Sulu felt a twinge of real regret, but he pushed it aside. After all, what choice had the Neyel left him?

He turned to Rand. “Hail them again. Maybe now they’ll talk to us. And listen to reason.”

Docksey and two other off-duty crew members had arrived on Deck Five at approximately the same time. They made their way to Phaser Array One, located just behind the registry numbers on the forward dorsal side of Excelsior’sprimary hull. The damage that had caused the injuries to the three technicians was obvious. One of the blasts Excelsiorhad taken sent an arc of power into the computer banks there, and two of them had exploded, their ODN relays and [139] scorched duotronic circuits spilling out like viscera from a slain animal. Those unhurt by the blast were now operating the phaser banks manually, since most of the control systems were off-line.

Quickly assessing the situation, Docksey was reminded of ancient Earth history, when powder-and-lead-crammed cannons had been manned by artillery crewmen who had rolled the ungainly weapons about on creaking wooden decks.

“Over here, Shandra,” a familiar voice called. It was Dennis Beauvois, another beta-shifter with whom she often had lunch in the mess hall. The dark-haired man had recently received some very good news; his wife, back on Starbase 35, had just given birth to a new baby boy, their third child. He had seen only holograms of his son so far, but he was quite excited to have a boy to join his two little girls.

Docksey hurried over to help him. “Quite a mess up here, isn’t it?” she said, her smile faltering.

“Yeah, two of the guys got burned pretty badly, and Fri’lin got skewered in the leg with some shrapnel when one of the consoles overloaded,” Beauvois said. He shook his head and added, “Nasty.”

“So, what’s the deal here?” Docksey asked. “You want me to take the target-lock or the trigger?” She was joking. The phaser cannons didn’t have triggers per se;but when run manually, they had to be triggered by a code sequence relayed down from the bridge on a display panel.

“You seem more like a trigger person to me than a squint-through-the-crosshairs-at-the-targettype,” Beauvois said, grinning.

“They’re still refusing our hails, Captain,” Rand said.

Sulu shook his head and let out a heavy sigh. Some people just don’t know when to quit.

“Phaser Array One and Two are targeted and ready,” [140] Akaar said, looking at Sulu expectantly. “We have detected functional weaponry near the vessel’s core. But if we destroy those weapons, a great many Neyel may find themselves floating home without a vessel around them.”

Sulu turned back toward Rand. “Send one more hai—”

Lojur interrupted. “Captain, the Neyel are firing at us again. Looks like a missile of some kind.”

Sulu turned back toward the viewscreen and in less time than it took him to blink, saw a bright streak headed directly at Excelsior.

“Coordinates are locked in,” Beauvois said.

“I’m all set here.” Docksey looked over at him. “So, how’s the new boy doing? You thought of a name yet?”

Beauvois shook his head. “No, we’re still mulling names over. How are the wedding preparations go—”

Docksey saw a bright light shining through the windows of the phaser bay, illuminating Beauvois and herself and all the others present so brilliantly that they seemed to be ashen bas-reliefs set into a gray stone wall.

The shield in front of the hull sparkled and cracked for a heartbeat, and then the hull itself blew inward as the Neyel missile suddenly expended its destructive energies.

No longer able to breathe, her lungs afire, Docksey surmised that the oxygen in the bay was igniting along with the Neyel incendiary device. But she could still see the gaping rent in the bulkhead, beyond which lay darkness and toward which the remaining air was blowing with gale intensity. She sensed dimly that her body was in motion, a straw in a hurricane.

Docksey tumbled in the endless dark for a cold eternity, her tears sublimating in the vacuum, along with her blood. Knowing she was dying, she thought of Lojur, and wished her intended happiness and peace. And she wondered if the emergency forcefields had clicked on in time to save [141] Beauvois, so that he might have an opportunity to see his newborn son.

Then the eternal night enfolded her.

“Shields are now at forty percent and holding, Captain,” Lojur said, still blinking from the brilliant explosion that had blanked out the main viewer.

“The forward sections of Deck Five were badly hit,” an ensign at the aft tactical station called out. “We lost some personnel along with the phaser power.”

No more,Sulu thought, gripping the sides of his chair nearly hard enough to snap something off. “Fire all weapons,” he said, his voice a low rumble.

Moments later, -the surface of the Neyel ship was dotted with explosions. A gout of flame and debris shot out into space from a hull breach near the vessel’s midsection.

Then the Neyel ship went completely dark and silent.

PART 4

SURVIVAL

Chapter 12

Thursday. 5 April 2063 . 2:42 am

Zefram Cochrane found the bearded man’s story incredible. After all, he and his two companions just claimed they’d voyaged backward more than three centuries to save humankind from ravening hordes of cybernetic zombies.

On the other hand, they carried impressive tools and tech with them. Or at least it lookedimpressive.

And they said they wanted to help make the Phoenix fly.

The man who called himself La Forge was bent over the eyepiece to Cochrane’s telescope, peering into the clear night sky. He snapped shut an instrument of some sort, then straightened to face Cochrane.

“All right,” La Forge said, grinning. “Take a look.”

As if this is going to prove anything,Cochrane thought. He laughed as he approached the ’scope, a reaction no doubt fueled by the copious quantities of liquor he’d absorbed at the Crash & Burn alongside the beautiful Deena, or Deanna, or whatever the hell her name was.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” he said as he bent his head toward the eyepiece. “Ah, I love a good peep show.”

The telescope displayed a crystal-clear image of a long, [146] sleek, graceful spacecraft, obviously the product of a culture whose technology far surpassed anything Cochrane had ever seen.

Now he felt fear. If he allowed himself to hope that this apparition was real, he knew he would be devastated beyond recovery when he finally discovered he’d been had.

Cochrane stood erect, facing the bearded man, who had identified himself only as “Commander Riker.” Like Deanna and La Forge, Riker watched him with an air of almost reverent anticipation.

“That’s a trick,” Cochrane said, before returning to the ’scope for another quick peek. The image, illusory or not, persisted. Maybe it’s real after all. Maybe their story about being from the future reallyis true.

He faced them again, still not entirely ready to let go of the armor of conservative skepticism that had sustained him through so many experimental setbacks and outright calamities. “How’d you do that?”

“It’s your telescope,” La Forge said.

Deanna finally spoke up, the effects of the alcohol she’d imbibed earlier evidently having worn off already. “That’s our ship. The Enterprise .”

Cochrane decided to allow for the possibility that their tale mightbe true. “And, uh ... Lily’s up there right now?”

“That’s right,” Deanna said, smiling.

“Can I talk to her?”

“We’ve lost contact with the Enterprise ,”said Riker. “We don’t know why yet.”