Again their conversation was shattered by the sound of alien static and that same grating, stilted speech of the Orishan representative.

   “You have been[ possible meaning: judged] ,”the creature said. “Now you will face the[ possible meaning: wrath] of Erykon’s Eye.”

  “Now what?” said Modan.

  As if in response, the Orishan vessel broke off, shimmering back to invisibility even as it receded into the distance. Just as it vanished completely, “Uh-oh,” said Keru. Before anyone could ask what he meant, the Ellingtonwas rocked by a massive shockwave. Everything and everyone that wasn’t strapped down was flung against the port bulkhead.

  Only Counselor Troi, still seated, still trying desperately to make contact with Titan, remained more or less undisturbed.

  “Everyone strap in!” bellowed Vale, as if there was any need for the order. The others were already scrambling to the jump seats. “What the hell was-”

  Again the ship was battered by a massive jolt, even more violent than the first. This time everything was rocked forward, as if a giant fist had taken hold of the ship and was dragging it into a new position.

   Will!Troi sent with as much force as she could put behind the thoughts. Something’s happening here. We’re in trouble! Real troubl-

  Outside the forward viewport, Jaza’s so-called ghost field was a ghost no longer. A massive spiraling, undulating chaos of light and motion the size of a planet was suddenly writhing there in the space ahead and, despite their efforts to break away, was pulling them inexorably in.

  Worse, if worse was possible, the shimmering globe began to spit energy, great arching tongues of something unknown and deadly, kilometers wide and thousands long, in random directions. The Ellingtonwas being pulled into that maelstrom, and there was nothing they could do about it.

  Vale bellowed commands, and Keru and Jaza moved to obey-any evasive measure, any shielding trick, anything to keep them from being drawn in. Nothing worked. Soon all they could see outside was the sea of boiling energies sucking them down.

  “Set for collision!” yelled Vale over the noise of sparking machinery and computer warnings about energetic discharges.

  Just as they were sucked down, the entire mass erupted at once, spewing its energies wide in a tsunami of force that had to be witnessed to be believed.

  Waves of the weird multicolored energy leaped out in every direction, consuming or obscuring every scrap of normal space that had previously been visible.

  Troi’s mind screamed out to her husband. Will! Get out of there! Get away! Now!She could feel him there, feel his distress as if it were her own as the great wave of energy swept toward Titanlike an ocean of fire. They couldn’t move. There was nowhere to run and no way to do it if there were. “Will! Imzadi!”

  But it was useless. She could feel him, barely, but he couldn’t feel her, neither her panic nor her love, except as ephemeral echoes of what they should be.

  Then even that spindly connection was suddenly gone, ripped away along with the sight of the stars and blackness of normal space. The wave of wild energy ripped outward, swallowing the tiny shuttle utterly, obliterating its connection with the space around it. She was alone for the first time in years, perhaps ever, absolutely alone.

  “No!” she screamed.

  “Deanna!” yelled Vale, fighting alongside Jaza to get some sort of manual control of the shuttle’s motion. It was useless. “Are you hurt?!”

  “It’s Titan,” said Troi. “It’s gone!”

  “Gone?” said Modan, nakedly terrified. “What does she mean, it’s gone?”

  “I can’t feel them anymore!” said Troi in obvious distress. “I can’t feel any of them!”

  Whatever empathic contact she had with her husband, whatever ebb and flow had normally passed between her and the three-hundred-plus members of Titan’s crew was gone, severed as soon as they were caught in the field eruption. Vale had no idea what such a severing might mean, but she was sure it couldn’t be good.

   “Planetary impact imminent,”said the computer over the din. “Implementing automatic safety protocols.”

   Planetary impact?thought Vale. What the hell? Orisha is hundreds of thousands of kilometers from here.

  “There’s something in the field, Chris,” said Jaza as if reading her mind. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but it’s solid and it’s coming up fast.”

  Those that could watched in astonished horror as the effects of the energy wave gave way to the simple clouds of the upper atmosphere of some unknown world. There were landmasses down there, a vast sparkling ocean of something both white and blue, and the sort of vegetation one generally only saw in nightmares. This world was like an enormous jungle, stretching from horizon to horizon in all directions. Mountainous leafy plants of impossible proportions, huge towering spires of turquoise or red that stood in clusters surrounded by hills and other plants that they dwarfed the way Izarian cityscapes dominated her homeworld.

  This was a wild planet, terra incognita, completely untouched by anything recognizable as civilization, and they were about to crash into its heart. The pressure of reentry, without the normal shielding to protect them, pressed relentlessly against them all. Vale knew she was a moment from a blackout.

  She saw something then on her periphery that drew her eye. A great black mass had appeared in the swirling chaos of energies around the planet, with a shape that was chillingly familiar.

  She watched in horror as the shape, very obviously that of Titannow, was buffeted and ultimately torn to bits by the rampaging waves of energy. It went screaming down toward the surface in great burning chunks.

   “Impact imminent,”said the computer as her mind rebelled against the sight her eyes forced it to process. “Implementing emergency protocol priority alpha.”

  The transporter nimbus enveloped the members of her team, spiriting them to the ground where, in theory, they would have a better chance of survival than with the shuttle’s impact.

  Vale had no time to grieve for her friends or to ponder whether their chances would be better naked on this unknown and likely hostile planet, but as the transporter beam took her and she slipped into unconsciousness, her last thought was, “At least I don’t have to hear Ra-Havreii’s damned humming anymore.”

Chapter Five

  T he memories of the previous days came back to him in a rush, and with them the sort of shattering despair that only a supreme act of will could force to recede.

   Titan. Dead with all hands. The whole crew. The rest of the away team scattered, maybe dead as well, and him and Modan trapped in the middle of some massive local conflict.

  Jaza had seen bad days in his time, horrendous ones, in fact, but nothing to compare with this. He had lost friends before, fighting the Cardassians, during his previous Starfleet assignment as science officer on the U.S.S. al-Arif, even a few on Titan, but he had never lost so many so quickly.

  Modan had dragged him away from the scene of her killing of the alien soldier, concealing him under a canopy of the massive leaves that made up so much of the local flora. She was off somewhere, making sure the soldier’s body would not be discovered by its fellows.

  The change in her was remarkable and went far beyond the cosmetic. In shifting into what he could only guess was some sort of naturally evolved hunting or fighting mode, her body now sported, in addition to the new dermal plating, an assortment of spines running the length of her back from the base of her skull to the bottom of her spine. Her “quills” she called them.