“I hope this hailstorm of burning moon rock doesn’t do us in,” she said, keeping her voice steady, even if the calmness seemed a bit forced. “Dodging the spatial distortions is tough enough without also having to worry about boulders grinding us into powder.”

“You’ll do just fine,” Keru said, patting her on the shoulder. He then turned toward the other members of his team: Kent Norellis, the human astrobiologist who seemed to have romantic designs on him, however unwanted; Nurse Kershu, an Edosian whose three arms and highly dexterous hands made her especially valuable during medical emergencies; and Lieutenant T’Lirin, the Vulcan security officer who’d proven herself to be quite tough, not only during the recent raid on Vikr’l Prison, but also over the course of the last three orbit-to-surface-and-back evacuation runs.

“This will have to be our last run,” Keru said, though it pained him to have to say it. “Local space is destabilizing too quickly. We’ve all done the best we can, but we won’t make it home if we attempt any more evac runs.”

Norellis turned to look at a monitor, on which a sensor alarm was flashing. His fingers tapped one of the touch-sensitive panels nearby. “We’ve found another small group of refugees, Commander. Only ten or twelve individuals. But it looks like they’re not out in the open. They’ve taken refuge below ground, in a cavern. I’m having trouble getting a transporter lock.”

“Head for their coordinates,” Keru told Waen. “We’re not leaving here empty-handed.”

Moments later, the shuttlecraft was hovering about twenty meters over a settlement that had been built into a series of buttes. But a cursory glance at the rubble and smoke visible everywhere revealed that little of the village was left standing. To make matters worse, the ground itself was bucking and roiling, as cracks yawned wide and spewed plumes of molten magma and fountains of super-heated steam.

“The bedrock is completely destabilized,” Norellis said, his tone edging almost toward panic. “We can’t land. And the caves the survivors are hiding in are too kelbonite-rich to let us beam them out without pattern enhancers.”

“We’ll go in, then,” Keru said. He turned toward T’Lirin. “You, me, and Kent. We’ll each take a pattern enhancer. If we can persuade the survivors to stay in one place, we ought to be able to beam them out safely.”

The shuttle veered to port, throwing them all toward that side of the craft. As they righted themselves and recovered their seats, Waen shouted an apology. “Sorry. A huge gout of magma was erupting right below us.”

Keru felt as though his insides had been sliced open, pain from his recent chest wound. “How do we get to the survivors?”

Norellis pointed through the forward window toward a cave opening on one of the buttes. The entrance was narrow, and the pathway leading to it had already crumbled away, no doubt because of all the recent seismic activity. “Line-of-sight transport. We beam ourselves just inside the opening, one at a time. Risky, but it’s our best option.”

Keru nodded, then looked quickly at T’Lirin. She nodded as well.

“I will go in first,” she said. “I’ve traversed the volcanic plains of the Womb of Fire on Vulcan. I believe this will be easier.”

Moments later, T’Lirin had successfully beamed over to the cave opening, followed quickly by Norellis. Keru was the last to go, feeling the beam engulf him in its disorienting shimmer.

The air outside the shuttle was oppressively hot and acrid-smelling, and Keru immediately began to cough as he made his way deeper into the caves. The situation reminded him briefly of the stand he and the other Guardians had made on Trill, when political terrorists had attacked the caves of Mak’ala.

He heard the echoes of footfalls coming from T’Lirin and Norellis up ahead, as well as a variety of screams and shouts beyond. He rounded a corner to find a broad chamber filled with a chaotic and frightened crowd of refugees. Most of them were members of the bovine native species that the Neyel had apparently enslaved long ago, along with representatives of a number of other sentient races, including Neyel, mixed among them.

As T’Lirin tried to explain to the refugees what would happen during the beam-out, Keru and Norellis arranged the tall, stanchion-style transporter pattern enhancers in a triangular formation that encompassed much of the wide chamber. They couldn’t transport everyone out at once; they would have to do so in three groups.

Norellis took the first group, and while they seemed to flicker and linger a bit too long during their dematerialization, Keru was heartened to hear Kent’s voice over his combadge a few moments later. They had reached the shuttle successfully.

The ground shook and groaned, as if the very bones of the planet ached.

“You’d better get out of there quickly though, Ranul,”Norellis said over Keru’s combadge. “These buttes are starting to collapse around us out here.”

Keru looked to T’Lirin. “You go next.”

The Vulcan woman shook her head. “Respectfully, sir, even though you are the leader of this mission, you must go next.” She pointed at him.

Keru was about to disagree, when he saw that she wasn’t pointing at him, but at his chest. He looked down to see blood seeping through his tunic. Hisblood. His wound had reopened.

“See you on the other side,” he said, then joined a group of lowing, frightened Oghen natives within the triangle formed by the pattern enhancers. A moment later, a shimmering curtain of energy enfolded him, and he felt a momentary sensation of freefall.

Then he materialized in the shuttle, along with the refugees. Nurse Kershu turned toward him and her eyes widened when she saw the blood on his tunic.

“Get T’Lirin out immediately,”he shouted. He’d be damned if he was going to leave any of his team behind.

Norellis yelled into the companel in front of him. “T’Lirin! Are you ready? T’Lirin?”

All that came back was static.

Waen turned back from the pilot seat. “Sir, sensors show there’s been a cave-in. We’ve lost our transporter lock.”

Keru’s heart sank. No. I can’t lose her. I can’t loseanyone .He’d made that promise to himself when he’d agreed to take the job as Titan’s chief of security. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, his coma visions of despair and bloodwine assailed him.

Waen shouted again from the cockpit, and Keru heard the sound of hope in her voice. “I’m showing life signs, Commander. And they’re on the move.”

“Is there any way to get them out?” Keru asked, pushing the administering hands of Nurse Kershu aside and moving forward through the frightened crowd toward the cockpit’s copilot seat.

“No, sir,” Waen said. “But I think they’re headed for an opening over there.” She pointed to the forward window, toward another opening in the butte wall.

A moment later, movement was visible just inside the dark egress. Keru turned back toward Norellis.

“Kent, beam over anyone who exits the caves. Energize the moment you have a lock.”

As he turned back toward the screens, Keru heard a cacophonous sound, louder than anything he’d yet heard. A moment later, something massive collided with the face of the butte, near the entrance the team had used previously. Rocks and dust scattered from the impact’s epicenter, stone shrapnel banging against the shuttle’s hull.

Waen turned toward him. “Commander, we’re being hit by lunar debris, and it’s only getting worse. We have to go now!”

“Not without T’Lirin,” Keru said. He turned back toward the rear of the shuttle, just in time to watch another quartet of disoriented refugees materialize.

“There she is,” Waen said, pointing. Through the dust-clotted air, Keru saw T’Lirin, her uniform torn and dirty. She was carrying a small Neyel child, and was standing near the lip of the cave.