“Kre.

“Hwi.

“Lliu.”

The impact came so quickly that R’Kal never even saw the flash.

Lekev watched from the sky in fascinated horror as everything he knew and loved instantly changed forever.

The first thing he noticed was the silent orange fireball, the signature of the impact, as it began spreading quickly across the darkened half of Coridan Prime, setting the equatorial continent known as Idanev awash in furious amber flame.

The next thing he noticed was that the starship construction facility was gone. Not drifted out of sight, not lost in the darkness that marked the nightside terminator, not orbited over the horizon, but gone.

The Krekolvshuddered and lurched. Alarms shrieked. The captain’s voice came over the shipwide comspeakers, warning everyone to get to the reinforced sections deeper inside the ship. Lekev saw gleaming metallic debris spinning crazily near the observation port, and knew at once that this was all that remained of Coridan’s proud shipyards; whatever had just passed through two asteroid belts on the way to its deadly collision with Coridan Prime had taken out the orbiting facility on its way in, narrowly missing destroying the Krekolv–as well as virtually the entire central government of Coridan Prime–in the process.

Lekev ignored the shrieking klaxons and the captain’s warning to withdraw to the better‑protected sections of the ship. He stood transfixed at the observation port, watching the fireball on the planet’s surface spread, no doubt fueled both by the antimatter stocks on the ship that had struck the Idanev continent–what could the missile have been, other than a warp‑driven ship?–and by the extensive subsurface deposits of dilithium and other such ores for which Idanev had long been famous. As he watched, even the waters of the vast Idanev Sea seemed to ignite like dry kindling, touching off a blaze that rivaled the brilliance of Coridan’s great red sun.

The ambassador didn’t want to think about the sheer enormity of this horror, the scale of this act of pure murder, while he hovered above it all, safe.

Safe ground.

Lekev began to sob, and then to weep. He knew that the government’s response teams were on the move now, preparing to deploy rather deadly fire‑smothering chemicals–materials that would not have been usable if not for the mass evacuations he’d worked so hard to carry out. But he also knew that the death toll would have to be in the hundreds of millions already, in spite of the evacuation program. Additionally, much of Coridan’s volatile, energy‑bearing mineral wealth would doubtless be consumed completely by subsurface thermal chain reactions long before the spiraling ecological disaster on the ground could be brought to heel–if such an outcome was even possible now.

Lekev watched his charred, wounded world from space, and knew that no matter how hard he worked, it could never be the same again.

Forty‑Five

The early twenty‑fifth century

Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana

JAKE SETTLED BACK into his chair, his mouth hanging open. “So that’s the realstory of what happened with Coridan?”

“If we believe thisversion of history,” Nog said, rubbing his left eye with the back of his hand. He was clearly tired, but seemed intent on finishing the records. Jake knew that he himself couldn’t stop watching either.

“We knew that Coridan was hit hard,” Jake said, “but the records have always been vague about exactly how it happened. Although this certainly explains why the Coridanites did what they did during the Romulan War.”

“According to some of the files that accompanied this, there werenews stories filed, but they were quickly pulled or denied,” Nog said.

“This is a cover‑up of majorproportions,” Jake said, looking over at the nearly empty wine bottle and silently deciding that he’d had enough. Between the late hour, the wine, and his age, he was barely keeping a clear head as it was.

“Maybe Gardner pulled some strings to save his own reputation,” Nog said. “Wouldn’t be the first time an admiral made a bone headed choice and tried to save face later. I mean, making the decision not to send Enterpriseto Coridan is…well, stupid, at best.”

Jake nodded. “The whole rescue of the Aenar is missing from history as well. Was that Gardner, too?”

“I suspect that omission was probably a combination of work by the Andorians and Section 31,” Nog said, staring down into the wine at the bottom of his glass. “The Andorians had enough problems back then; they didn’t need the whole galaxy knowing that they had a race of powerful telepaths ripe for the picking. They’d kept quiet about them for generations, so why not continue to do so? And if Section 31 helped them, they might have had access to the Aenar when they needed them. We knowthey used telepaths in their later work. Perhaps this was the genesis of that.”

Jake sighed heavily. “It’s a shame what eventually happened to the Aenar.”

Nog nodded silently, a sad expression crossing his face.

“The most galling thing about all of this is that Tucker was erased from these events,” Jake said, steepling his hands under his chin. “Even the ones that haven’t been tampered with. I mean, he saved countless millions of lives on Coridan that wouldn’t have been saved otherwise. And it was hiswarnings–and his decision to help Section 31–that led Captain Archer to rescue the Aenar. Who knows what would have happened if the Romulans had developed a whole fleet of those drones? Or got their hands on a warp‑seven drive, either from Ehrehin or the Coridanites?”

Nog smiled. “I always wondered why Tucker had such a great reputation. I mean, he wasa good engineer, and he wasan important part of the crew of the first Enterprisein Starfleet history. But there was always an aura about him, as though he’d done something legendary.But it never made sense to me before.”

“Maybe enough of the truth leaked out back then to influence his place in history,” Jake said. “After all, anyone with the power to rewrite history can use that clout for goodpurposes, too.”

“So, did he survive, or was this really his last hurrah?” Nog asked.

“You don’t know?” Jake said, teasing. He cuffed Nog on the arm, the way they used to do when they were kids.

“I told you I hadn’t watched it all the way through, hew‑mon,” Nog brayed, giving Jake a good‑natured shove. “You don’t believe me?”

Jake held up his hands in surrender. “That’s all the roughhousing these old bones can take.”

Nog snorted. “Oh, you’re suchan old man.”

Jake realized now how much he’d missed the banter and teasing he used to share routinely with his old friend. It really had been too long since they’d been in touch, and he resolved not to let so much time pass between their reunions in the future.

“All right, let’s see what happens next,” he said, his hand moving to reactivate the holo. “And let’s hope for the best.”

Forty‑Six

Sunday, February 23, 2155

Near Romulan space

TRIP REJOICED WHEN THE INSTRUMENTS confirmed that their ship had actually made it past the known boundaries of the Romulan Star Empire. Of course, his joy was mitigated by the grim realization that Admiral Valdore’s ships weren’t about to be stopped by a border arbitrarily drawn onto some stellar cartographer’s maps.

Trip could be thankful at least that he and Ehrehin had managed to widen their small lead over their pursuers, albeit only modestly. Or until the next time this rust bucket’s warp drive conks out,he thought, hoping he wasn’t tempting fate by visualizing that scenario.

Perhaps a minute later, as he spared as much power as he dared to scan the subspace bands, Trip’s earlier elation vanished entirely.