Reap the Whirlwind

Everyone else on the bridge except Xiong seemed calm about the imminent arrival of the boarding party. The young A&A officer trembled, and his hands shook so badly that he could barely be trusted to aim his phaser. “Are we really taking on a Klingon boarding party?”

“Of course we are, Ming,” Nassir said. “This situation calls for a stupid and utterly futile gesture to be done on somebody’s part, and I think we’re just the crew to do it.”

The captain held a straight face and enjoyed Xiong’s stu

Good, Nassir thought. Better to go out in high spirits.

Sorak turned from his console and stood up, phaser in hand. “The Klingons have lowered their shields and begun sca

“Here we go,” Nassir said, standing up to steel his nerves for the coming fray. He watched the image of the Zin’za on the main viewer—and flinched with surprise as a volley of charged plasma shots struck it amidships, battering its secondary hull and peppering its warp nacelles and impulse drive. Instantly dealt a savage blow, the ship’s bow pitched downward as the vessel rolled to port.

“Stations!” Nassir snapped, pushing himself back into his chair. “Sorak! Report!”

“Weapons fire from the Tholian ship,” the Vulcan said. “Heavy damage to the Klingons’ impulse drive, shields, life support, and weapons.”

McLellan cut in, “Tractor beams disengaged, sir! We’re free to navigate!”

“Sayna,” Nassir said, and before he could finish the sentence zh’Firro had already accelerated the Sagittarius to full impulse away from the Klingons. The captain looked back at McLellan. “The Rocinante?”

“Free and breaking away,” she said. “The Tholians are pursuing the Zin’za.”

Nassir eyed the swiftly changing situation on the main viewer. “Will the Klingons fight it out?”

“Negative, sir,” McLellan said. “They’re breaking orbit.”

“Confirmed,” Sorak added. “The Zin’za is powering up its warp nacelles for—” On the main viewer the Zin’za vanished to warp speed in a colorful blur. From behind it, the Tholian warship was cruising toward the Sagittarius.

Now to find out if we’re next on the Tholians’ hit list, Nassir worried. “McLellan, hail the Tholians, request a parley. Sorak, contact the Rocinante, tell them to make a run for it.” He thumbed open a comm cha

“Almost fixed, Skipper,” Ilucci said. “Two more minutes.”

McLellan removed a Feinberger transceiver from her ear and reported, “The Tholians don’t answer our hails, Captain.”

The hulking, triple-wedge-shaped hull of the Tholian battleship filled the entire frame of the main viewer. It was all but on top of the Sagittarius. Nassir threw a perplexed look over his shoulder at Sorak, who reviewed his console’s readouts.

“No sign of weapons lock by the Tholians,” Sorak said. “No indication that they are sca

McLellan silenced a beeping signal on her console. “It’s the Rocinante, sir. They’re asking if we’re all right.”

“Tell them we’re fine,” Nassir said, heaving a sigh of relief. Around the bridge, hunched shoulders relaxed, held breaths were exhaled, and exhaustion long denied took hold.

Then Xiong went and ruined the moment. “Captain,” he said, the worry in his tone instantly setting the rest of the crew back on edge. “We’re picking up some really wild readings throughout the Jinoteur system.” Flipping some toggle switches next to the sensor hood, he continued, “Major gravimetric fluctuations, disruptions of subspace and regular space-time. It looks like a subspatial compression with a diameter of—”

“Sum it up, Ming.”

Xiong stood and looked Nassir in the eye. “A wrinkle in space-time is crushing this star system. We need to go to warp in the next sixty seconds, or we’re all dead.”

“Bridy Mac,” Nassir said, “if the Rocinante has warp speed, tell them to go. I mean it this time. Sayna, lay in a course, maximum warp.” Thumbing open the top-deck cha

There was no direct reply over the open cha

On the main viewer, the change was subtle at first—a sense that the burning orb of the star called Jinoteur was growing closer, larger, brighter. Then its fiery presence was eclipsed, literally, by the collision of its fourth planet with all of its moons. A storm of planetary debris scattered from the apocalyptic impacts, revealing glowing orange volcanic cores. It was a terrifying but utterly compelling vision of destruction.

And it was expanding toward the Sagittarius.

“The Rocinante is safely away,” McLellan reported.

Beyond the rocky vista of a shattered planet and its broken moons, the star-flecked expanse of the galaxy distorted into bent streaks that continued to stretch, until they were well on their way to becoming endless rings of light.

“Mains online,” zh’Firro said crisply as she engaged the warp drive. Nassir thought the engines’ thrumming sounded off-pitch, atonal, sickly. He didn’t know if that was a product of the hasty repairs or of the distorted nature of the deforming region of space-time that they were racing to escape.

The ringlets of distorted starlight unbent and straightened into long, soft streaks. As the pitch of the engines normalized, zh’Firro said calmly, “We’re clear of the anomaly, sir.”

“Take us back to sublight,” Nassir said. “Xiong, keep sca

“I can’t, sir,” Xiong said. “It’s gone.”

Nassir was not a fan of exaggerations. “The entire system can’t have been destroyed that quickly. Even if it was, studying the debris could—”

“There is no debris,” Xiong interrupted. He patched in an image on the main viewer: an empty starfield. “There’s nothing left. That wrinkle in space-time swallowed every planet, every moon, even the star itself. It’s gone, sir. Just…gone.”

Qui

“As in, it’s not there anymore,” Terrell replied.

Pe

Shaking his head and holding up his palms, Qui

Theriault entered the cockpit and stood beside Pe

“They’re fine,” Terrell said. “I just hailed them. They’ll be here in a few moments.” He winced and shifted in his seat.

The young woman moved to Terrell’s side. “Are you okay?” She recoiled at the sight of the black glass that permeated his abdominal injury. “What is that?”

“A little present from the Shedai,” Terrell said. “Don’t worry, I’m told Dr. Babitz has the cure.”

Instantly, Theriault lifted her tricorder to scan the substance—and she paused as a drizzle of dirty water seeped out of the device, which made a sickly buzzing crackle in her hands. Her lips tightened into a disappointed frown.

Terrell smiled at her. “Good instincts,” he said.

The subspace comm beeped, and Qui