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  It was absurd, really. The only people who ever came to Andrias were vacationers at the resort that hosted it. It wasn’t as if Andrias had casual walk-in traffic. Most of its patrons weren’t what Salir considered discerning diners. He doubted half of them could tell the difference between a braised yuva shank and a deep-fried leg of xanth.

  We craft plates adorned with edible art, and we serve them to imbeciles.

  It was dispiriting in more ways than Salir could enumerate. He was wasting the best years of his professional life, practicing his craft at the height of his abilities, and getting nothing for it. His customers lacked the palates to appreciate what he made for them; his peers in the big cities looked down on him for being an “island-resort slop-slinger” when everyone told him he could have been so much more, if only he’d had different options, made different choices, or been even the slightest bit luckier. Instead, he was here. With perhaps the only dozen individuals who knew as well as he did the artistry and the agony of their culinary adventure.

  Maybe I’m not too old. Maybe I could still get out. Open my own place. He thought of all the mediocre chefs collecting accolades and awards, all the half-baked hacks who had turned their lackluster cooking into wildly successful brands and franchises. Their success and wealth taunted him. It could have been me. It should have been me. So what am I still doing here?

  A whistle of alarm from one of the prep cooks freed Salir from his maudlin reverie.

  “Chef! You really need to come see this!”

  The rest of the staff backed away from the pot whose heating coil he had switched on a few minutes earlier. Concerned that a spot of unnoticed grease might have caught fire, he sprinted across the kitchen and pushed through the circle to see what had spooked his cooks.

  There were no flames. What there was, Salir couldn’t explain.

  Under the pot, the heating element had melted into slag. Its smoke curled up and around the pot, which was sweating with condensation. Salir edged closer and stole a look inside the pot. What he thought was steam rising from the water inside it was actually cold water vapor lingering above a solid block of ice.

  The senior associate chef, Nasiikh Renar, stared at the molten metal and frozen water. “Chef? What ­happened?”

  “It looks like the heating coil absorbed heat instead of emitting it. Somehow, it froze the water in the pot and melted itself.”

  Renar’s eyes bulged wide in disbelief. “How is that even possible?”

  “I have no idea, but I’m taking it as a sign.” Salir shook off his chef’s jacket. “Anyone who wants to help me open my own restaurant on the mainland, come with me now.” He threw his jacket on the floor and stepped on it on his way to the rear exit. “Screw this place. I quit.”

  • • •

  There wasn’t much that could twist Master Chief Mike Ilucci’s guts with fear, but the ride across the capital city in an automated ground car, from the Executive Complex to Doctor Kavalas’s laboratory, had done the trick. The entire trip had been nothing short of nerve-wracking, thanks to the utterly chaotic behavior of every intersection’s traffic controls. By the time they reached the lab—in one piece, thanks no doubt to the mercy of the Great Bird of the Galaxy—Ilucci was all but ready to fall on his hands and knees and kiss the ground.

  “Man, am I glad to be out of that death trap,” he said as he and Taryl fell out of the driverless electric vehicle. “Doc, if that’s what the improbability field does to your traffic lights, I don’t blame the tribune for grounding your jets. That was a nightmare.”

  Hesh climbed out of the vehicle behind him. “It could have been worse, Master Chief.”

  Close on Taryl’s heels, Terrell replied, “If so, Lieutenant, I don’t want to know how.”

  Kavalas walked toward the domed building’s entrance and beckoned the landing party to follow him. “This way, please.”

  The four Starfleet personnel followed him to the door. Kavalas opened it and walked inside, then ushered them into the cold gray foyer on the other side. He locked the door behind them, then led the way down a corridor toward an elevator at the terminus of a dead end.

  No one spoke during the ride up to the top floor of the building, or on the way inside the operations center, which was situated beneath the massive, translucent dome that capped the building. All its clunky computer banks and monitors were dark. The only sound was the soft droning of the building’s ventilation system, which had chilled the dormant operations center to what Ilucci could have sworn was barely a few degrees above freezing.

  Their host shivered. “My apologies. The climate controls have been erratic since the incident. The operations center’s been alternating between being a sauna and a freezer. We’ve tried to fix it, but we can’t find the problem—and there’s no way to shut it off without blacking out the rest of the building with it.”

  “That’s fine,” Ilucci said. “If it gets too cold, we’ll just start burning the furniture.”

  “The furniture is metal,” Kavalas said.

  Not wanting to waste time refining the Austarans’ sense of humor, Ilucci pressed onward. “Let’s try to get some of these command systems back online. I want a look at the generator.”

  Kavalas pointed at a large bank of switches that dominated one wall. “The center row of toggles restore power to the command-and-control network. But I think you’ll find they’ve been severed at the source, according to the diagnostic software.”

  Ilucci did his best not to let preconceptions color his analysis. “I get it, Doc. Bring them back online, please. We need to have all available systems up and running so we can make our own determinations.” As Kavalas carried out his request, he added, “Thank you.”

