“Finally!” Kavalas turned and shouldered his way to Hesh’s side in front of the console. “Show me the master console. We don’t have much time.”

Hesh called up the simulated interface on the display above his station. “I have programmed this panel to trigger the functions of the virtual console. Note that the corresponding control for each function is noted in both our languages.”

“I see it,” Kavalas said. His slender digits moved over the console’s buttons and switches with speed and grace. Each function he activated was noted on the overhead screen. After several seconds of frantic action, he stopped and took half a step back from the console. “Damn it.”

“What’s wrong, Doctor? Why have you stopped?”

Kavalas slumped and hung his head in defeat. “The aliens who designed this thing . . . they’ve outwitted us again. Once engaged, this system isn’t meant to be shut down.”

“That doesn’t mean it can’t be turned off, Doctor.” Hesh began studying the scroll of new data from the complex. “It just means we need to be more creative in our methods.”

“No, it’s hopeless.” Kavalas shook his head so hard that his eyestalks bobbled. “It’s over. We’re doomed. There’s no way to turn it off.”

Hesh flipped a few switches and noted the feedback on the virtual console. “That might be true, Doctor. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to break it.” Encouraged by the results of his first acts of minor tampering, he escalated his sabotage. “If we introduce sufficiently serious asymmetries into its power matrix, we might be able to trigger a cross-dimensional implosion that will destroy the siphon and direct all its remaining energy, as well as most of that from its destruction, into a subspatial pocket dimension, where it will—”

“I believe you! Stop talking and do it!”

“I’m almost finished, Doctor. However, I require your administrative command code in order to engage the console’s override and destabilize the power matrix.”

Kavalas reached past him and entered commands in a blur. “It’s done! Finish it!”

“With pleasure, Doctor.” Hesh executed his improvised hack of the siphon’s systems with great haste and exacting precision. The power matrix proved more fragile than he’d thought and decayed into an entropic breakdown within seconds.

Using a reserved control pad on his console, Hesh tapped into the open comm channel to the landing party. “Sagittarius to Captain Terrell!”

“Terrell here. Go ahead.”

“Captain, I’ve triggered a series of catastrophic asymmetries in the complex’s main—”

“Sum up, Lieutenant!”

“I triggered the self-destruct.”

For one brief moment, Hesh thought he saw alarm on the face of Sorak and the chitinous visage of Nizsk. Over the comm, the captain asked, “How long do we have to get out?”

Hesh realized he had made one tragic miscalculation. “I would suggest you all run, sir.”

23

Veils of falling sparks stung Ilucci’s face and neck. He struggled to sustain a wild sprint through the shallow curve of the accelerator tunnel. Rising walls of noxious vapor and toxic smoke made his eyes water and his throat burn. The air was hot and thin, making him gasp like a drowning man, and he fought to avoid irregular gaps in the waffle-grate floor panels, which became hard to see as the handful of emergency lights still working in the tunnel faltered.

Where’s the stairwell? It has to be here!

He looked down and followed the data cables. As long as he didn’t lose sight of them, he knew he hadn’t missed the doorway back to the control center. A distant muted boom led to a persistent rumbling that rained dust and fragments of broken concrete onto his head. Through the haze and darkness he was encouraged by a hint of bright light—until its luminance swelled, and he heard the roar of rolling flames.

Falling was easy. Landing on his elbows and chin was hard. He pushed his face against the floor as a vermillion fireball tumbled past scant centimeters above him, crisping the hair on the back of his head. When darkness returned, he knew the conflagration had passed. He stood and lurched forward, fighting fatigue and asphyxiation with every step.

Several secondary eruptions rocked the complex, then the last few emergency lights expired, plunging the accelerator ring into total darkness. Only distant, intermittent flashes from blasts farther down the line hinted at the shape of the space.

Don’t panic, Ilucci told himself. You’re okay. He took a knee and patted the floor until his hands found the cables. Gripping one, he got up slowly to make sure it had enough slack that he could stand while holding it. Letting it slip through his half-open fist, he continued forward. Better than bread crumbs any day.

All hell broke loose—gouts of fire and storms of shrapnel—as Ilucci followed the slender thread of cable like a modern-day Theseus fleeing the Minotaur’s maze. Then came a monstrous bolt of electricity, a crackling branch of green lightning that slammed into him and launched him against the wall. After a hiccup of consciousness he was back on the ground.

