The thrumming of the engines grew louder and pitched quickly upward as the stars on the viewscreen shot past.

"Course laid in and engaged, sir," replied Lavena, her voice filtered through her aquatic breathing mask. "ETA to target is approximately seven hours, nine minutes."

To Vale, Riker added, "Get ready for a hostile reception."

Vale turned to T'Kel. "All security personnel to stations." Then she pivoted toward Tuvok. "Shields to ready standby, weapons hot." As the two officers carried out her orders with cool, quiet efficiency, Vale turned back to Riker and lowered her voice to a sub rosa level. "Without comms, we won't be able to report our findings to Starfleet. If we get into trouble, we won't even be able to send a Mayday. We'll be completely alone out here."

"We're already alone out here," Riker replied in the same hushed tone. "But I'm not breaking off or going back. Whatever's hiding out there in the dark, it's got my full attention."

2168.

20.

Erika Hernandez awoke struggling and flailing as a gloved hand clamped over her mouth and nose.

A German-accented voice snapped, "Quick, tie her!"

She lashed out and cuffed Private Steinhauer on the ear before someone else snared her wrist and yanked it backward.

Steinhauer and Mazzetti pulled Hernandez from her bunk. The German's hand slipped from her mouth, and she inhaled, a prelude to a shout-then Mazzetti wedged a rolled-up sock between her teeth, m.u.f.fling her panicked cry for help.

There were sounds of struggle in the rooms adjoining hers, more sharp-but-hushed orders, heavy thuds of bodies striking the floor, the meaty smack of fists against flesh.

Her attackers flipped her facedown on the floor. One of them, she couldn't see which, kneeled on her back and held her wrists behind her while the other bound them. The odor of their exertion was heavy in the air. She kept trying to pull free, and they tightened their hold. Beads of sweat rolled from beneath her hair, soaking her forehead and neck.

Mazzetti and Steinhauer each grabbed one of her arms, under the shoulder, and dragged her backward out of her quarters, into one of the corridors of their penthouse suite. At the same time, Commander Fletcher was dragged, bound and gagged, from her room by Sergeant Pembleton and Private Crichlow. Lieutenants Yacavino and Thayer pulled the similarly restrained Lieutenant Valerian into the hallway, while Major Foyle and Lieutenant Graylock towed Dr. Metzger from her chambers.

"Bring them to the main room," ordered Foyle. The group did as the MACO leader said and pushed, pulled, and prodded their four prisoners into the suite's sunken living area, near the terrace entrance. Foyle released his hold on Metzger and said, "Seat them back-to-back and tie them together."

Hernandez eyed Foyle as he stepped away and watched Pembleton and the three privates lash the four Columbia officers together, each of them facing out, like points on a compa.s.s.

The major conferred in whispers with his second-in-command for a moment before he acknowledged Captain Hernandez's baleful glare. "I won't insult you by apologizing," he said. "And I can't say as I mind our conversation being a bit one-sided in my favor, for a change." He stepped down and kneeled beside her. "You understand why I had to do this, don't you?"

She wanted to spit at him, but the sock was in the way.

"Yacavino," said the major. "I'll brief our guests on what happens next. Deploy the others and wait for my signal." As the group began to leave, he added, "Pembleton, hang back."

The MACO sergeant turned and halted while the rest of the mutineers departed. Hernandez caught a backward, regretful glance from Lieutenant Thayer, but only a stern mask of resolve on Graylock. She was profoundly disappointed in both of them, but especially in her chief engineer.

I never should've let Tucker transfer back to Enterprise, she jokingly berated herself. It's so hard to find good help these days.

After the Caeliar elevator pod had departed, carrying the others back to street level, Foyle waved Pembleton over. "Take their communicators," he said. "And anything else you find."

Hernandez had suspected that Foyle would remember she had ordered everyone to carry communicators at all times, in case the scattering field ever lifted. All the same, as Pembleton plucked hers from her pocket, she felt a twinge of irritation at the MACOs' efficiency and thoroughness. The sergeant concluded his pat-down search of the four female officers and held up four communicators. "This is all they had."

"Stack them over there, against the wall." Pembleton did as Foyle instructed. Then the major added, "Frag them."

Pembleton tugged the strap of his phase rifle and swung it off his back and into his hands. He squeezed off a burst of charged plasma and reduced the four communicators to smoking, sparking sludge.

Then he aimed his rifle at Hernandez.

"Give the order, sir," said Pembleton, his index finger poised over the trigger, steady and certain.

Foyle absorbed Hernandez's murderous, defiant stare. His face was an icy cipher. After several seconds, he said to Pembleton, "Lower your weapon." He strode toward the elevator pod. "We'll leave them here."

Pembleton let his weapon's muzzle dip toward the floor as he watched Foyle walk away. "Sir, that wasn't the plan."