  The captain roamed among the banks of computers and studied them with his usual detachment. Never more than a few paces behind him was Ensign Taryl, her right hand perched on her left hip, just above her phaser. She let her stare move around the room, ever vigilant for the slightest sign of danger to the captain or the landing party.

  One row of terminals after another flickered to life. The screens were packed with symbols Ilucci didn’t understand. He looked around for Hesh and was relieved to see the science officer was already running a translation matrix with his tricorder. “Hesh? What have you got?”

  “All the data being provided by the system confirms Doctor Kavalas’s report.” He adjusted the settings on his tricorder. The rectangular device whirred and filled the air with high-frequency oscillations. “I have patched into the system on a wireless frequency. I can confirm, sir: This facility has no direct connection to the generator ­facility.”

  Terrell asked, “Can you tap into its activity logs? Any record of what went wrong with their initial experiment could be useful.”

  “I’ll try, sir.” Hesh keyed more commands into his tricorder, all the while staring at its display with his solid-green eyes. After a few moments, he frowned and looked up. “I’m sorry, Captain. The logs match the data Doctor Kavalas provided earlier.”

  “As I told you before we came here,” Kavalas said, “this is a waste of time.”

  If the Austaran scientist was trying not to sound like a smug know-it-all, Ilucci was reasonably sure the big frog was failing. “Hesh, can you see any way to restore the connection?”

  “No, sir. All diagnostic data I’ve been able to interpret so far suggests that the command line was physically severed at the generator facility, likely as a misfire of a fail safe system designed to protect the system’s control apparatus from being remotely hijacked.”

  “Then we have to go to the next link in the chain.” Ilucci looked at Kavalas. “Doctor, how long will it take to get from here to the generator?”

  “Well,” Kavalas said, “that depends on—”

  The lab went dark, and the low droning of the ventilators turned to silence. Overhead, the glow of the city through the tr
anslucent dome also went black.

  Momentarily reduced to a voice in the darkness, Hesh retained his understated deadpan. “Captain? When I said earlier that matters could be worse? I was referring to this.”

  7

  Most of the time, Theriault was happy to remain above the fray, to stay out of the rough-and-tumble of other people’s problems. When the other people happened to be her commanding officer and shipmates, however, her feelings on such matters were quite the opposite.

  Never mind that she had a duty as the ship’s executive officer to safeguard the vessel, as well as the lives and well-being of its officers and crew. Terrell and the ­others were like a second family to her. Knowing the landing party was at risk while she bided her time in orbit felt to her like a dereliction of duty. Ensconced in the command chair on the bridge, she stared at the image of the planet on the main viewscreen and castigated herself in silence. I should be leading the mission on the surface. What was I thinking, letting the captain walk into danger?

  It didn’t matter that she couldn’t have stopped the captain even if she had tried. Once he made up his mind, changing it could be a Herculean labor. Theriault took comfort in the fact that she knew he could take care of himself. During his tenure as the ship’s first officer, he had proved himself something of a daredevil more than once. He was no stranger to risk. There was no one better prepared to protect the landing party in the pit of chaos Anura was about to become.

  Just have faith, she told herself. He wouldn’t have gone down there without—

  A tide of dimming coursed through the glowing webs of cities that dotted the landmasses on the planet’s night side—a phenomenon Theriault had once heard was called a “brownout.” Then the artificial constellations of light began to stutter. Large segments of each city’s grid went out, followed by others, an erratic cascade of blackouts. She swiveled her chair toward the science console. “Dastin, what’s going on down there?”

  The tall field scout hunched over the hooded display. Its blue glow stole the subtle, earthy colors from the pattern of spots that ran from his temple to his jaw, and then down his neck and under his collar. He answered without looking up. “It’s just what it looks like, sir. Power failures rolling from one section of the planet’s integrated grid to another.” He flipped some switches on his console to adjust the sensors’ settings. “I’m also picking up random surges in the grid. Some sites lose power for a few seconds, get it back, and lose it again.”

  Sorak turned from the tactical console to join the discussion. “I believe I have identified the cause of the sudden blackouts, and their brief but unpredictable reversals. The planet’s magnetic poles have reversed themselves twelve times in the past two minutes, and they continue to do so. Furthermore, they appear to be shifting position with each reversal.”

  Theriault got up and moved aft to look over Sorak’s shoulder at his screen. “Show me.”

  He called up his data and rendered it as an animation to show the bizarre wobbling and inversions of the planet’s electromagnetic poles as they occurred. “Their pattern of movement is suggestive of the precession seen in some planets’ axial tilts, but at a greatly accelerated rate.”

  “What’s that likely to mean for the landing party?”

  Crossed arms and a furrowed brow. “Difficult to say. Navigation systems that rely upon the planet’s magnetic poles for orientation are now useless.”

  “What about satellite-based nav systems?”

  “That would depend upon how resistant they are to EM interference.”

  Taking the cue, Theriault turned toward the communications panel. “Chief? Are we seeing any changes in the operation of the Austarans’ satellites?”