He struggled to open his eyes. His mind felt adrift in the dark, not even half aware of his body. It was a struggle to force his right arm to paw the ground in search of his lifeline to escape. Then a bright light blinded him, and he wondered if he was passing over to some other plane of existence, in defiance of all his rational expectations.

The captain’s voice dashed his hopes for an afterlife.

“Master Chief! Are you all right? Speak to me!”

A mumble over a tongue that tasted like tin. “I’m toast. Leave me.”

Terrell grabbed him by his jumpsuit’s collar and wrenched him up to a sitting pose, then hefted the stocky engineer over his shoulders in a classic firefighter’s carry.

The flashlight beam bobbed as Terrell carried Ilucci back down the accelerator tunnel. If Ilucci had thought the darkness was disorienting, catching fleeting glimpses of upside-down details in the murk was even more confusing. Then they reached the dim glow of the doorway, and Terrell grunted as he started climbing the stairs with Ilucci on his back.

“Skip, put me down.”

Another labored upward step. “Can you walk?”

“Dunno. But even if I have to crawl, it’s better than making you haul me up the stairs.”

The captain set Ilucci on his feet. A wave of vertigo left Ilucci unsteady and holding on to the handrail, then he nodded at his commander. “Let’s move.”

Terrell bounded up the stairs two at a time. Ilucci trudged up the steps, but within seconds the captain realized Ilucci was falling behind. He came back, looped Ilucci’s arm across his shoulders. “Stay with me, Master Chief.” Together they climbed toward the exit.

“Dammit, Skip, I’m just slowing you down.”

“I know.” A cocky grin. “You’re my handicap, Chief. How would it look if I was the first one out of danger?”

“Well, okay.” Ilucci pushed himself to pick up the pace, for both their sakes. “As long as I’m the one doing you a favor, I can live with that.”

“Not if you don’t get a move on, you won’t. And neither will I.”

Their hard upward march became a tortured jog. “Roger that, Skip.”

•   •   •

No one would ever mistake Torvin for an athlete, but if there was one physical activity at which he excelled, it was running for his life. In his youth, he had beefed up his stamina and honed his knack for hurdling over obstacles by fleeing bullies in the sublevels of the decaying arcology he had called home. As a member of Starfleet, he did most of his running to evade alien monsters and reach minimum safe distance from explosions of one sort or another. On this particular day of adventure in the Federation’s service, it was the latter that had him hauling ass and keeping up with the longer-limbed Lieutenant Dastin.

No sooner had Hesh told the landing party to evacuate the complex than the explosions had started. Fire belched from the control center’s tiers of workstations, and smoke poured from every ventilation grill. Then had come a massive concussion from deep below, somewhere in the bowels of the dark energy siphon’s machinery, and the rest of the complex had begun collapsing in on itself—starting with the ceilings in the main corridors, which caved in at multiple points, leaving Torvin and Dastin in a frantic race to find a safe path out before the rest of the complex converted itself to smoking rubble.

Dastin bolted past a T-shaped intersection with hardly a glance to his right. Torvin, who was not quite as fast as the field scout, noticed a faint glimmer at the end of the other passageway. Stumbling to a halt, he called out, “Sir! This way!”

It was almost funny watching Dastin halt his headlong flight. Going from full run to dead stop left him swinging his arms to recover his balance. He jogged back to Torvin, who pointed through the smoke. “See it, sir? That’s light from the storm outside.”

“Good eye! Let’s go!” They resumed running. Dastin pulled out his communicator and flipped it open on the move. “Dastin to Sagittarius!”

Sorak answered. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

“The direct route from the control center’s blocked. Inform all personnel still inside the complex to follow the outer passage to the second transverse, then follow it to the exit.”

“Understood. Be informed, Mister Dastin, you have three minutes to reach the ship.”

“Thanks for the tip! Dastin out!” He closed the communicator with a flick of his wrist.

Torvin was in the lead as they each sprang from a fallen slab of ceiling concrete and rebounded off the nearby wall to vault over and around a large obstruction caused by a roof collapse. Only as he landed on the far side did Torvin glance back and see a green hand reaching out from beneath the titanic mound of debris. He caught Dastin as the man landed beside him and pointed. “It’s Taryl! She’s trapped!”

“Help me dig her out!” Dastin threw himself at the jagged hunks of broken concrete, which were mixed with a twisted jumble of construction materials. Torvin fell in beside him, and within seconds they had hurled aside everything they were strong enough to move, revealing the crux of the problem: A heavy crossbeam had landed across Taryl’s legs, trapping her. Dastin tried to pull her free, but she was stuck fast.

