Moll Enor couldn’t remember how she got back to her quarters, past the crewmembers braced in the corridors. Her door was only around the corner, but an eternity away. The ship was shaking strangely, a deep rumbling through the hull, like it was running over rocks.

She just couldn’t believe that Titus had died in the explosion. There was a lifepod near the Jeffries tube–if he had gotten to it somehow . . . She did remember seeing a white spark of light leaping from the side of the battle section, or had that been the first indication of the warp‑core breach?

She crouched next to the door, watching as Veridian III loomed through her inward‑slanting windows. Fire seared off the leading edge of the saucer section, turning the room lurid with its light.

The saucer module wobbled side to side as it banked, entering the midcourse correction of phase one of the theoretical best‑case atmospheric entry. Her shocked brain was busy trying to convince herself that Titus couldn’t be dead–he must have made it to a lifepod somehow–while her impeccable memory followed the textbook landing procedure. It had only been performed in computer models because Starfleet had deemed it too costly to subject a Galaxy‑class spaceframe to a full‑up atmosphere entry test.

But now the Enterprisewas going down, testing theory in action. Moll ran over the preferred landing fields: beach sand, deep water, smooth ice or grassy plains on class‑M bodies–

As the saucer section banked the other direction, Moll stared out at a jagged green mountain with ice on top. They skimmed just over the top. She could see the ice sheets, and exactly where the tree line started.

The helm was trying to level the descent, then wham!One side of the saucer section hit the ridge, then the other side hit. Right in front of Moll’s horrified eyes, her windows slammed into the ground.

The rumbling and smashing went on forever as a spray of rocks and dirt and green matter blanketed the structural integrity field. With a final slam, Moll was thrown forward, striking her head against the bulkhead. Even as they slowed to a halt, everything went black.

Chapter Eleven

JAYME WAS LATE for her humanoid anatomy class because she’d been up all night, unsuccessfully trying to track down Moll. She hurried through the commons, even though she knew she wouldn’t hear a word of the lecture. But she was fairly sure Moll was all right. She had finally gotten hold of the Trill Symbiosis Commission and found out they hadn’t been notified about Moll Enor–and they were the ones who would hear first if a symbiont was killed.

There was still that nagging doubt in the back of her mind because she hadn’t gotten a message yet from Moll, but she could almost hear her disapproval that Jayme had missed a class on account of that. After two years of solid B’s in engineering and her struggles to get B+ or higher in the premed courses, she would still be lucky to make it into medical school. And the commendation she received after the Izad Revolution was her only ace in the hole to counter the rather unimpressive stack of reprimands she had received.

Jayme was reassuring herself about Moll when the image of Admiral Brand appeared on the public screens, halting her in midstride. She joined the swarm of cadets who crowded in close as Brand glanced down for a moment before making her announcement.

“As all of you know, during the battle and emergency saucer separation of the Enterprise, one of the crewmembers was killed.” Jayme drew her breath, seeing her own fear reflected in the anxious faces of her fellow cadets.

Admiral Brand’s expression was often considered to be severe, with her white, upswept hair and striking dark brows, but today she looked older than Jayme had ever remembered. “I’m sorry to inform you that it was one of our own cadets, Hammon Titus, who perished while performing his duty on board the Enterprise.”

A young woman nearby gasped out loud, clutching her hands to her mouth and staring at the screen. A friend took her arm, offering support, as Brand continued.

“Hammon Titus will receive posthumous field promotion to ensign, and his life and accomplishments will be celebrated in a memorial service soon after the Enterprisecrewmembers have returned to Starfleet Headquarters.” Her lips tightened. “We never like to hear when a fellow officer has been forced to give their life in the line of duty, especially an officer as young and talented as Ensign Titus.” Brand had to pause for a moment. “We all would have liked to see the career Hammon Titus was destined to make for himself, but we shall have to be content with the time he spent as part of our family in Starfleet.”

Jayme was so stunned she couldn’t move. She had never considered that it could be Hammon Titus! All she had worried about was Moll, figuring Nev Reoh would never get near trouble and Titus could always get out of it. Titus dead . . . she couldn’t believe it!

Bobbie Ray went with Jayme to the beam‑down point at Starfleet Headquarters to wait for Moll Enor and Nev Reoh to return to Earth. Bobbie Ray had returned to the Academy early when he found out that it was Titus who had been killed. He didn’t really think about it, actually. He beamed over to the Academy before he realized he hadn’t said good‑bye to his mother. She wasn’t exactly pleased that he wouldn’t be coming back for a few days, and he got the idea she wanted to “mother” him, which would have made him hang by his claws from the ceiling in less than an hour.

Jayme wouldn’t wait for Enor to come to the Academy; she insisted on going to Starfleet at the ungodly hour Enor was scheduled to return, having already been debriefed en route.

Bobbie Ray pretended to grumble about being routed out of bed, but it really didn’t take much to get him to the beam‑down point exactly on time. And as they waited for the transporter to materialize, he was hit with a pang of remorse when only Moll Enor and Nev Reoh appeared. He was glad to see them, but it was suddenly very real, when Titus didn’t appear with the others, that he would never see Titus again.

Moll Enor saw it in his eyes, and she patted his arm with a furrowed brow. With only one glance, he could tell she was taking it very hard. Jayme was hugging Enor like she never wanted to let go, laughing and crying at the same time.

“You were with him, weren’t you?” Bobbie Ray asked her, even as Jayme was trying to tell Moll Enor how happy she was to have her back.

Enor looked at Bobbie Ray. “We were at the hatch and he thought the docking latch was jammed. He just leaped through and the forcefield snapped on before I could follow. And then . . .”

Jayme was wiping her eyes, her face crumpled as she thought about Titus, but she comforted Enor. Bobbie Ray turned away, telling the transporter operator, “I want to go back to the Academy.”

“C‑can I come with you?” Nev Reoh asked.

Bobbie Ray put one arm around the Bajoran’s shoulders, giving the smaller man a solid shake. “You know I wouldn’t leave without you.”

They left Jayme and Enor at Starfleet Headquarters so Enor could get her orders. As they materialized back at the Academy, Reoh said, “I’ve transferred back to the Academy. I’ll teach in the geophysics department. I’ve had enough of starships for a while–”

“Aaahhh!”Starsa screamed she ran into the room and saw the two of them together. She didn’t stop until she ran straight into Nev Reoh, throwing her arms around him and kissing first one cheek, then the other, over and over again. “I’m so glad you’re alive!”

Everyone in the transporter room began to chuckle, then laugh at the awkward expression on the former Vedek’s face. Even Bobbie Ray began to smile, thinking Nev Reoh deserved to have such an exuberant welcome. He should have done it himself, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Titus.