The major stopped, turned, and snapped, "I know that, Sergeant. Sling your rifle and get in the lift." He watched Pembleton engage the safety on his weapon and quickstep toward the returned elevator pod. Then he looked at Hernandez. "I've chosen not to kill you, Captain," he said. "Please don't make me regret my decision."

He followed Pembleton to the pod and stepped inside. Its transparent sh.e.l.l sealed itself around them, and then it vanished through the floor on its way to the plaza below.

Hernandez a.s.sessed her situation with dour cynicism. I'm bound hand and foot, unarmed, with no communicator. And I've got a sock in my mouth. She felt her nostrils flare as she sighed through her nose. I wish he had shot me.

Time was dragging for Kiona Thayer even as the wind whipped her long, dark hair above her head like Medusa's serpents.

She still had a sick feeling in her gut from helping Major Foyle and his men a.s.sault and restrain her four fellow officers. Everything had unfolded so quickly once the MACOs had set themselves in motion. Within minutes she and Graylock had been roused and pressed into service to restrain the captain and the others.

In the hour that had elapsed since they'd left the penthouse and persuaded the Caeliar to provide them with an automated transportation disk to the nearby city of Mantilis for "cultural research," Thayer had felt her pulse throbbing in her temples. At any moment her four betrayed shipmates would be discovered trussed like animals in the penthouse, she was certain of it. And then all of this would be for nothing.

Towers and spires blurred past in the darkness. Then the lines of the metropolis sharpened as the disk settled to a soft landing in the midst of a great plaza across from the opaque dome that shielded this city's majestic Caeliar apparatus.

The disk melted into the marbled stone of the plaza, and the eight-person team moved quickly toward the dome. A violet radiance shot up from the top of the dome and soared skyward.

"Nice thing about a species that never sleeps," Crichlow said softly, with a grin. "They don't ask why you'd want to take a trip in the middle of the night."

Pembleton smacked the back of Crichlow's crew-cut head, and said in a whisper laced with menace, "Shut up."

At the base of the dark hemisphere that loomed large before them, the group halted. The MACOs unzipped side pouches on one another's packs and removed rolls of wide medical tape from their first-aid kits. They worked strips of tape between their fingers and wrapped a few loops, adhesive side out, around their palms and the toes of their boots.

Pembleton handed a roll of tape to Thayer. "Just enough to give yourself some traction," he whispered. "Once we're past the first half, we should be okay without it."

Thayer tried to wrap her hands and boots with the tape; it was clumsy work, holding one end in place while manipulating the rest of the roll. After it slipped from her grasp for the third time, Pembleton and Steinhauer did the work for her. When they finished, Pembleton asked her, "Ready?" She nodded. "All right," he said. "Let's climb."

The sergeant and Major Foyle led the way, scrambling and fighting for purchase on the smooth surface. The rest of the group hurried behind them. In moments they were scratching and kicking their way up the dome like drunken bugs. Just as Pembleton had predicted, after they reached the halfway point they were able to move more quickly, jogging in a knuckle-dragging slouch, occasionally padding their palms against the dome for traction or balance. Recalling that the domes appeared transparent from inside, Thayer hoped that none of the Caeliar working on Mantilis's apparatus were looking up at that moment.

At the top of the dome, the eight-person team perched at the edge of the fifty-meter-wide aperture to the crystalline shaft that linked the dome to the enormous circular platform two hundred meters below. "Moment of truth," Foyle said as he stared down into the glittering empty s.p.a.ce and the constantly moving ma.s.s of dark machines at its nadir.

All six MACOs doffed their packs, opened them, and began extracting coils of high-tensile microfiber rope and carabiners that they snapped into reinforced loops on their standard-issue tactical vests. Their hands worked faster than Thayer could follow, threading ropes through the steel loops, tying knots, and securing pockets and packs.

Graylock carried a tube of cyanoacrylate from his emergency repair kit and moved down the line, stopping behind each person to affix a carabiner on the surface of the dome with a thick wad of the polymer superadhesive. Thayer eyed the fat dollop of glue with suspicion. "Will that hold?"

"Ja, but not long. Six, maybe seven decades." As Graylock moved on, Thayer reflected on the truism that there had never been any great German comedians.

Yacavino tapped her on the shoulder. "Lift your arms, signorina," he said. "I need to tie you a harness." She did as he asked and watched as he worked careful loops in a cross over her torso and then secured them with a strong simple knot through the carabiner at her feet. Then he threaded her descent rope through a carabiner on her makeshift harness. "You know how to use this, si?"

"I think I remember, yes," she lied.

A few meters away, Steinhauer finished strapping Graylock into his own jury-rigged harness. The MACOs secured their rifles and gear, slung their packs back into place, and looked to Foyle for orders. "Let's go," he said. "We're running out of time."