Torvin eyed the wreckage. “We need a lever! Something strong enough to move that beam.” He spotted a long section of broken metal pipe and jumped toward it. “Find something to put under it!” He snapped up the pipe and turned to see Dastin pivoting in confusion. Torvin pointed out a hunk of concrete that looked strong enough to act as a fulcrum but also small enough for Dastin to move. “That one! Put it right there!”

He waited until Dastin positioned the fulcrum chunk, then he set the end of the pipe under the crossbeam and positioned its length above the second pseudo-boulder. Then he pulled on his improvised lever with all his might—and nothing shifted. Not one millimeter.

Dastin grabbed the pipe with him and added his strength. This time the crossbeam shifted with a gritty scrape. “Pull her out,” Dastin said through clenched teeth.

“Can you hold it alone?”

Wincing from the agony of exertion, Dastin nodded. As Torvin let go of the pipe, Dastin shifted himself underneath it to let his own weight do some of the work.

Torvin ran to Taryl, grabbed her wrists, and dragged her out from under the crossbeam. At the first safe moment to do so, he shouted, “Clear!” Dastin let go of the lever. The crossbeam thundered to the floor, sending tremors through the floor and filling the corridor with gray dust.

The two men each draped one of Taryl’s arms across their shoulders—Torvin on her left, Dastin on her right—and resumed their flight to the exit, making the best speed they could with her as a dead-weight passenger between them.

She let out a small groan as they portered her out the complex’s door into whipping wind and rain. Her eyes cracked open, and her head rolled drunkenly from one side to the other. She squinted at Dastin. “You saved me?”

“Not me.” He nodded at Torvin. “Tor’s the reason you’re still alive.”

She swiveled her head his way. “Thought it was your lucky day. Guess it’s mine, too.”

The young engineer had nothing witty, romantic, or charming to say, so he just smiled.

I guess so.

•   •   •

Terrell and Ilucci lumbered out of the complex into a raging downpour and blazing electric fury. Groans of roaring wind and rain had enveloped the facility, erasing the storm’s once-calm eye. Just a dozen meters away, Torvin and Dastin handed off the half-conscious Taryl to Doctor Babitz and Nurse Tan Bao inside the cargo hold of the Sagittarius.

Razka sprinted through the lashing torrents to meet the captain and chief engineer. “Give me your other arm, Master Chief!” Ilucci lifted his left arm. Razka ducked under the outstretched limb, then rose up beneath it to help Terrell bear the man’s weight. “Everyone else is already aboard! We need to move! The complex is imploding!”

Precisely on cue, a fearsome blast lifted the roof of the main building behind them. A column of orange flames, black smoke, and smoldering wreckage flew up into the tempest, which scattered the conflagration in all directions, a grand guignol of fiery destruction.

Fueled by fear and adrenaline, Terrell and Razka hefted Ilucci off the ground and quickened their retreat to the ship. Massive blocks of red-hot metal, broken concrete, and smoke-wreathed ejecta ranging from furniture to mangled electronics slammed down all around them, a steady barrage that pursued them as they fled. Twisted and burning, an office chair caromed off the nose of the Sagittarius. A scorched office machine shattered into countless fragments as it crashed against the ship’s starboard nacelle.

Terrell and Razka dodged side to side, forced into a slalom by the blazing obstacles that abruptly littered their path. Another boneshaking blast knocked the air from Terrell’s lungs and flattened him, Razka, and Ilucci a few meters shy of the ramp. He wanted to curse, but he struggled to draw breath, much less speak. Then he noticed the world around him had gone strangely quiet, and he realized the blast wave had left him half-deaf.

Through the swirling dust and stinging rain, he saw Razka and Ilucci were both stunned, just as he was. So much for making a graceful exit.

Hands reached down and grabbed Razka and Ilucci. Terrell had barely registered that Dastin and Tan Bao were dragging the two noncoms back to the ship when Doctor Babitz flipped him over and wrapped her arms around his chest. He had always thought of the germophobe physician as slight and bookish, yet she hauled him with speed and rock-solid balance across muddy ground and up the ramp.

