The strawberry-blonde junior officer threw an apologetic look at Stano and keyed in the commands. “Armed and locked.”

“Fire!”

Blue streaks of phaser energy lanced out across Vanguard’s docking bay and struck the Shedai several times in its center of mass. The creature slowed for a moment, then crackled with energy and renewed its headlong plunge into the station’s core.

“No effect, Captain,” reported McCormack.

Khatami swiveled her chair toward her science officer. “Klisiewicz! Any idea how to stop that thing?”

The dark-haired young man looked up from his sensor display and frowned as he shook his head. “None, sir. It’s tearing through the station like it’s made of paper.”

From the aft quarter of the bridge, communications officer Hector Estrada interjected, “Captain! Vanguard control just issued an evacuation order.”

“Docking bay doors are opening,” reported McCormack.

Facing forward, Khatami said to her helmsman, “Neelakanta, clear all moorings and take us out, full thrusters. If this station goes boom, we don’t want to be here when it happens.”

A black blade was cutting its way to the heart of the station.

Haniff Jackson had never seen anything like it. The entity moved like liquid and sliced through decks and bulkheads with ease, leaving shredded metal and sparking power conduits in its wake. On every surface it touched, it left a residue that looked like dirty ice and spread like mold. Everything shook violently.

He flipped open his communicator. “Jackson to ops! Evac core sections nine through fifteen on all levels, now!”

“Copy that,”replied Commander Cooper. “Evac in progress.”

Running footsteps announced the arrival of his backup, but he feared it would be too little, too late. “Set phasers to full power, narrow beam,” he commanded the five security guards. He lifted his own phaser and aimed at the iridescent surge of dark matter blocking the corridor ahead. “Fire on my mark! Three …”

As quickly as the creature had appeared through one bulkhead, it vanished through another, leaving only the empty tunnel it had bored through the station’s infrastructure. Wind rushed past Jackson with a great roar, and the escaping air carried tiny bits of debris back the way the entity had come.

He lifted his communicator and said, “Ops, this is Jackson! We’re venting atmosphere into the docking bay!”

“Roger that,”Cooper said, sounding distracted. “We’re on it. Stay after the intruder.”

“Acknowledged,” Jackson said. He waved for the security team to follow him as he charged through a gap in a bulkhead to pursue the invading entity, but he didn’t know how they would catch it, considering the rate at which it was moving.

A minute later he realized they had no chance of catching it at all. They reached the end of the creature’s tunnel through the core. It opened into the station’s central matériel-transfer conduit, an enormous circular shaft that reached from just below the operations center at its apex to just above the main sensor dish at its nadir. Peering cautiously over the edge into the vertiginous abyss, Jackson could barely see the intruder’s black mass making its rapid, unchallenged descent.

“Ops, the creature is inside the transfer conduit,” he said into his communicator. “And you’d better warn the folks in the Vault to get outta there—because it’s coming right at ’em.”

“Everyone out!” shouted Carol Marcus, herding her team of scientists toward the Vault’s three emergency exits, in a moment that seemed all too familiar. “Move it! On the double, folks!”

Horrendous booms of impact were followed by the shrieks and groans of wrenched metal. Each second it drew closer.

The lab’s overhead lights flickered erratically. Red warning lights flashed on every bulkhead, and gratingly nasal alarms split the air. Marcus tried to keep a running head count as her people hurried past her, but with bodies moving in three different directions there was no way she could keep up.

But she only had to be able to count to one.

One person had ignored the evacuation order and was still standing at a command console, feeding in data and activating systems inside the experiment chamber: Ming Xiong.

Marcus forced her way through a cluster of running bodies then ran to Ming’s side and yanked hard on his sleeve. “Do you have a death wish or something?”

He twisted free of her grip. “I’m playing a hunch,” he said, never taking his eyes from his work. “Go without me.”

She looked around the room at the exits. The rest of her people were out and moving to safety. Only she and Xiong were left in the Vault, which quaked beneath a steady cadence of hammering blows that sounded as if they were right outside.

“At least tell me what you’re doing,” Marcus pleaded.

“Setting a trap,” Xiong said. With a dubious tilt of his head he added, “I hope.”

Something struck one of the Vault’s outer barriers with a crash of thunder, and an interior metal bulkhead fractured. Panels and monitors on that wall cracked and sprayed sparks across the room. A steady cannonade of impacts followed.

Moving to an adjacent control panel, Marcus shouted over the din, “What can I do to help?”

“No time to explain,” he said. “Just do what I say.”

She nodded. “Okay, go.”

“Patch in the data sequence from Gek’s terminal,” Xiong said as he dashed to a different panel and continued entering commands. “Then route all power from the first artifact’s reserve cell to the new artifact.”

Marcus worked as quickly as she could, and Xiong kept moving from one scientist’s terminal to another, apparently trying to slave them all to some arcane task.

As she completed her first two instructions, the inner bulkhead began to buckle inward from a steady brute-force assault. Over the cacophony she called to Xiong, “Done!”

“Last step!” he yelled back. “Lower the safety barrier! I’ll get set to open the main power relay!”

Despite her every survival instinct telling her not to do as Xiong had asked, Marcus keyed her override code into the Vault’s command console and entered the instruction to lower all the transparent safety panels around the two artifacts.

As the monolithic slabs of transparent steel retracted into the deck, Xiong jogged toward the old-style toggle that served as the manual override for the lab’s main power relay.

He got halfway to the switch before the Shedai smashed through the wall in a blur of obsidian liquid surrounded by arcing bolts of electricity.

Xiong drew a phaser and aimed at the creature. It spawned a tentacle that swatted the weapon from his hand.

The phaser skittered across the deck and slid past Marcus. She dived after it.

A flurry of slender tendrils lashed out from the Shedai and struck at Xiong like cobras. He dodged one, ducked another, then plucked a length of broken pipe from the floor and parried the monster’s third stabbing assault.

Marcus scuttled across the floor. Scooped up the phaser. Fired it on full power at the Shedai.

The shot did no damage, but it seemed to draw most of the creature’s attention toward her. It reared up to attack.

Xiong took a short running start and somersaulted over its back. He rolled across the floor.

The creature spun toward him, forgetting Marcus.

Its tentacles coiled and sprang at Xiong.

He closed his hands around the power-relay toggle and pulled. With a loud clack it snapped shut.

Power surged through the lab—and into the empty artifact.

A burst of light overwhelmed Marcus, and in that moment of white blindness she heard the most terrible screech of torment.

Her vision returned, but all she could see was a painfully bright storm of light and fury. The creature flailed wildly as it was pulled toward the empty artifact, which blazed like a miniature sun. The Vault was filled with an unearthly wailing, a cry of terror and agony that Marcus was sure would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.