Yacavino whispered to Thayer, "Do as we do."

He turned his back to the aperture and took hold of the rope between himself and his glued-on anchor. Thayer mimicked his actions but lacked the Italian man's ease or confidence as they began backing up in small steps toward the edge behind them. Watching and copying his every movement, she set her heels precisely over the edge, pulled her rope taut, and leaned back until she was almost horizontal, with only her grip keeping her from free fall. On either side of her, the others hovered over the shining abyss. Then Foyle said, "Now."

Reflex kept her in motion with the MACOs. She bent her knees just enough to coil up some energy, then she pushed away from the wall and let the slack rope fly through the carabiner. Then her old combat training came back to her, and she was right beside Yacavino and the others, plummeting and bouncing and feeling the exhilaration of acceleration, the rush of falling without losing control, all her focus on the present moment, the angle of her body, the placement of her hands, the tension in the rope, the rebound in her feet.

In less than a minute, they were standing on the narrow perimeter rim at the bottom of the shaft and unhooking their carabiners from their rappelling lines. Speed was paramount now. They had to act before the Caeliar had time to respond.

They slipped through a close grouping of meter-wide slits in the columns and sprinted across the giant, deserted circular platform, toward one of the entrances to the facility hidden within. Beyond the luminous halo of the platform, Thayer saw nothing but shadows and heard only the vital pulsing of great machines and the endless echoes of the yawning silo.

A portal irised open on the blockhouse as Foyle and Pembleton approached it, weapons held steady and level. Thayer was stunned by the lack of security. Guess the Caeliar figured we'd never get this far, so why lock the door?

Beyond the portal was a long, spiral-shaped ramp that led down and doubled back beneath Thayer's position. Foyle motioned Pembleton to take point, and the sergeant stalked forward in a low crouch until he was almost out of the team's sight. With a low wave, he ushered the rest of the team forward.

Mazzetti and Crichlow were the next to proceed. Then Foyle gestured for Thayer and Graylock to advance, placing them in the protected middle of the formation. Next, the major and Private Steinhauer followed the two flight officers, while Yacavino lingered a few meters back as the squad's rear guard.

Near the bottom of the ramp, the team halted while Foyle and Pembleton surveyed the situation. Thayer peeked over the low half wall that bordered the ramp and stared agape at the Caeliar laboratory. Beside her, Graylock was stealing a peek of his own.

Machines of crystal, light, and fluid ringed the nearly hundred-meter-wide open s.p.a.ce, and a dancing sphere of light several meters in diameter hovered in the chamber's center. The ceiling was dozens of meters overhead, lending a cavernous aspect to the facility's total enclosure. But its real wonder were the Caeliar themselves.

There were only thirteen of them overseeing the entire works. Some stood and interfaced with the apparatus by contact, while others hovered in midair and manipulated two-dimensional screens that seemed to be made of silver liquid that rippled at their touch. A slow, oscillating song emanated from the machines, eerie and almost hypnotic in quality.

Pembleton looked back at Foyle, who nodded. It was time.

The team charged into the open, the MACOs brandishing their rifles, as Pembleton shouted, "Stop what you're doing!" His voice echoed back to him twice as the rest of the MACOs spread out around him. The Caeliar, if they were surprised or alarmed, gave no appearance of it. They regarded the invaders with the same curious annoyance that a human might have at discovering a troublesome pet in a forbidden room of the house.

Foyle stepped out in front of the group and addressed the Caeliar in a calm, even manner. "We are here because we desire your cooperation. And before you start vanishing in puffs of smoke or floating away, I should warn you that if you don't cooperate, there will be grave consequences."

The nearest Caeliar scientist said, with almost pitying boredom, "Your weapons pose little threat to us, Stephen Foyle."

"Yes, I'm aware of that." Foyle looked at Pembleton. "Sergeant, if you would."

Pembleton turned, fired, and shot Thayer's left foot.

She collapsed to the floor, screaming and bleeding.

Her ragged cries of horror and agony resounded in the vast enclosure, bringing her pain and shock back to her threefold. The initial needlelike blast of pain in her now-crisped foot became an unbearable burning that spread from her ankle into her entire leg. "Putain de merde!" she raged at Pembleton. To Foyle she added, "Con de crisse!" Blood flowed from the stump of her leg, forming an irregularly shaped puddle on the floor.

No one had told her this would be part of the plan.

Graylock tried to come to her, but Yacavino held him back.

The Caeliar crowded forward as if attracted to her pain. Foyle waited until they had circled around the squad and said, "Any closer and my sergeant will kill her."

"And if we drain the power from your weapons?" inquired another Caeliar.

Steinhauer pressed a combat knife against Thayer's throat.