He couldn’t hear a word she said as she laid him on his back in the cargo bay, so he turned his attention to Lieutenant Hesh, who used an entrenching tool—Starfleet’s overly fancy word for a sharp-edged shovel—to sever the data line that linked the ship’s computer to the complex’s backup control center. He tossed the complex’s share of the cable out of the ship and pressed the button to raise the ramp.

Doctor Babitz waved one of her medical gadgets next to Terrell’s head. In a matter of seconds, the hearing in his left ear recovered enough for him to hear the instrument’s whirring, the hydraulic whine of the ramp being pulled up, and the resonant thunk of it making contact with the hull. As the good doctor worked her medical magic on Terrell’s right ear, Hesh stepped over to a wall panel and thumbed open an intraship channel. “Hesh to Bridge. All aboard, ramp secure.”

“Copy that,” Theriault said, her voice clear over the speaker. “Brace for some chop—we’re taking off!” Hesh closed the channel, darted to the ladder, and took hold of its rungs.

Even if Terrell had still been deaf, he’d have recognized the impulse engine’s familiar vibrations through the deck beneath him. He turned his head to see Doctor Babitz treating Ilucci’s right ear. The ordinarily prim and pristine surgeon was dripping wet and muddy. Even her trademark blond bun had come partially undone. Seeing her disheveled made Terrell grin. “Finally got your hands dirty, eh, Doctor?”

A sly smile peeked out from behind her façade of clinical detachment. “Anything for you, Captain.” She shifted her humming gizmo to treat Ilucci’s left ear.

Ilucci turned his head toward Terrell. “Thanks for not leaving me, Skip.”

“You’re welcome. By the way—that’s two you owe me, Master Chief.”

“No offense, but I hope that’s a marker you never have to cash in.”

Terrell breathed a long sigh and closed his tired eyes. “Amen to that.”

•   •   •

Transfixed by the vision of fire and rain on the main viewscreen, Theriault white-knuckled the armrests of the command chair. “Nizsk? We really need to go. As in right now.”

“I have only partial power.” The helm officer made frantic adjustments at her console. “Until I balance the thrust, I will be unable to maintain level flight.”

Impacts pealed through the hull as more detritus blasted from the complex bounced off the ship. “I don’t care about level, Ensign, I just want to be somewhere other than here.”

“Aye, sir. Engaging thrusters. Brace for liftoff.”

The purring of the impulse core became a sickly whine as the ship struggled to slip gravity’s surly bonds. For a few seconds, the ship levitated upward while maintaining a level attitude. Then the horizon climbed toward the top of the screen, leaving nothing on the viewscreen but the fast-collapsing ruins of the dark energy complex.

Theriault’s eyes widened in alarm. “Helm? What’s happening?”

“As I tried to say, Commander, attitude controls are not responding.”

“And we’re staring at the ground because—?”

“Because the bow of the ship is pointed directly at it.”

“That’s what I was afraid you were—”

Words failed her as the image onscreen became a vision of hell. The complex caved in and vanished into a great swirl of earth and flame. At the heart of the vortex was a dark sphere, a void in the fabric of reality. Tendrils of indigo light danced around it, appearing and disappearing without apparent pattern or purpose, but they annihilated anything and everything they touched.

Next came the screaming. Horrific otherworldly wails of noise assailed the ship, which shuddered and started to sink toward the yawning pit of destruction.

A sick twist of terror in Theriault’s gut churned sour bile into her throat. “Helm! Report!”

Nizsk struggled to make the helm obey her commands. “The dark energy core is consuming the storm—and acting as a magnet for all the distortion effects it created.” She looked back at Theriault. “And to get to the core, it all has to go through us.”

“Full reverse! Get us as far from that thing as you can!”

“We can barely hold position,” Nizsk said, contending with the stuttering helm console. “Unless we restore full power in the next ten seconds, we’ll be pulled—”

The ship ceased its quaking, and the helm controls flared back to steady brightness. Nizsk keyed commands into the helm, and the cataclysmic vista on the viewscreen retreated and vanished behind a thick blanket of clouds blackened by rain and limned by lightning. Within seconds, the forward perspective recovered its view of the horizon, and the haze of atmosphere faded to reveal the perfect clarity of space.

Only then did Nizsk pause in her efforts to swivel her chair and tell Theriault, “Full power restored, Commander. We’re clear of the storm and have assumed a standard orbit.”

Too grateful and relieved to mock the pilot for stating the obvious, Theriault nodded once and replied without sarcasm, “Thank you, Ensign.” And thank you, Cahow and Threx. She made a mental note to add commendations to the two engineers’ personnel records.

