Wind?

In the next instant, Harriman flew upward. His knees struck the bottom of the helm station, reducing his momentum for just a second, and he grabbed instinctively for the nearest surface. His hand found purchase on the astrogation console, his fingers squeezing the thin metal hood surrounding it, but the rest of his body continued up, as did seemingly everything else on the bridge. The chair in which he’d been sitting glanced off his back as it rushed by him. Harriman seemed to dangle upside down, and when he looked up past his feet, he saw the chair tumbling end over end out into space, the stars a terrifying backdrop—the disruptor bolt had sheared off the roof of Hunley’s bridge.

Air rushed past Harriman, trying to carry him out into the void. The sounds of the swift currents filled his ears, and he could hear nothing else. He felt his hand cramping as he clung desperately to the astrogator hood.

And then Harriman witnessed the unthinkable: Captain Linneus soared through Hunley’s gaping wound and out into space. For what must have been only a fraction of a second, but which felt longer, Harriman saw Linneus’s face: his eyes wide, his mouth open in a silent scream, his profound terror unmistakable. And then the captain was gone, his figure disappearing quickly as it receded into the darkness.

Harriman’s fingers slipped along the surface of the astrogator hood, and he clenched his hand tightly, as though attempting to punch a new handhold in the metal. He tried to reach his other arm down and grab on to something else, but he felt his fingers slide again along the hood, until finally his closed fist held nothing. Harriman sailed upward. His heart leaped in his chest, and he opened his mouth to scream. He shot toward the stars, and toward the cold, hard vacuum that separated them.

Harriman struck something. The unexpected impact came along his right side, and then he plummeted back to the decking. He landed in the open space between the command chair and the helm and navigation consoles, bringing his arms up in time to protect his head. He crashed down on his left side, his shoulder giving way with a loud snap. The breath was forced from his lungs as pain flowed through his body like an electric current. He gasped, trying to inhale.

There was no air.

The wind had stopped, he realized, the atmosphere of Hunley’s bridge now entirely gone, blown out into space. Gulping wildly as he suffocated, Harriman rolled off of his injured left side and onto his back. The stars stared down at him through the hull breach, and then they began to wink out one after another as something moved in front of them. He recognized the form of the Romulan vessel as it passed, and he could even read the rounded, runelike block characters on its hull: Daami.As he lay dying, he unaccountably recalled the Romulan-language courses he’d taken during his time at the Academy.

In just a few seconds, the Romulan vessel had gone from view, leaving only the unfeeling starscape above him. His vision began to fray at the edges. His lungs ached.

Finally, darkness took him.

Admiral Aventeer Vokar, master of the Romulan vessel Daami,stood at the front of his ship’s bridge, staring at the primary viewscreen there. On it, he saw the wounded form of the Starfleet vessel drifting undirected in space. The two warp nacelles on either side of its circular hull had gone dark, and its bridge had been demolished.

Vokar smiled to himself. Hunley’s crew had come hereinto Romulan territory in response to the other vessel’s distress signal, and yet they hadn’t even been able to help themselves. He had seen to that. Daami’s crew had detected Dakota’s call for assistance—originating in Romulan space—and had moved immediately to intercept the supposedly civilian freighter. Daamihad arrived on the scene after Hunleyhad, but not too late to take action.

“Bring us about,” Vokar said, turning to face his bridge crew. “Let’s finish what we came here to do in the first place.” The crew’s acknowledgments crackled in the dim lighting, no doubt motivated by Vokar’s recent promotion in rank. But he had no intention of stopping or even slowing his progress through the hierarchy of the Imperial Fleet, and today he would demonstrate that to all by bringing the Empire another victory.

He turned back to the viewscreen and watched as the crippled Hunleyslipped away to starboard, Daamirounding onto its new heading. Both the Hunleyand Dakotacaptains had claimed to know nothing of the recently modified Romulan borders, of the expanse of interstellar territory the praetor had claimed for the Empire. And Vokar supposed that had been the truth—the freighter had needed assistance after it had struck a perimeter mine—although the incursion might also have been an attempt at espionage by the deceitful Federation. Whichever the case, they would pay, either for their ignorance or for their treachery.

On the screen, the image of Dakotaslid into view. Vokar regarded the old, seemingly decrepit freighter with contempt. The damage it had sustained when it had struck the mine showed at the bow of its single warp nacelle, a jagged, blackened patch reaching a quarter of the way back along the engine structure. If the crew of the hoary vessel had been conducting an intelligence mission, Daami’s sensors had told Vokar, then they had been doing so with antiquated equipment. Unlike Hunley,the aged hulk provided Vokar no opportunity for spoils.

“Ready disruptors,” Vokar said, calling back over his shoulder. Again, the crew responded sharply. He peered back at the viewscreen, at the defenseless Federation vessel in Daami’s path, and smiled to himself once more. He would vanquish the interlopers, and then he would collect Hunleyand return to Romulus, where he would personally deliver his prize to the praetor.

Consciousness returned to Harriman surreptitiously, surrounding him in its folds like warm water gradually and unexpectedly rising around him. He became aware by degrees, not knowing whether he had been out for a minute or an hour or a day. He only knew that he was not…was not—

Not dead.

Harriman opened his eyes. Above him, he saw the starscape still staring threateningly down on the Hunleybridge. But a blue haze flickered where the roof of the bridge had once been, and he realized that an emergency forcefield had automatically activated in order to close the breach. Likewise, environmental-crisis protocols must have pushed an atmosphere back into the resealed space.

He moved his arms back so that he could prop himself up on his elbows, but his left shoulder wailed in pain. He felt tenderly along the silver uniform sleeve covering his injured arm, grateful not to find any bones projecting from beneath his flesh. Everything seemed to be intact, at least, though he had clearly suffered internal damage.

Rolling onto his right side, Harriman pushed himself up and stood. Eerily quiet, the bridge sounded and looked wrong. Virtually everything that had not been somehow secured to the ship had vanished: chairs, handheld equipment, the smoke…and people. He tried to recall how many of the crew had been on the bridge when the Romulan ship had engaged them. Eight? Ten? There had been the captain and the first officer, the security chief, Anner’namin at navigation, Harriman himself at the helm…somebody at the sciences station…and one or two people had been working to quell whatever fires had broken out…

However many of the crew had been on the bridge, now only two others besides himself remained: Lieutenant Grinager, lying near the tactical station, and a member of the crew he didn’t recognize, her body in a heap near the port-side turbolift. Harriman bounded up the two steps to the outer, raised portion of the bridge. As he approached the unfamiliar crewperson, he saw that she lay with her neck twisted at an unnatural angle—at an impossibleangle for a human. Still, he kneeled beside her and reached two fingers out to the side of her neck, feeling for a pulse. He found none.