  Razka poked at his console’s buttons with his slender digits. “Affirmative. Several have gone quiet in the past few minutes. Signal traffic from the surface to low orbit has decreased by nearly seventy percent during the same time period.” A few more adjustments, then he checked the monitor above his post. “Fifty percent of their low-orbit satellites have lost power.”

  “That’s not good.” Theriault paced back to the command chair. “Dastin, start looking for patterns in the blackouts, the failed satellites, and the distortions produced by the dark energy generator. I need to know how, where, and when these wave fronts are going to intersect, and to what effect. And I need to know now.”

  He looked up just long enough to nod. “On it.”

  “Ensign Nizsk, widen our orbit to ten thousand kilometers.”

  “Aye, sir.” She entered the commands into the helm, and instantly the image of Anura grew smaller on the main viewer as the Sagittarius climbed away, until its orbit was wide enough to see nearly the whole planet on the broad, rectangular screen.

  Theriault settled back into the command chair and pondered her options in troubled silence. Her mind turned from one worst-case scenario to another for half a minute before she noticed Sorak standing beside her. “I think there is another risk we need to consider, sir.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I presume you’re referring to the fact that our shields won’t do anything to protect us from the effects of the improbability field?”

  “Yes, and the likelihood that as a greater number of increasingly powerful wave fronts continue to intersect, their area of effect will very soon extend into high orbit—and might well expand to encompass much if not all of this star system.”

  Their conversation drew anxious glances from Dastin, Nizsk, and Razka, so Theriault did her best to maintain a brave mask. “Yes, Mister Sorak, I’m well aware of the dangers posed by the distortion field. I used to be a science officer, remember?”

  “Quite well, Commander. But right now you serve as acting captain, and in that capacity you have a decision to make. Assuming the captain refuses to cut short the landing party’s mission on the surface, how long do you intend to remain in orbit?”

  “That’s a good question, Sorak.”

  “Thank you. What is your answer?”

  She drew a deep breath to steady her frazzled nerves, then she fixed her stare on the deceptively placid image of Anura. “As soon as I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

  • • •

  A sharp crack announced Terrell’s priming of a fourth emergency light-stick, which consisted of a flexible clear plastic sheath around a pair of brittle cylinders, each of which contained half of a binary formula for a bright fluorescent chemical. Its violet glow mixed with that of a handful of other snap-flares, as the Austarans called them. Even so, the pool of illumination was limited to the middle of the operations center, leaving the majority of the spacious facility in the dark.

  Ilucci pulled open tool cabinets and drawers of worktables in one corner of the room. “Kavalas? Any more of those snap-flares?”

  “I didn’t know we had as many as you’ve found. I suspect there are no more.”

  Taryl held up a sheaf of printed pages. “Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple songs,” she snarked before tossing the papers aside in a wild flutter.

  Terrell took Taryl’s sarcasm in stride. “If you don’t mind, Ensign, I’d like to hold off on arson for the moment.”

  Hesh held to his chest two of the glowing sticks, whose light threw sinister shadows upon his face. “Master Chief? I think we have enough flares to find our way back to the vehicle.”

  The unsolicited opinion lit a fuse under Ilucci’s bad mood. “So? So what?”

  The science officer was undeterred by the chief engineer’s grouchy mood. “Without main power, there is nothing more we can accomplish from this location. We should move on.”

  Ilucci slammed the cabinet door. “Suits me.”

  Before Terrell could give the order to move out, his communicator beeped twice. He plucked it from his waistband and flipped it open. “Terrell here.”

  Theriault answered over the comm. “Captain, are you
and the landing party all right?”

  “We’re fine, Number One. How’s the ship?”

  “So far, so good. But we’re seeing blackouts all over the planet.”

  He looked around the darkened lab. “We seem to be caught in one ourselves.”

  “I wish I could say that would be the worst thing you’ll face today, but that would be a lie. Dastin’s been analyzing the distortion field produced by the dark energy generator. Their power levels are increasing even faster than the Austarans’ data predicted.”

  Hesh cut in, “The generator might have made a feedback loop on the other side of the dimensional rift it created to tap into the cosmic dark energy matrix. Just as its effects amplify one another on this side, it might be increasing its access to energy on the other side.”

  “Sir, if Hesh is correct—and I’m pretty sure that he is—I’d suggest we shorten our timetable for this mission and initiate retrieval of the landing party immediately.”

  “Negative,” Terrell said. “We’ve barely begun to assess the problem. I’m not throwing in the towel. Not yet.”

  “Sir, blackouts are about to become the least of Anura’s problems. Sorak and Dastin agree that within approximately six hours, the distortion effects created by the generator will pass a tipping point. After that, the only thing that will stop them will be the total destruction of the planet. I don’t think you want a front-row seat to that.”

  “You’re right, Number One, I don’t. And there are several billion Austarans down here who I’m pretty sure feel the same way. So I’m going to do anything and everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

  “In that case,” Hesh said, “I would strongly suggest that the Master Chief and I proceed at once to the generator itself and conduct an onsite inspection of its systems and components.”

  The chief engineer nodded. “I’ll second that. You want this fixed? We need to go hands-on with this gizmo—the sooner the better.”