There was movement behind her left shoulder, and then she heard Kodell’s voice, low, pitched for her ears only: “But you doneed to do something.”

That made her mad, but she kept her voice down. “Thanks for the reminder. You know damn well I can’t fire on the Cardassian scout, without raising all kinds of hell. We’re in disputed space and we’re here because of a breach in Starfleet security, remember?”

“The captain’s turning!” Castillo sang. “Heading back toward the shuttlepod!”

“What?” Bat-Levi didn’t want to say it, but she thought that this bordered on suicidal.

“May I remind you,” Kodell continued, as if nothing had happened, “that if that Cardassian doessee us and lives to tell about it, the end result will be the same? All they have to do is report back to their Central Command, and we’ll still have an incident on our hands. There are, however, creative ways to bend the rules, without you having to fire one directshot.”

Kodell nodded toward the viewscreen, and Bat-Levi turned in time to see another piece of space around the shuttlecraft flare. “That’s a lot of plasma out there,” said Kodell. “A lot of very volatileplasma.”

Her anger evaporated. Bat-Levi looked from Kodell to the viewscreen and then to Kodell again.

“Oh,” she said, showing her teeth in a savage grin, “you are good.”

“He’ll blow,” Stern warned. “No way Halak’s going to last they keep firing at him like that.”

“He’s not the only one. Can you raise him?” Garrett spun the shuttle port and down thirty, but not soon enough. The shuttle lurched and bucked, and she heard Stern curse.

“Crap,” Stern rapped. Then: “No. We’re too far away. Too much damned interference.”

“Any closer, and we might as well charge admission,” said Garrett, trying to force the shuttle into a turn by dint of her will. She felt the vessel turn, turn, turn…then slam into a shock wave. Garrett gasped, felt her stomach bottom out as gravity failed for an instant then came back.

Those damn disruptors, they’re touching off plasma explosions left and right, shock waves from all sides…

Clearly, they were trying to stop her from making a run for the brown star. Succeeding, too. She understood the Cardassians’ strategy. If they couldn’t get her with a direct shot, they could ignite the space around her. Like having a whole bunch of phasers. No, better than that: mines. Garrett pushed a shock of hair out of her eyes and tried to think. Either her shields would fail, or the ship would simply buckle and break apart from the shock waves, all that radiation and charged particles slamming into their hull. She couldn’t fault the Cardassian on his tactics either. She’d have done the same thing herself if she had enough firepower.

She watched Halak’s shuttlepod flounder through space. Somehow, miraculously, the commander had managed to eke out some power from a maneuvering thruster and he’d avoided the Cardassian so far. Not for long, though: She watched the Cardassian scout peel off and bear down on Halak’s vessel. As the Cardassian ramped up his speed, she saw a brief pink flare erupt then disappear as the Cardassian’s vented plasma ignited a swirl of ionized gas.

Enough firepower. Garrett’s breath caught. My God, of course!

“Hang on!” Garrett slammed the shuttle into a reverse turn, pivoting the vessel on its long axis and bringing it around. She punched the shuttle to max acceleration, and the vessel leapt toward the Vulcan shuttlepod.

“What are you doing?”Stern shouted. Grabbing onto her console, she braced herself. “Are you trying to end this soonerrather than later?”

Garrett didn’t answer. She punched up Halak’s comchannel. “Commander!’

A wash of static, then: “Here.”

“Do you still have phasers?”

“Affirmative.”

“What about shields?”

“Twenty percent, max. But…”

“That will have to do. Listen. I want to try something. Two words: Kolvoord Starburst.”

An instant’s silence. “Captain, I don’t have the maneuverability. There’s no way I’ll be able to cross your flight path and ignite my plasma trail without ramming into…”

“You and I won’t have to get that close. Listen. It’s the same principle, but instead of us crossing each other’s flight paths, I want us to pull closer to the Cardassian and concentrate…” It took her five seconds to explain, and two for him to agree.

“My God.” Stern was shaking her head as Garrett dropped the ship at Z-minus-70 and brought the shuttle around. “You’re both certifiable. You are going to get us barbecued.”

“Not if I can barbecue them first.” Rushing toward the Cardassian scout, Garrett targeted the space behind the vessel. She brought her phasers on line, full power. “Shields at maximum. Commander, on my mark, in three, two, one, fire!”

Garrett’s phaser beams sizzled across space. The energy from Halak’s phaser joined hers. There was a split second where absolutely nothing happened—when Garrett watched the Cardassian plowing through plasma whorls and ionized gas toward Halak’s shuttlepod. Then there was a blinding flash, so bright and quick that the automatic polarizing filters didn’t have a chance to snap into place and Garrett winced, threw her hand up to shield her eyes. Then she watched as the space ignited behind the Cardassian, streaming up the Cardassian’s vented plasma trail the way fire licks along a stream of kerosene. The space behind and around the Cardassian exploded in a fireball, and the scout disappeared in an orange-yellow maelstrom of ionized gas and ignited plasma.

“Shock waves!” Stern cried.

A wall of ionizing radiation crashed against the shuttle like water barreling through a broken dam. Something shorted just behind Garrett’s head; she smelled ozone and scorched metal.

“Jase!” she shouted, battling for control of the ship. She watched, helplessly, as her port maneuvering thruster went out, and her starboard thruster flickered.

But her son was already out of his seat. “I got it!” he cried, grabbing for an extinguisher. Wrenching it free of the bulkhead, he thumbed the extinguisher on and opened up with a short burst once, twice. He staggered back as the shuttle rolled then canted on its short axis.

“I’m losing her, I’m losing her!” Garrett shouted. She tried slowing the ship’s spin, but she had no thruster control.

The hull began to vibrate, the consoles to rattle. “Shields and phasers off-line!” Stern reported, shouting above the din. “Rachel, your inertial dampers are failing.”

Garrett’s teeth gritted. “You need to tellme this?” she grunted, wrestling with the controls. “We’re going to break apart.”

Then she heard Stern gasp. “Oh, my Lord.”

Garrett looked up. “Oh, God,” she said, going numb with horror. “Oh, my God.”

There, like some phoenix arising from the ashes, was the Cardassian. The scout barreled though the firewall and, although Garrett thought it couldn’t possibly notbe damaged in some way—for God’s sake, that was the equivalent of several thousands of megatons going off—the Cardassian wasn’t hurt enough.

She felt Jase’s hand on her shoulder. Garrett slid her arm around her son and pulled him tight. “I’m sorry, son,” she said.

Jase’s face was pale but calm. “It’s okay, Mom.”

Garrett pulled Jase’s head down to her chest. “Don’t look, baby. Don’t look.”

The Cardassian filled space until that was all Garrett saw.

Dear God.Garrett uttered a silent prayer. Make it quick, make it…

In the next instant, there was a bright flash, and then space blew apart. And then the Cardassian was spinning out of control.

“Phasers, fire!”Bat-Levi shouted.

“Aye!” Glemoor’s voice was gleeful.

They watched as the Enterprise’s phasers lapped at the space around the Cardassian, setting off another plasma burst.