Around them, the shuttle hummed to life. Vaughn glanced quickly to the aft of the cabin and saw the sphere of the cloaking device begin to glow. “Twenty seconds,” he said, looking back to the chronometer.
“Commencing antigrav liftoff sequence,” Harriman said, his fingers roaming expertly across his panel.
Through the forward viewing port, Vaughn saw another shuttle and several work pods seem to descend as Liss Riehnlifted from the landing stage. A moment later, the shuttle stopped rising, and then it yawed to port. The bay slipped away in the opposite direction as the stars came into view, the warp effect stretching them into thin lines as Tomedraced through space. “Ten seconds,” Vaughn said.
“Activating cloak,” Gravenor said. The lighting in the cabin immediately dimmed, a signal both of the cloak’s operation and of the enormous amount of power it drew.
“Aft thrusters at the ready,” Harriman said.
“Three seconds,” Vaughn said. “Two…one…” As he reached “zero,” the shuttle surged forward into the starscape, the bay slipping past the viewing port until it was no longer visible. “Subspace threshold in three seconds,” Vaughn said. He knew that navigating the border between a ship’s warp field and normal space could be accomplished safely and easily at speeds slower than warp five, but at Tomed’s current velocity—
A jolt thundered through the shuttle, and it skewed laterally from its course. Vaughn flew from his chair across the cabin. He raised his uninjured arm in time to absorb the impact as he struck the bulkhead, but the wounds in his shoulder and hand screamed in pain. A loud drone rose in the enclosed space, and Vaughn recognized the sound of the structural-integrity field straining to protect the shuttle.
The vibrations in the cabin increased as he pushed himself away from the bulkhead and staggered back to his chair. He saw Commander Gravenor also pulling herself back up to her console, but Captain Harriman had somehow braced himself and had maintained his position. Past the two officers, a faint translucent glow, golden and the consistency of vapor, shined outside the viewing port.
“The cloak is holding,” Gravenor yelled above the din.
“We’re almost clear,” Harriman said, also raising his voice to be heard.
Vaughn checked the time, grabbing hold of the panel to steady his gaze. “Five minutes, forty-five seconds until containment failure,” he called, indicating the time left before the destruction of Tomed.“Forty-five seconds until we need to go to warp.” In order to escape the ensuing shock wave, the shuttle would need to put some distance between it and the Romulan flagship.
All at once, the shuttle stopped shaking. “We’ve cleared the subspace threshold,” Harriman said.
Vaughn peered over at the viewing port. The stars moved in counterclockwise spirals out in space, he saw, the shuttle obviously in an uncontrolled roll. Then he checked the chronometer. “Thirty seconds until we need to go to warp,” he said.
Captain Harriman operated his controls. “Starboard thrusters,” he said beneath his breath, his words almost inaudible. The spinning of the stars slowed, and Vaughn imagined that he could feel the decelerating effects of the thrusters as they braked the shuttle’s roll, although with no external gravitational reference, he surely could not.
“Fifteen seconds to warp,” he said.
“We’ll make it,” Harriman said calmly. Through the viewing port, the stars coasted to a stop. “Laying in our course away from Tomedand Foxtrot XIII,” he said, working his panel once more. “Going to warp.”
The hum of the warp engines filled the cabin, accompanied by a controlled vibration. Through the viewing port, Vaughn watched the stars streak past the shuttle as it rocketed to lightspeed. Then he turned to his own panel. “Transmitting our signal,” he said. Using his uninjured hand, he activated the control sequence that would cause a random dispersion in Liss Riehn’s navigational deflector. “Signal away,” he confirmed when he had completed his task.
Five minutes later, Captain Harriman brought the shuttle out of warp. The stars returned to pinpoints as the cabin quieted and stilled. “Maneuvering thrusters,” the captain said. “We are at station-keeping.” Then he turned in his chair and faced both Commander Gravenor and Vaughn. “Drysi, Elias, well done,” he said. “You’ve completed an incredibly difficult mission. And an importantone. Your actions may have saved billions on both sides of the Neutral Zone.” He paused, and then added, “If I could, I’d put each of you in for the highest commendation.”
“Thank you, John,” Gravenor said.
“Thank you, sir,” Vaughn said.
“John,” the captain told Vaughn. “Right now, you can call me John.”
“Thank you, John,” Vaughn said.
Harriman and Gravenor both turned back to their consoles, and Vaughn looked at his own panel. Their duties completed, they sat in silence, waiting to learn whether or not they would survive their mission.
Linojj stared from the command chair at the tactical readout displayed on the main viewer, having trouble accepting what she saw. An icon representing the Foxtrot XIII asteroid sat in the center of the screen, with concentric circles drawn around it to indicate distance from the outpost. A representation of Tomed,a small, green starship symbol, sped toward the center of the display on an unwavering course.
“It’s headed directly for it,” Ensign Fenn said from the sciences station, her voice low, her tone one of disbelief.
“Tomedis nine billion kilometers from the outpost,” Tenger reported. “The containment field will fail completely in eighteen seconds.”
Linojj didn’t need to work through the mathematics to know that the explosion would occur extremely close to Foxtrot XIII. Even at a greater distance, though, the unleashing of a quantum singularity within a warp field would send such a powerful shock wave through subspace that the outpost would still be destroyed. And with Tomedtraveling at warp nine, the entire sector might be at risk.
“We’re within visual range,” Kanchumurthi said.
“On screen, maximum magnification,” Linojj ordered.
The viewer changed, the tactical display replaced by a starscape, with the brown, irregularly shaped oval of Foxtrot XIII visible at its center.
“Four-point-five billion kilometers,” Tenger said. “Eight seconds to containment failure.”
Linojj felt helpless, unable to bring Enterpriseclose enough in the final seconds to help in any way. She could only hope that that Agamemnonwould be able in the last moments to force Tomedout of warp. If containment failed outside a warp field, the microsingularity would cause localized destruction, but there would be no threat to the outposts.
“Agamemnonhas opened fire on Tomed,”Ensign Fenn said excitedly.
“Two-point-two billion kilometers,” Tenger said. “Three seconds…two…one…”
Linojj peered around the bridge and saw all eyes focused on the main viewer. She looked there herself, in time to see a brilliant flash of white fill the screen, the protective filters unable to compensate for the intensity of the light. Linojj squinted and looked away for a moment to protect her eyes.
When she looked back, Foxtrot XIII was gone.
Zero: Tomed
InTomed’ s main engineering section, containment failed. With the complex fields that tamed its effects gone, the microscopic black hole that powered the starship reached out into the universe. Matter tore apart under the relentless draw of the singularity, and then disappeared into the pure darkness. Space and time, bound together seamlessly to form the structure of reality, rent beneath the force, twisting and wrinkling as portions of the continuum sank into the ultimate gravitational vortex. The black hole pulled at everything, devouring all it captured, its appetite insatiable.