Sorak left his usual post to check the readouts at the sensor console. He stared into the blue glow of the hooded display while adjusting controls with both hands simultaneously. “Good news, Commander. The imminent coronal mass ejection on Anura’s parent star appears to be abating. Based on its current dissipation rate, I predict it will degrade to an impressive but ultimately harmless solar flare in approximately one hour and eleven minutes.”

“What about the distortion field on the planet?”

He adjusted the sensors and peered once more at the hooded screen. “Fading rapidly. The implosion of the dark energy complex appears to be complete. The siphon has been disrupted, and it is no longer producing new distortion waves.” He stood and faced her. “The effects of the improbability field will taper off and vanish entirely within the next four hours.”

Theriault drew a deep breath and exhaled to expel the tension she had let build up inside her over the past day. She aimed a sidelong look at Sorak. “You don’t drink, do you?”

“If you mean intoxicants, no.”

“Your loss.” She got up from the command chair and headed aft. “You have the conn. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the mess hall—teaching the food synthesizer how to make a gimlet.”

24

Just before Captain Terrell arrived at the door to sickbay, it opened and disgorged the eight Austaran astronauts, who each shook his hand and thanked him, one by one, before they descended the ladder to the cargo deck. Their words of gratitude and their valedictions came so quickly after one another that he barely had time to acknowledge each before the next began. Secretly, he was relieved at the brevity of their farewells, as the hectic pace of the moment made it possible for him to hide the fact that he hadn’t learned any of their names except their commander’s. Just as fortunate, Beiana was the last one to exit sickbay and seize Terrell’s hand.

“We can never thank you or your crew enough, Captain. Not just for saving our lives on the station, but for all you’ve done for our world and our people—and the risks you faced to do it.” He clasped both of his enormous, long-fingered hands around Terrell’s right hand. “You all have oceans of kindness running in your veins, and my people will remember this—always.”

Terrell bowed his head. “You’re more than welcome, Commander.” He extricated his hand from Beiana’s grasp. “We’re glad we could help in your hour of need.”

Beiana gently grasped Terrell’s shoulder. “Until we meet again, may sea and stars protect you, my friend.” With that, he followed his crew down the ladder to the cargo bay, whose ramp Terrell heard being opened to permit their departure to Anura’s surface.

Free of the parade of astronauts, he entered sickbay. Doctor Babitz stood between the two biobeds, checking the readouts from the displays above each one. In the bed on her left lay Ensign Taryl; in the other was Petty Officer Threx. To Terrell’s right, Nurse Tan Bao removed a dermal regeneration patch from Doctor Kavalas’s forearm. The Austaran scientist tested the newly formed tissue with a gingerly touch of his fingertips. “Remarkable,” he said, with hushed awe. “If not for the discoloration, you’d never know I’d been burned.”

“The color will normalize over the next day,” Tan Bao said. “The synthetic pigments in the patch will adapt to mimic the natural pigments in your epidermis. By tomorrow, no one will ever be able to tell you were injured.”

Kavalas stared in fascination at his arm. “Incredible. Simply incredible.” He looked up and noticed Terrell. “Captain! Is the report from your bridge crew correct? The improbability field vanished?”

“All except a few lingering pockets,” Terrell said. “But their intensity is now only a tiny fraction of what it was before we shut down the siphon. The last of the effects will fade within the hour. Welcome back to normal, Doctor.”

“I’m sure Commander Beiana and his crew have already thanked you—”

“They have. Thoroughly.”

After a humbled pause, Kavalas continued. “Still, it seems only right to thank you and your crew again, Captain. If not for you, my error would have condemned my entire world to annihilation.” A melancholy air overtook him. “I owe you a debt I can never repay.”

“You owe us nothing.” He picked up Kavalas’s jacket from atop Doctor Babitz’s desk and handed it to him. “But if you want to thank us, do it by learning from your mistakes and charting a new path forward for your people.”

Kavalas pulled on his jacket. “I don’t know how to do that. When I leave this ship, I’ll need to face my tribune and my people, and own up to my part in this catastrophe. After that? My career will be over. My scientific legacy will be reduced to a cautionary tale.”

“Not necessarily,” Terrell said. “Your career’s not over unless you stop working. Which means there’s still time for you to change your narrative.”

His words of encouragement were met by a dubious frown. “How? Who would ever let me near their research? Why would any of my people ever trust me again?”

