AroundTomed, the warp field generated by its faster-than-light drive carried the ship through subspace. The alternate realm existed within and without the starship, allowing it to travel at speeds not possible in normal space-time. Loosed in this domain, the singularity continued to feast, consuming the fabric of this other existence.

But as subspace folded in on itself at warp factor nine, it filled the black hole. The actuality of velocity overwhelmed the potentiality of force. The singularity, infinite in its dimension, could not contain the greater infinity of subspace collapsing into it.

Gravity turned. Matter transmuted into energy, and the energy shifted, reversed, pushing from the negative, through the zero, and into the positive. Subspace grew into the superior power, transcending the might of the singularity.

The black hole became the black entrance, the black portal. Subspace pushed backward, flowed from the point of its virtual demise and rushed, born again, back into the universe, carrying with it matter and energy previously consumed.

In the space occupied by the disintegrating form ofTomed, subspace asserted itself with its new force, destroying the rest of the starship in a fraction of second. And the wave of energy continued on, expanding in every direction, coursing through and beneath space and time with little resistance.

The shock wave caughtAgamemnon, and an instant later,Agamemnon was no more. The inconspicuous asteroid dubbed Foxtrot XIII provided more opposition, withstanding the onslaught of subspace energy for an entire second before crumbling into nothingness. And still the great sphere of the wave expanded.

The shuttleLiss Riehn lasted as long as each of the two starships had, its distance from the source of the shock wave keeping its smaller form intact longer than it would have had it been closer. And still the subspace wave spread.

It chased another starship,Enterprise, which escaped only by virtue of the greater speed allowed by the separate subspace field projected around it.

Foxtrot XII vanished next, its matter blown apart in seconds. Outposts XI and IX followed, gone as though they had never been, so complete was their destruction. Two unnamed asteroids and a comet in the Neutral Zone were pulverized.

Finally, the vastness of space and time over which the shock wave had traveled took its toll. The subspace wave, its energy diminishing at each point as it expanded, began to fade. It demolished Foxtrot X, but took a half-minute to do so. Outposts VIII and VII each disappeared in a minute, and Foxtrot VI in two. As the wave weakened and slowed, it lost its ability to devour. Four of the remaining five Foxtrot asteroids shattered, but left progressively larger chunks of themselves floating through the void. Foxtrot I withstood the initial assault relatively intact, its hollow center caving in, but the asteroid itself not breaking up for more than an hour.

And then at last, the wave died, its energies spent on trillions of trillions of cubic kilometers of space.

In its wake, Foxtrot Sector was gone.

Plus One: Ruins

Sulu stood alone in the transporter room, peering down at the hooded sensor display in the center of the control console. She tapped a series of touchpads, trying to cast a wide net, but not toowide. The dispersion in the Romulan shuttle’s navigational deflector would not be differentiable from the background noise of the universe at too high a level of granularity.

As Enterpriseraced toward Foxtrot XIII, Sulu had to continually adjust the targeting scanners. As she did so, she could not help thinking about Linojj and the others attempting to reach the outpost in time to protect or rescue its crew. Their efforts would ultimately prove fruitless, and there seemed to her an inherent cruelty in that. While they would mourn the loss of the almost three hundred personnel stationed at the outpost, they would also have the burden of watching the event unfold. And they would witness, via sensors, the deaths of not just those on Foxtrot XIII, but also those on each of the other dozen outposts, and those aboard Agamemnon.After initially suffering herself the grief caused by the loss of Universeand its fifty-one personnel, Sulu could only imagine what the Enterprisecrew—along with the rest of Starfleet and the Federation—would feel at the murder of more than four thousand men and women.

Sulu understood the value of the plan Captain Harriman had devised and then carried out. If the consequences of what he had done played out as he’d intended—and she saw no reason now to believe that they wouldn’t—then war would be averted, and countless lives would be saved. Was that worth the sadness that would be inflicted on the people of both the Federation and the Romulan Empire? She had to agree that it was, and yet she wanted to go to the bridge and tell her crew—tell everybody—that nobody had died, that nobody would die—not aboard Universe,not aboard Agamemnon,and not in Foxtrot Sector. She wanted to remind them of all the equipment Enterprisehad recently ferried to the outposts, and to reveal to them that the ship hadn’t been delivering new defenses or weapons, as all had believed, but equipment to simulate the life signs of a crew of three hundred. Enterprisehad rotated personnel off of the outposts, but no replacements had been delivered by Agamemnon;instead, a skeleton staff from that ship had installed the new equipment, and then had left their empty ship orbiting Foxtrot XIII, its functions automated—including a final run at Tomed,phasers firing. Captain Harriman’s plan had been so meticulously plotted—

Accompanied by a short tone, a tiny point of light flashed on the sensor display. It pulsed once and vanished. Sulu initiated the transporter’s targeting lock, but the sensor contact had already faded. It could have been anything—a burst of radiation from a distant star, the ionization of interstellar gas—but Sulu believed otherwise, having seen firsthand the readings of a dispersion of a navigational deflector. Trent’s duplicity had paid yet another dividend, in addition to having lured Tomedinto the area of the Bonneville Flats, where its crew had witnessed the destruction of Universeand thus set these events in motion.

She worked the controls, narrowing the search area considerably, centering it on the brief reading she had just seen. With a smaller volume of space to scan, she would increase the effectiveness of the sensors, and thereby increase the chances of locating the dispersion.

The point of flight flared again on the display, another tone signaling the sensor acquisition. As the light began to fade, Sulu quickly focused her scans even more. The point pulsed twice and then steadied. She followed the signal to its source and executed a scan for life signs. She found three, all human.

Once more, Sulu activated the targeting sensors. In only seconds, the transporter had locked on to the three life signs. She reached forward on the console and pulled a trio of slide buttons toward her. The whine of the transporter filled the room, and white motes of light formed above the platform. When the sound and lights faded, Captain Harriman, Commander Gravenor, and Lieutenant Vaughn had materialized. Both Gravenor and Vaughn wore Romulan uniforms, and Vaughn had one arm in a sling and bandages wrapped around one hand.