“Giddy-up,” she grunted, doing her best to hide the agony the movement was inflicting on her mangled limb.

Anderson took a few unsteady steps, struggling to find a way to move as quickly as possible while balancing the awkward load. By the time they emerged from the passage into the large stalactite-filled cavern he had found an awkward but effective cadence somewhere between a gallop and a trot. And then the timer detonated.

From the main laboratory in the heart of the research base an enormous ball of heat, fire, and force burst loose, laying waste as it swept through the complex. Doors were warped and ripped off hinges, floors buckled, walls melted.

Far away in the natural cavern the effects of the explosion were felt in three distinct stages. First, the ground seemed to heave under Anderson’s feet, sending him tumbling to the ground. Dah screamed as

her leg slammed against the floor, but her voice was drowned out by the second phase of the explosion -

a deafening boom that echoed throughout the cavern and drowned out every other sound. The final

phase was a wall of hot air propelled by the blast spilling out from the passage to roll over them, pinning them to the ground, burning their lungs and leaving them gasping for air.

Anderson struggled to breathe, and for a second he nearly blacked out. He fought to maintain consciousness as the invisible hand squeezing his chest and pinning him to the ground slowly released its pressure while the super-heated air expelled by the blast dispersed itself throughout the cavern.

They weren’t out of danger yet. The force of the blast had rocked the cavern. The strings of artificial lights ripped loose, swaying wildly and casting bizarre, crazy shadows throughout the room. And though his ears were still ringing, he could plainly hear the loud, sharp cracks of stress fractures appearing in the walls and ceiling as the cavern began to collapse.

“O’Reilly!” he shouted into his radio, hoping the three men in the elevator could still hear him. “This place is caving in! Get to the surface! Now!”

“What about you and Dah?” The reply was barely audible inside Anderson’s helmet, though from the tone it was clear the corporal was shouting.

“Send the elevator back down after you get to the top,” he snapped. “Now move! That’s an order!”

Not waiting for a reply, Anderson scrambled over to check on Gunnery Chief Dah. She had passed out; the pain in her leg too much to bear on top of the physical trauma of the explosion’s aftershocks. Summoning what was left of his strength, the lieutenant managed to stand up, slinging her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

He began a desperate, staggering race to freedom as the chamber disintegrated around them. Stalactites plunged down like enormous jagged limestone spears, the fragile hold they had maintained on the ceiling for thousands of years finally failing. Huge cracks were spreading through the floor, walls, and

roof, causing great chunks of rock to shear off and tumble to the floor where they exploded into dust and rubble on impact.

Anderson did his best to block it all out. There was nothing he could do but keep moving and pray they weren’t crushed from above, so he forced his mind to focus solely on placing one foot in front of the other. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it. The swinging strings of lights caused a strobelike effect that made it difficult to keep his balance on the uneven ground. He was bruised and beaten from the concussion of the blast. Exhaustion and fatigue were setting in. The muscles in his thighs and calves were burning.

The adrenaline rush he’d felt at the beginning of the mission was gone: his body simply had nothing left to give. He moved slower and slower, the unconscious woman draped over his shoulders feeling as heavy as the massive slabs of rock raining down around them.

When the elevator finally came into view he wasn’t surprised to see O’Reilly, Shay, and Lee still waiting for him. Seeing their commander staggering along like the living dead, all three of them rushed out to help. Anderson was too exhausted to object. He simply let Dah slide from his shoulders into the grasp of the two privates, one taking her under the shoulders and the other under her hips.

With the burden removed he lost his balance and nearly fell over, but O’Reilly was there to catch him. Leaning on the corporal for support, he managed to take the last twenty steps into the elevator before collapsing in the corner.

The doors slammed shut and the car began the long journey up to the top. The ride was far from smooth: the elevator moved in fits and starts as the gears screeched and squealed. Nobody said anything, as if they were afraid mentioning their precarious position might make it worse. Anderson simply lay where he had fallen, panting and wheezing as he tried to catch his breath.

By the time they reached the top and spilled out into the safety of the surface he had recovered enough to speak.

“I told you not to wait for us,” he chastised his team as they made their way back to the Hastings, the

privates still carrying Dah’s unconscious body between them. “I should bust each of you down a full rank for disobeying orders!” He paused to let the statement sink in. “That, or recommend you all for medals.”

First Lieutenant Kahlee Sanders was smart: she was one of the Alliance’s top computer and systems technicians. She was attractive: other soldiers at the base were always trying to pick her up when she wasn’t on duty. She was young: at twenty-six, she could expect at least another half century of healthy, productive years ahead of her. And she knew she was on the verge of making the biggest mistake of her life.

She glanced warily around the bar, sipping nervously at her drink as she pressed herself deeper into her small corner, trying not to draw attention. Average in both height and build, Kahlee’s only really distinguishing feature was her shoulder-length blond hair — a genetically recessive trait, natural blonds were nearly extinct. But her hair was a dirty blond, with streaks edging toward shades of brown… and there were still plenty of humans who dyed their hair blond anyway. She didn’t normally stand out in a crowd. That made it easy for her to escape notice here — the Black Hole was packed.

Most of the crowd was human. Not surprising, considering the bar was an upscale establishment within walking distance of the spaceports on Elysium, the Alliance’s oldest and largest colony in the Skyllian Verge. But at least a third of the patrons were made up of other species. Batarians were the most predominant; she could see their narrow heads bobbing on their sinewy necks among the crowd. They had oversized nostrils and large, triangular noses that were almost flat against the face, the tip pointing straight down to their thin lips and pointy chin. Their faces were covered with hair so short and fine it looked like the soft velvet of a horse’s nose, though the hair grew longer and thicker around the mouth. A flat stripe of ridged cartilage ran along the tops of their skulls and down the backs of their necks.

But the most unique characteristic of the species was undoubtedly the fact that they possessed two distinct sets of eyes. One pair was set wide in prominent bony sockets protruding from the corners of their face, giving their skulls a noticeable diamond shape. The second set of eyes was smaller and closer together, set higher on the face, just beneath the middle of the forehead. Batarians had a habit of looking at you with all four orbs simultaneously, making it difficult for a binocular species to know which pair to focus on during conversation. The inability to maintain eye contact was disconcerting for most other species, and the batarians always tried to exploit this advantage in situations involving bargaining and negotiations.