“Because I’ll tell your tribune, and anyone else who’s willing to listen, that we couldn’t have saved this world without you. Yes, you’ll admit your errors. But we’ll vouch for your noble intentions—and your courage in correcting your own mistake.”

Kavalas was taken aback by Terrell’s proposal. “But—I think we both know that’s not entirely true, Captain. I played a minor part. Why give me such unearned praise?”

He led Kavalas out of sickbay, toward the ladder. “Because I think you really did have the best of intentions. And because I think that people of good conscience deserve a second chance after they’ve made an honest mistake.” He stopped beside the ladder and turned back to face the humbled scientist. “What matters now is how hard you’re willing to work to tip the scales of your life’s measure back toward virtue.”

Kavalas nodded. “Thank you, Captain. You must be a wise man among your people.”

“Not as wise as the man who once wrote ‘No man is as good as the best thing he has ever done, or as bad as the worst thing he has ever done.’ Don’t lose heart, Doctor. We all have our moments of triumph as well as our moments of shame.”

Kavalas was still processing that thought when Theriault lurched out of the mess hall holding a cocktail glass half-filled with a pale greenish-white beverage. “I did it! I mastered the synthetic gimlet! Who wants—” She collided with Terrell and sloshed half her drink across the front of his jumpsuit. “Oops! I guess that means drinks are on the captain!”

Terrell looked at the sodden front of his uniform, then at his besotted first officer, and finally back at Kavalas. “My case in point.”

•   •   •

It was the craziest game Carod had ever played, and it wasn’t even a game, really. Flipping a sun-star token, a relic from the age when Austarans had used metal disks as currency, was more of a distraction, a way to pass the time while exiled from the house by her parents, who had spent most of the last day and night fretting over some mysterious voices on the radio that they’d forbidden her to hear. Cast out onto the roofed porch of her family’s vacation cabin, she had contented herself with watching the sun set and the moons rise. With watching the stars wheel past overhead. With waking to the glow of sunlight piercing the forest.

And with flipping the coin. Its two sides were distinctive. One bore the image of a circle inside a five-pointed star; the other, a sunburst. Carod had never been good at math, but she had understood enough to know that when one flipped a sun-star coin, half the time it should come up sun, and the other half it should land stars. It was a symbol of fairness.

One idle flip after another, she had taken only passing notice of the results. Then she had realized she had counted no fewer than seven consecutive results of sun. Intrigued, she had decided to keep count, to see if what her teacher had told her was true. A hundred flips later, she’d seen a hundred more suns, and no stars. Her parents had been too involved in their own drama to pay attention to her discovery, but she had kept going anyway.

All evening, even after the sun had gone down, she had flipped the coin. All night, until she had grown too tired to keep counting. And again this morning, as soon as she had rubbed the sleep from her eyestalks. Attentive and dutiful, she had recorded the result of each flip with a notch on the posts of the covered porch. She flipped it again, watched it spin and tumble over her head, then caught it in her palm and slapped it onto the back of her hand.

For the 2,319th time in a row, it landed sun-up.

Another flip. It had almost become rote, she had repeated the action so many times. The bright coppery disk spun and flashed in the morning light, then fell back to her hand. She caught it and slapped it onto the back of her other hand once more.

Stars.

She stared at it, dumbfounded. After all this time, after what had seemed an unbreakable streak of perverted fortune, the weirdness had come to an end.

She flipped it twice more, just to see what would happen.

First it came up sun. Then it landed stars.

Carod pocketed the coin. So much for that.

All was quiet inside the cabin, so she slipped inside and made her way to the kitchen to fix herself breakfast. Her parents were asleep, but she knew she wanted to be in and out as quickly as she could. A beautiful day was dawning, and she didn’t want to miss a moment of it.

•   •   •

As homecomings went, this one was more subdued than most. The eight returning astronauts were welcomed back to Anura by a sizeable throng of well-wishers, and there was more than a moderate degree of surprise at the role an alien vessel had played in their rescue, despite the Austarans’ previous knowledge of the existence of starfaring intelligent species.

Terrell ascribed the muted celebrations to the fact that so much of Anura’s capital city was still smoldering from its close brush with cataclysm. Many of its great towers had been shattered by the meteoric bombardment. Others had toppled as victims of earthquakes. A few had collapsed without apparent cause, victims of nothing more than improbability run amok.

