Even through his suit, Terrell could feel the heat and radiation that were tearing the statite to pieces under their feet. Every running stride was a fight to stay upright as the ground buckled and sagged, then expanded and erupted. Walls of fire burst randomly from growing fissures, and Terrell knew that he and zh’Firro wouldn’t be able to count on taking the same route back to the ship, because it likely would no longer be there.

They reached Ilucci and Theriault. The engineer was facedown in the dirt, and the lieutenant was sprawled on her back in an awkward pose. Terrell didn’t bother to check for vital signs. He’d come out here to bring his people home, dead or alive. He kneeled and hefted Ilucci over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He turned to see zh’Firro had done the same for Theriault. With a nod, he signaled her to lead the way back. The lithe Andorian wasted no time and began the hard run back to the ship.

Dodging the random hazards of the dying statite had been hard enough with his hands free, but struggling under Ilucci’s dead weight, Terrell found the fiery maze insurmountable. Every turn he made led to a dead end, every path zh’Firro blazed turned to slag before he could follow it to safety. Within seconds he was ten meters behind her and turning in panicked circles, frantically searching for a way back to the ship. Steeling his nerve, he hoped the Starfleet environmental suits were as well insulated as their design specs claimed—and he made a straight dash through the flames toward the Sagittarius.

He regretted his choice almost immediately. He felt the sting of searing heat over his entire body, except where he was covered by Ilucci. Painful burning sensations prickled his face and back, jabbed his arms and legs like needles fresh from an acid bath, and filled his suit with the horrid stench of singed body hair. By the time he broke through the far side of the firewall and stumbled the last few meters to the ship, he was sure the bottoms of his feet were covered in broken blisters. He fell to his knees halfway up the ramp, and Threx and zh’Firro leapt forward to grab Ilucci and carry him inside to safety.

Terrell crawled up the ramp into the cargo hold. As he collapsed in exhaustion onto the deck, he felt a rumbling through the ship’s hull and knew it wasn’t another quake. The engines were powering up. He shot a look at Threx, who grabbed the bulky metal rod he’d wedged into the ramp’s hydraulics and pulled on it—only to find it was jammed.

Goddammit, Terrell cursed to himself, this is no time for irony! He forced himself to stand, stumble across the shuddering deck to Threx’s side, and grab the rod. Adding his strength to the Denobulan’s, he gritted his teeth and pulled until he was sure he’d given himself a hernia. Then the rod broke free, and the sudden release sent Terrell crashing back to the deck. Lying beside Ilucci, Razka, and Theriault, he watched the ramp lift and close, and he keyed his suit’s transceiver. “Terrell to bridge. Ramp closed.”

“Clark, get up here, on the double.” The captain sounded pissed off.

“On my way.” He shut off his comm and groaned. No rest for the wicked.

The environmental status light beside the ramp switched from red to green, indicating the cargo hold had been repressurized. As Doctor Babitz and medical technician Tan Bao scrambled down the ladder with medkits in hand, Terrell gratefully emancipated himself from the stifling bulk of the headpiece, then stripped off the rest of his suit and left it on the deck. Dressed only in his regulation gray undergarments, he winced as he climbed the ladder to the main deck.

Seconds later, he stepped onto the bridge. Nassir was in the command chair, and Dastin was at the helm. On the main view-screen, the crumbling disk of the statite was being pulverized by the pulsar’s emissions as it tumbled downward on a collision course with the neutron star. The captain turned slowly to face Terrell and fixed him with a stinkeye glare. “A jammed hatch, Clark? Really? That was the best excuse you could come up with?”

Terrell shrugged. “Time was a factor.”

Nassir reproached him with a look. “Try to come up with something better for the log.”

“Yes, sir.” Terrell felt himself sway, and he blinked to focus his eyes as he fought off an attack of vertigo. “Permission to go to sickbay and collapse?”

“Granted.”

Bad news came to Khatami from every direction. On her right, Klisiewicz tore his eyes from the science console to warn, “Starboard shields buckling!” At the forward stations, Thorsen called out, “Enemy ships too close for torpedo lock!” Shouting over Thorsen, Sliney declared, “The Tholians have split into three groups and are flanking us!” Over the intraship comm, chief engineer Bersh glov Mog bellowed, “Hull breaches on Decks Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen!”

“Thorsen, switch to phasers! Target the group off our port bow!”

Thunderstrokes of enemy fire pummeled the Endeavour’s hull and drowned out the angry screech of its phasers. A split-second of weightlessness was Khatami’s only warning before the deck pitched, courtesy of a momentary overload of the inertial dampers. She clutched the arms of her chair while her bridge crew struggled not to be hurled from their seats. The overhead lights dimmed for several seconds as the bridge consoles stuttered and threatened to go dark, and for a moment the only light was the ruddy glow of the Red Alert panels on the bulkheads.

Systems all over the bridge flickered, then thrummed back into service. Another low shriek of the phasers reassured Khatami that her ship was still combat-worthy. “Helm, hard about! If you have to ram through the enemy formation, do it, but block their shot of the statite!”

Eyes fixed on the main viewer, a despondent Thorsen replied, “Too late, Captain.”

The screen showed the splintered remains of the statite being blasted into dust by the pulsar’s regular bolts of supercharged particles. With a majestic flash, the statite vanished.

Thorsen looked back at Khatami. “The Tholian fleet’s disengaging, Captain. I guess they’re calling this mission accomplished.”

Klisiewicz checked his sensor readings. “The other nodes in the statite cloud are falling into the star, Captain. So much for studying the—” He let the sentence trail off as he worked furiously at his console, adjusting the settings on the sensors.

As impatient as Khatami was to know what had snared the science officer’s attention, it was Stano who prodded, “Talk to me, Klisiewicz. What’ve you got?”

Joy widened his eyes and lifted his voice. “The Sagittarius! She’s clear of the pulsar’s emission axis and breaking orbit of the star at full impulse!”

Immediately quashing the good mood, Thorsen declared, “Tholian fleet coming about on an intercept course for the Sagittarius!”

Khatami seized the moment. “Helm, put us between the Sagittarius and the Tholians. Estrada, let Sagittarius know we’ll guard their aft quarter. Thorsen, route all shield power to the aft emitters, and have all torpedoes transferred to the aft launchers, on the double.” She keyed open an intraship channel. “Bridge to engineering. Stand by for maximum warp.”

“We’ll give you all we’ve got,” Mog answered.

Holding one hand over the Feinberger transceiver in his ear, Estrada reported, “Captain? Sagittarius says, ‘Thanks for the escort, and try to keep up.’”

“Tholian vessels closing fast and charging weapons,” Thorsen interjected.

“Load aft torpedo tubes,” Khatami said, “and stand by to fire a full spread, Pattern Romeo.” With a look she cued Stano to step out of the command well to the upper deck, watch over Klisiewicz’s shoulder, and let her know when the Tholians closed to optimal range.