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By Root 858 0

had started spinning an updated version of the famous Tholian web around the starbase. This web, instead of being a simple energy construct, had the additional effect of disrupting the station’s electronic systems. A message had gone out to the Berlin as one of the very first acts when the Tholians approached, but no one was at all sure if it had been received or if further messages were going out. Then other systems began failing-shields, intrabase communications, environment, weapons. As the Tholians began constricting their web, the starbase was rocked violently back and forth, slamming occupants and equipment alike into walls and floors. Sparks flew and control consoles burst into flames, and Kyle saw an ensign he knew cut in half by a computer bank ripped from its moorings and hurled into the young officer, crushing her against a bulkhead.

The two remaining Tholian ships pounded the starbase with phasers and plasma cannons. Kyle watched in horror as those around him died. Commander Bisbee was standing too close to a tactical systems control panel when it exploded, and a shard of tripolymer composite sliced through his carotid, fountaining blood across the room. The same explosion blinded Aikins, the security chief.

Starbase 311 consisted of two main rings built around a central core, which held power generation facilities. Kyle had often thought of it as two rings on a single finger, with just a little space between them. The upper ring was operational, and included engineering, navigation, and tactical departments, while the lower ring was the province of the scientists and researchers for whom the station had been built. During the attack, when comm systems were coming in and going out seemingly at random, Kyle heard a few moments of absolute panic as the Tholian cannons focused on the lower ring. Someone-he had always thought it was Simon, though he could never be sure-had tried to take control of the situation, though it was already hopeless. “Take cover!” the frightened voice had commanded. “Get behind something and hold on! It’ll be over in a few minutes!”

Other voices had screamed dissent, but the voice Kyle believed was Simon’s had overruled them. “I’m telling you, your best chance is to move into-“

But then that part of the lower ring had been breached. For a second Kyle heard the screaming of metal and polymers, then a great whooshing sound, and then nothing at all. Everyone in that chamber had been blown out into the vacuum of space.

And still the Tholians came. Kyle thought there might yet be a chance if they could focus the starbase’s phaser arrays on the energy generators the Tholians used to create the web, but that would have required scanning the attacking ships to find those generators, and the scanners had all been knocked out of commission by the web. As had the phaser arrays, for that matter.

Even as he ticked through the possibilities in his head, Kyle realized that there was almost no one left alive to carry out any strategy he might create. Then the command center was rocked by a singularly powerful blast and Kyle’s feet went out from under him. His head smashed against an ops console and then against something else-bulkhead or floor or ceiling, he had no idea. He saw a brilliant flash of light, then he saw nothing for an indeterminable period of time.

When he woke up, he tasted blood. He pushed himself to a sitting position and blinked his eyes open, spat blood onto the floor, fighting off a wave of nausea. Command was full of smoke; his lungs burned with it.

But at least he could sit up. Everyone else was dead.

On a flickering viewscreen he could see a Tholian ship, its red lights completely washing the starbase, so near that a tiny portion of the ship blocked the entire screen. He tried to ignore the frightening image as he stumbled from one corpse to the next, checking for pulses, listening for any faint breath. It was no good, though. Kyle’s heart was the only one that still pounded: so loud he thought the Tholians would hear it from their ships. And he was in bad shape, himself-his