"Then he cuts her from ear to ear," said Foyle.

Thayer fought to blink through her kaleidoscope of tears. She saw Graylock struggle against the MACO lieutenant's hold. "You're all verruckt!" shouted the furious Austrian.

"Be quiet, Mister Graylock," Foyle said. "We've come here to do a job, and I will see it done, by any means necessary." Returning his focus to the Caeliar, Foyle continued, "My chief engineer is going to ask you to make some adjustments to your apparatus. First, however, I want you to weaken the scattering field in a narrow radius around this facility, with a clear line of transmission to our ship in orbit. Do you understand?"

The Caeliar watched Thayer as she squirmed in agony on the floor and flailed desperately in a pool of her own blood. A few seconds pa.s.sed before the first Caeliar who had spoken to Foyle replied, "We understand."

That was when Thayer understood Foyle's logic. Unable to overpower the Caeliar, he had exploited their only weaknesses: their compa.s.sion and pacifism. Several times over the past six months they had reminded the Columbia team of their aversion to violence and their cultural prohibition against taking sentient life, through "action or omission of action."

It was a n.o.ble philosophy, in Thayer's opinion, and it was therefore completely unsuitable for dealing with such a ruthless political actor as Foyle, who had just put it to the test and found it wanting. He snapped at Graylock, "Stop staring at her and get to work on the time tunnel home." While Graylock stepped away and conferred with three of the Caeliar scientists about the modifications he wanted to make in their apparatus, Foyle looked to his MACOs. "Yacavino, hail the Columbia. Pembleton, if he can't break through the scattering field and raise the ship in the next fifteen seconds, shoot Thayer's other foot."

His order brought back all her pain, and the fear of an encore made it worse. She wanted to crawl away and hide, but the cold edge of Steinhauer's knife was firm against her throat. Her leg felt as if it was on fire, and her mouth was parched. A sick feeling swelled in her stomach, and adrenaline overload was shaking her with the force of a seizure while she watched her lifeblood seep away.

Yacavino held up his communicator and called to Foyle, "I have the Columbia, sir."

"Tell them to fire up the transporter," Foyle said. "Fast."

One of the Caeliar made cautious gestures to Foyle and then drew near. "Your engineer's time-travel formulae are crude," the scientist said. "We've made such adjustments as are necessary for your safe pa.s.sage. However, I should warn you that the linked nature of the apparatus will make it obvious to the other loci in the network when we shift our focus to Earth. Also, the various stations all operate from a central command system, so your time-travel formulae will infect the system as a whole. These details will not go unnoticed. The Quorum will block your escape from orbit once your actions are noted by the gestalt."

"They'll try," Foyle replied with a sinister grin. He pulled back one sleeve of his camouflage uniform and checked his watch. He tapped its face and smiled. "Which is why, when we set our timers, I chose this as the perfect time for a distraction."

On the sunlit side of Erigol, in the city of Kintana, Auceo, poet-laureate and chief archivist of the Caeliar, worked with his colleagues in the core of the city's apparatus, awaiting the response to the hail they had projected across the universe, toward a civilization from the dawn of time.

"The aperture is steady," said Eilo, his research partner. She dragged the tip of one tendril across the liquid display that shimmered before her.

Attuning his will to the gestalt, Auceo rearranged the monads that infused the air around him. The same nigh-invisible cloud of raw matter surrounded all the Caeliar's cities and was free for the taking by all who could perceive its existence.

Subatomic particles coalesced at his behest and formed a curving liquid-silver sheet that he molded until its vista of images, all as sharp as reality, filled his peripheral vision. Streams of data flooded his senses, some of it numeric, some of it visual. "Subspatial harmonics are stable," he said. "Data stream integrity is-"

Errors and failures cascaded from every system, and Auceo and the others in the Kintana locus abandoned their previous tasks to attend the emergent crisis.

"The Mantilis node is misaligned," reported Noreth, the interlink engineer.

Auceo observed the feed from Mantilis. It fell farther out of synchronization with the other loci the longer he watched.

Then a hue of alarm resonated in the gestalt, and Auceo caught only the most fleeting sense of its warning-the humans had interfered in the Great Work somehow. Before he could learn more, a discordant wail of pain and terror engulfed the gestalt and drowned out all the other voices. At the same time, a surge of chaotic signals and unchecked power spikes blasted through the apparatus network, disrupting its global frequency.

For the first time that Auceo had ever known, the gestalt was silenced by its shared pain and horror.

Far beyond the horizon from Kintana, halfway between it and Axion, the city of Feiran had just vanished in a flash of fire.

"Ma.s.sive detonation on the planet's surface," reported Ensign Claudia Siguenza, the Columbia's gamma-shift weapons officer. "One of the alien cities just exploded."