Watching the astronauts shake hands with members of the public, Terrell turned to Tribune Saranda, who stood beside him on the top level of a scaffold hastily erected in one of the capital’s sprawling, beautifully landscaped parks. “It was a lovely ceremony, Madam Tribune.”

“Thank you. A shame so many could not be here to share it with us.”

He had no words of solace that were equal to the hundreds of thousands of souls who had perished on Anura over the last day and a half. All he could offer her was a sad nod of agreement and a soft reply of, “Very true.”

She turned away from the festivities transpiring below. Terrell pivoted with her and noticed a subtle shift in her countenance, from one of quiet hope to one of somber reflection. “We have paid a terrible price for ambition. We thought we were ready to plunder the secrets of species much older and more advanced than ourselves. But we were wrong.” She turned her gaze toward the horizon. “We would have lost everything if not for the valiant deeds of you and your crew, Captain.” Her mien brightened as she faced him. “Thank you for showing us that some alien cultures are worthy of our trust. Now, tell me—how can we thank you?”

“First,” Terrell said, “you could make certain your scientists stop tinkering with dark energy technology.”

Saranda slowly inflated her vocal sac, then nodded. “That technology will be banned, Captain, I give you my word. Now that your vessel has shown us that matter-antimatter power is both safe and reliable, that will be the energy source we rely upon as we look to begin our own journeys to the stars.” She turned a despondent look at her damaged, smoke-shrouded capital. “Though I fear we have much work to do here, rebuilding our own world, before we seek to plant our banner on others.”

“The good news, Madam Tribune, is that you don’t have to do it alone—not if you don’t want to. If your people would like help rebuilding—and taking your first steps to the stars—the Federation would be glad to offer its assistance, without cost or preconditions.”

“Your people are that generous? They would give so much, and ask nothing in return?”

“Nothing but friendship,” Terrell said. “Which would be yours to give or refuse.”

She offered him her hand. “I would be a fool to deny my people such a friend.” They shook hands. “Captain, please tell your Federation that on behalf of Anura and the Austaran people, I formally request its assistance—and we will welcome its friendship.”

“It’ll be my pleasure, Madam Tribune.”

Now this, Terrell reflected, is cause for celebration.

25

The entire crew was back aboard, and all systems were once again functioning properly. All the damage the Sagittarius had sustained over the past two days had been repaired sufficiently for the ship to resume normal operations. Now that the Archer-class scout vessel was safely back in orbit above Anura, things had quieted down enough that Crewman Torvin had been able to persuade the Master Chief to let him slip out of engineering to attend to some personal business.

Now he halted in the open doorway of sickbay, a bundle of nerves in a baggy green jumpsuit, his finlike Tiburonian ears burning with the heat of anxiety and embarrassment. He had hoped to find Ensign Taryl still confined to a biobed, recovering from the injuries she had suffered during the escape from the dark energy complex. Instead, she was on her feet and rolling up the sleeves of her own green coverall.

Think of something to say, Torvin exhorted himself. Something cool or clever or—

She noticed him and turned his way. “Hey, Tor.”

“Hey.” He felt like he might just collapse and die on the spot. Real clever.

Taryl circled around the biobed and walked his way. “Doc says I’m cleared for duty.”

“That’s great. But you know, maybe you, um, should take it easy for a day or two.”

She shook her head. “Nah. I feel great.” A playful poke at his chest. “Thanks to you.”

He tried to be nonchalant. “Um, well, y’know—I helped.”

His attempt at modesty seemed to amuse her. “Dastin already told me that you were the one who saw me. He said if you hadn’t stopped him, he’d have kept on going.”

“Well, yeah, but I went first. If he’d been on point—”

“He also said you rigged that lever out of junk.” She pressed her warm, soft green palm to his pale cheek, preempting his next attempt to deflect praise. “I wouldn’t be alive if not for you, Tor. You saved my life.” She withdrew her hand and smiled. “You’re a good friend.”

The word friend cut him to the bone. He tried to hide his bitter disappointment.

“Thanks. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

She tilted her head as she studied his reaction. “You sure you’re okay?”

He doubled down on his air of feigned cool. “What? Me? Sure.”

A knowing smirk magnified her charms. “This isn’t about that kiss, is it?”

“What? No. No, of course not. I mean, I know that was just—it was crazy, right? I mean, that kind of thing doesn’t happen every day. It was one in a billion, right?”

