“No contact with the Archimedes,Captain,” Harding said. “They must have already entered Chiaros IV’s atmosphere.”

“Captain!” Burdick suddenly cried out from the science station, getting Blaylock’s full attention. “The wavefront’s speed has just increased almost a hundredfold!”

How can that be?Blaylock thought in the space of a heartbeat. Unless the phenomenon has begun dropping in and out of normal space, gaining velocity from subspace . . .

She wasted no time. “Raise shields!” she shouted. “Glebuk, get us out of–”

The wave‑front struck at that moment, instantly overwhelming the Slayton’s inertial dampers. The bridge went dark and the deck lurched sideways, throwing Blaylock from her feet. Her body slammed hard into a railing, which she grabbed with both arms. She felt at least one of her ribs give way under the impact. A portside panel exploded in a bright shower of sparks, leaving tracers of light behind her eyelids. She heard a sharp scream cut through the alarm klaxons, then cease.

The emergency lighting kicked in, casting an eerie, blood‑colored pall across the bridge. The deck leveled itself. Smoke billowed from a burning panel. Bodies lay sprawled everywhere, some moving, some not. The bridge viewer was dead. Blaylock noticed that Glebuk had been hurled forward over the helm console and onto the deck. The Antedean lay still, water seeping from a tear in her hydration suit, her neck bent into an impossible question‑mark shape. Fighting down a surge of horror, Blaylock sat behind the helm console.

The controls resolutely refused to respond. What the hell was she dealing with here?

Blaylock spun her chair toward Burdick, whom Harding was helping back into his seat. Blood surged into the ensign’s eyes from a gash on his forehead.

“Status report!” Blaylock snapped.

Harding, the more experienced officer, began consulting a nearby undamaged instrument panel. “The shields are down. We’ve got hull breaches all over the place and we’re down to battery power.”

“I need to see what’s out there. Can you get that screen working, Lieutenant?”

“I’m on it.” Harding tapped a console at a furious pace.

The bridge lights dimmed. “Try not to lose the mood lighting, Zaena,” Blaylock said. Harding smiled weakly in response.

The viewer came to life in a brief burst of static. Stars shone whitely, no longer distorted by the subspace phenomenon. And something else was there as well. A shape . . .

“Can you increase the magnification?” Blaylock said.

Harding nodded. The lights dimmed further and the half‑seen shape resolved itself into lines of hard metal. It was a large, toroid‑shaped ship–or perhaps it was a space station–circled by dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of much smaller objects. Buoys? Service modules of some sort?

“Why didn’t we notice all of this when we entered the system?” Blaylock said, turning toward Burdick and Harding.

Blaylock saw that Burdick’s eyes were glued to the screen. Pointing a shaking finger, he said, “Maybe because theydidn’t want us to?”

Blaylock was unsurprised to see the ominous, doublebladed shape of a Romulan warbird rippling into existence on the viewer. I hate being right all the time,she thought mirthlessly.

The Slaytonhad to be well within the range of the decloaking warship’s weapons. The Romulan vessel was more than twice the Slayton’s size, and her disruptor ports glowed with menace. And the Slaytonwas dead in space.

But Blaylock told herself that the warbird’s captain wouldn’t harbor any hostile intent. With so little really known about the Geminus Gulf, why would the Romulans want to risk starting a war over it?

Then the warbird fired.

The Slaytonlurched again, and the lights failed once more. Blaylock wondered how long it would take for the warp core to lose antimatter containment. And just what it was the Romulans knew about this place that she didn’t.

The bridge flared into cerulean brilliance a moment later, followed immediately by more blackness. This time, the dark was absolute and eternal.

The Archimedescontinued its descent through Chiaros IV’s storm‑tossed Dayside atmosphere. Zweller ignored the low conversational murmurs passing between the department heads and concentrated on his piloting chores. Though the inertial dampers succeeded in canceling out most of the turbulence, Zweller could still feel the deck shimmying slightly beneath his boots. And the structural integrity field was being taxed far more than usual.

Adjusting the viewer to compensate for the ball of white‑hot plasma that now completely surrounded the shuttle’s hull, Zweller quietly admired the savage beauty of the landscape quickly scrolling by below. It was a place of immiscible contrasts, irresistible forces in perpetual stalemate. It was a place he could understand.

As the Archimedesentered the nightward terminator, Zweller reduced the craft’s velocity, lowering the hull temperature and making the plasma fires gutter out. He brought the shuttle down toward a range of cheerless brown mountains and arced into a northeasterly heading. In seconds, the craft cleared the peaks, and the relentlessly baked Dayside gave way to a fog‑shrouded valley. Auroral flashes arced repeatedly across the sky, leaping the planet’s everlasting twilight belt, momentarily linking day with night. The vapor dispersed as the ground grew nearer and unveiled a quiltwork of hardscrabble farmland and narrow roads. Small settlements and isolated dwellings hove into view and just as quickly passed away. A great cityscape glittered in the haze, barely perceptible on the northern horizon. It appeared to fade toward a tumble of dry hills and barren escarpments that extended into the planet’s dark side as far as Zweller could see. Lights twinkled across the city’s remote nightward periphery.

“Looks like we’ve found the planet’s single worthwhile piece of real estate,” Gomp said with a porcine chortle.

Finishing a long countdown in his head, Zweller thought: It’s time.

An alarm light suddenly flashed on Zweller’s console, and a klaxon brayed a warning. The tactical display at Zweller’s left side came to life.

“What is it?” Roget said, sounding cautious, though not particularly alarmed.

“I think we’re about to have some company,” said Zweller.

“A Chiarosan honor guard?” Hearn ventured.

Zweller felt his jaw clenching involuntarily. “I . . . I don’t think so.”

“Shields up!” Roget shouted. “Red alert!”

Something struck the shuttle at that moment, making the hull reverberate like an enormous bell. The engineer and the doctor fell into a heap atop Liz Kurlan. Tim Tuohy, the head of planetary studies, helped Gomp get his hooves beneath him. Everyone scrambled back into their seats and activated the crash harnesses.

The shuttle rocked again, more violently than before, as though punched by a giant. His harness kept Zweller from being spilled from his seat. Though partly obscured by static, the tactical display showed a fast‑approaching trio of small, aggressively contoured vessels. They appeared to be fighter craft of an unusual configuration. Zweller recognized them as Chiarosan.

“Status!” Roget shouted, trying to compete with the rumbling of the hull.

“Shields and weapons are off‑line,” Zweller said. “I can’t keep anything working with all this atmospheric ionization.”

A static‑swept male voice, deep and harsh, emanated from the comm system. “Federation shuttle: You will follow our lead vessel’s navigation beam into Nightside. Consider yourselves our prisoners.”

Roget spat a nearly inaudible curse before replying. “We are here on a diplomatic mission at the invitation of First Protector Ruardh, the head of this world’s duly elected government. On whose authority have you attacked us?”