When no response came from the ship, Harriman checked the power level of the communicator. The indicator read well into the green. “Harriman to Enterprise,”he tried again. “Come in, Enterprise.”He heard urgency in his voice, but otherwise his tone remained even, belying the apprehension growing within him. He had long ago learned of the need in his position for composure; his crew looked to him for direction, and they followed the cues he provided.

Still no response.

Harriman eyed the dark billows of smoke rising into the sky, the thick plumes pushed aslant by the wind. Beneath sat the southern verge of the city, an area given over to industry. He recognized the ground-vehicle manufacturing plant as he watched that building and two adjoining warehouses burn. He could make out the shapes of people fleeing the blaze, although at this remove, several kilometers away, he could not identify any who might be Enterprisecrew members. He dreaded the thought of how many casualties the Koltaari would suffer—now, and during what would surely come in the weeks and months to follow. Harriman found himself hoping, with a desperation he resented, that the conflagration below would ultimately reveal itself to be the result of an industrial accident, and not the prelude to an invasion. But he knew better.

Harriman studied his communicator, intending to execute a diagnostic on the device, but then motion to one side caught his attention. He glanced in that direction to see Lieutenant Tenger racing back toward him. The security chief’s short, well-muscled legs were hidden by the flows of tall grass, his broad torso visible above, as though sailing across the sea of green stalks. The color of his flesh nearly matched that of the lea through which he moved. His speed seemed effortless, his brawny arms barely pumping as he ran.

After the recon team had earlier detected an anomalous energy reading emanating from the hills, Tenger had accompanied Harriman out of the city in search of the reading’s source. The sensor spike had lasted only seconds and might well have been a scanning ghost or reflection, or even the product of a power surge in the tricorder itself. Considering the current circumstances, though, Harriman had been unwilling to risk ignoring anything even remotely suspicious.

Now the security chief settled on his haunches beside Harriman. “Captain,” he said, his voice resonant despite being not much louder than a whisper. “There’s some sort of interference. I can’t take any readings of the city.” He worked his tricorder, doubtless attempting to configure it in some manner that would allow him to scan successfully.

“I can’t raise the ship either,” Harriman said, holding up his communicator.

“I can’t be certain,” Tenger said, “but there appears to be a dampening field in operation.”

“A dampening field,” Harriman echoed, looking away from Tenger and back down into the valley. His gaze followed the skyline of the city, from buildings that reached up several dozen stories at its center, out to those rising just one and two stories on its outskirts. The fire had spread to another structure, he saw, and dark masses of smoke continued to coagulate above the urban wound. The roar of the explosion had faded now, replaced by the plaintive screams of sirens. The shrill wails sounded to Harriman like the keen of the city’s population, in mourning for the mutilated and dead suddenly delivered into their midst by an unseen enemy. “It’s them,” he avowed, referring to that enemy, convinced of the conclusions he had drawn from the clues he and his crew had encountered during the past days—conclusions that had led him to bring Enterpriseto this world.

“Yes,” Tenger agreed.

Harriman knew that this land would offer its conquerors valuable resources—dilithium, pergium, cormaline, bilitrium—and the civilization here—technological, but prewarp—would provide the slave labor to mine and process those minerals and compounds. He also understood that those resources would be used against the Federation in the coming war. And there would be war, Harriman realized resignedly. If a world such as this could be taken—a world in disputed space, offering strategic value, with a planetbound population of two billion that posed no threat—then the delicate and increasingly tense political relations among the major spacefaring powers could collapse at any time.

Harriman thought of Amina, stationed on what would be the front lines, and then pushed away the emotions that followed. He turned back to his security chief. “What’s your assessment?” he asked.

“It’s a message,” Tenger said at once. Though hardly laconic, he tended to offer his words sparingly, saying only what needed to be said. As with many of the security officers Harriman had known during his Starfleet career, Tenger tended toward a measured and serious demeanor. “They know we’re here,” he went on. “They’ve seen Enterprisein orbit, and they’ve surely scanned the planet’s surface for our personnel.”

Harriman regarded the lieutenant. Tenger’s eyes, normally dark, distant pits, now mimicked those of the Koltaari, with large golden irises, and vertical almond shapes for pupils. His hair had also been altered, his normally short black locks now longer and lighter. Dr. Morell and her staff had similarly modified the appearance of each member of the landing party, taking the additional step of disguising their flesh; Koltaari skin color—like that of Tenger, an Orion—was pigmented a lustrous green. But all of those changes—synthetic lenses inserted into the eyes, a hairpiece set atop the head, a dye for the skin—were cosmetic, not substantive, and sensor scans would readily reveal the presence of the Enterprisecrewmembers on the planet.

“It’s not justa message,” Harriman noted.

“No, sir,” Tenger said, slowly shaking his head from side to side. “It’s a challenge.”

“Yes,” Harriman said. “It’s also a warning. And a threat.” But could they beat back that threat? It remained unclear whether or not the Klingon Empire would fight beside the Federation if war erupted. Despite nearly eighteen years of peace between the two powers— Or maybebecause of it,Harriman thought—the allegiance of the Klingons could only be characterized as uncertain. If forced to stand alone, the Federation would face a daunting future, where even eventual victory, if it came, would cost incomprehensible losses.

Harriman stood to his full height, and Tenger followed suit beside him. Although almost a head shorter, the burly security chief probably outweighed him by twenty kilos. “Let’s go meet that threat,” Harriman said with a confidence he did not completely feel, but that he felt it important to project. He placed his communicator back beneath his tunic, and Tenger stowed his tricorder in a leather satchel he carried on a shoulder strap. Harriman led the way through the tall grass to a travel-worn dirt path, and the two men began down the hill.

They had reached the paved road that would lead them into the Koltaari capital when the second explosion rocked the city.

Demora Sulu ran. Panic flowed around her like a river, the inhabitants of the city streaming past, the collective din of footfalls, screams, and sirens bounding along the building façades like water rushing along stony banks. And like the impending menace of a waterfall around a bend up ahead, the fire—the secondfire—roared without pause somewhere in the distance.

She struggled through the tide of Koltaari, racing in the opposite direction of the fleeing throng. Shoulders, arms, legs, and feet struck her as people dashed by. She changed direction for a moment and fought her way across the living current to the side of the street. Then, using the buildings to protect her on one side, she hurried on.

No lights shined within the broad windows of the store-fronts she passed, and she guessed that the second bombing had damaged or destroyed the city’s power plant. She and Lieutenant Trent had left that site not an hour ago—and just last night, members of the landing party had visited the manufacturing part of the city, where she believed the first explosion had occurred. Sulu might have considered the timing fortuitous had she not immediately dismissed the notion that events had been coincidental. No, she and Trent and the others hadn’t been lucky; they’d been permitted to leave those sites before the attacks. Although she hadn’t been able to contact anybody using her communicator, she felt sure that the rest of the landing party had escaped injury in the blasts. As heinous as killing innocent and essentially defenseless Koltaari was, the act did not carry with it the political implications of an assault on Starfleet personnel or Federation citizens.