A winsome smile. “One in a billion? Yeah, I’d say so.”

“I figured.” An abashed slump of his shoulders. “I knew I couldn’t get that lucky twice in one lifetime.”

She reached up and caressed the edge of his jaw with the back of her hand, then traced his lower lip with her thumb. “There’s more to love than luck, Tor.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, but as she stepped past him and left sickbay, he beamed with joy. Right up until the moment he turned to face Captain Terrell.

“What are you smiling about, Torvin?”

Shocked back into the moment, Torvin felt his grin vanish. Theriault and the Master Chief followed the captain into sickbay. The three of them fixed their stern sights on Torvin. Like a small herbivore confronted by three apex predators, he backpedaled against a biobed, swallowed hard, and muttered, “Nothing, sir.”

The captain glanced back at the first officer and the chief engineer, then looked young Torvin in the eye. “I’ve just had a very interesting conversation with the XO and the Master Chief about your performance over the last two days.”

“Really? About me?” Torvin was so terrified, he thought he might vomit. “And?”

Terrell declared in a forceful tenor, “It’s led me to an inescapable conclusion.”

Sweat rolled down the back of Torvin’s neck. “What’s that, sir?”

“It’s become clear to me that this ship has no place for enlisted men. Do you understand what I’m saying to you right now?”

Trembling and unable to think, Torvin defaulted to the truth. “No, sir.”

“I’m saying you should get back to your post . . . Petty Officer Torvin.”

Cognitive dissonance left Torvin paralyzed for a few seconds while he parsed the captain’s words. Then Terrell smiled, as did Theriault and the Master Chief.

Ilucci stepped forward and slapped Torvin’s back. “Congrats, Tor! You’re officially a petty officer, third class—a noncom, just like the rest of us tool-pushers!”

Fear was erased by relief and joy. Filled with hope, Torvin dreamed once more of Taryl. He asked Ilucci in a confidential whisper, “So, can noncoms and officers—”

“Not a chance.”

“Damn.”

•   •   •

Theriault finished her circuit of the bridge, pleased to find everything back in order. The usual suspects were at their stations: Sorak manned the aft tactical console. Lieutenant Hesh monitored the sensor feeds. Nizsk was at the helm, Razka kept watch over the communications board, and Captain Terrell was back in the command chair. And that much was right in the universe.

She sidled up to the center seat to deliver her report to the captain. “All systems check out, sir. Ready for warp speed on your command.”

“Glad to hear it, Number One.”

Razka looked toward them. “Captain? I just received the reply from Starfleet Command. The Federation Council has approved an aid package for Anura. A fleet of civilian relief vessels is already en route from Starbase Pacifica. ETA, nine weeks.”

The captain nodded. “Very good, Chief. Let the Austarans know help is on the way.”

“Aye, sir.”

Terrell looked at the main viewscreen. “Helm, stand by to break orbit. We’ll go as soon as Chief Razka relays our message to the tribune’s office.”

Nizsk checked her gauges as she answered, “Standing by, sir.”

Theriault regarded the stars with hope and anticipation. “Where to next, sir? Back to the survey we cut short?”

“No such luck,” the captain said. “New orders from Starfleet. They want us to press on, into the next unexplored sector of the Taurus Reach.”

“Are we looking for anything in particular?”

“Not yet, Number One. I guess they just want us to see what’s out there.”

“Huh. A scout ship on a scouting mission.” She teased him with a wry half-smirk. “What’re the odds?”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks go out to my wife, Kara, for continuing to forgive my flaws, adore my quirks, and encourage my dreams. She is why I am not homeless and/or dead.

Also due their measures of praise are my agent, Lucienne Diver; my partners in literary crime on this series, Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore; our editors, Margaret Clark and Ed Schlesinger; and our cover artist and accidental muse, Rob Caswell.

In the past I have heaped accolades upon bourbon for its role in my creative efforts. While it played its part in the crafting of this novel, this time around the most valuable player in my liquor cabinet was vodka. Thank you, vodka. This book would not exist without the courage you gave me to face the blank page, night after night. You rule.

Last but not least, I am thankful to all of you who buy and read these tales of mine. Knowing that my flights of narrative fancy entertain and amuse you is what makes all these efforts worthwhile.

Until our next trip to the stars, bon chance!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

On advice of counsel, David Mack denies everything.

Learn more on his official website:

www.davidmack.pro

FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/David-Mack

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

SimonandSchuster.com

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