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“Thirty seconds,” came Sulu’s reply from the conn.

“Distance from Reliant?” Kirk asked.

Chekov looked up from the tactical console with resignation. “Four thousand kilometers,” he meekly offered.

Not nearly enough, Thelin thought. The shockwave alone might destroy us, even with the adjusted shielding.

Kirk leaned forward in his seat, his exasperation beginning to shatter his mask of confidence. “Thelin? David? I think now might be a good time to try out that new shield configuration.”

“Stand by, Admiral,” Thelin replied. His hands shook. The console was responding so slowly; he wanted to scream, and to pound his fists into the keypads. Save the new template, reinitialize the modulation sequence…

“Fifteen seconds,” Sulu announced.

David watched Thelin from a few feet away, silently urging him on.

“Thelin?” Kirk cried out.

The Andorian finished punching in the final code sequence. “Shields going up now!” he yelled out triumphantly, releasing all his frustrations. He sat back in his chair and exhaled, and for a moment wondered if he had even remembered to breathe the last few minutes.

“Six…five…four…”

“All decks brace for impact!” Kirk shouted into the intercom.

Thelin looked over and met David’s eyes. Had they done enough? Neither of them seemed to know the answer.

“One…”

A blinding white flash filled the viewscreen before them.

In roughly the same instant, the wave violently collided with the rear of the ship. The hull lurched forward, and the cadets unfortunate enough to be standing about the bridge instantly found themselves sprawled on the deck. Quickly they scrambled to their feet and stumbled back to their respective stations.

“Report!” Kirk shouted.

Chekov struggled to pull himself back up toward the console. “Structural integrity at fifty percent,” he yelled over the din of alarms and voices that now surrounded them. “Inertial dampeners are restabilizing.”

“Trying to regain attitude control,” Sulu announced from the helm.

Thelin watched the viewscreen as the starfield tumbled about dizzyingly, punctuated by flashes of energy as the shields dispersed secondary waves from the explosion. Thankfully, the ship’s dampening field had adjusted following the initial impact, sparing the crew from any additional ill effects as the vessel continued to tumble out of control through space. That they all had not been reduced to their component atoms meant that Thelin’s shield modifications had worked. However, the information on his console wasn’t all positive. “Aft shielding down to twenty percent,” he called out. “Emitters have failed in proximity of decks seventeen and eighteen.”

“Hull breaches reported near the landing bay,” Uhura relayed from the communications station. “Emergency forcefields are in place. Reports of casualties coming in, Admiral. Medical teams have been dispatched.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Kirk said, his voice reflecting all too clearly the pain from knowing how many young officers and crewmen had already given their lives on this mission. “Navigator! Ship’s status?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Croy replied, cycling through the relevant readouts. “Distance from explosion, approximately ten thousand kilometers. Traveling at a rate of two hundred kilometers per second…”

“Attitude control is now restored,” Sulu interjected. “Aft view on screen.”

The bridge crew gasped at the sight displayed before them. Amid a fiery backdrop as the Genesis effect continued to produce subatomic reactions throughout the matter in the nebula, the boundaries of a great spherical planetoid had begun to take shape, growing in size as additional matter continued to accrete into the globular mass at the center. Already they could begin to make out a solid surface-primordial seas of magma and superheated elements, vomiting forth flaming geysers into the developing atmosphere of toxic gases.

At the sound of the rear bridge doors sliding open, Thelin turned to see Carol Marcus enter the bridge. Like the rest of the crew, she stood agape, staring at the screen in amazement.

Kirk turned to face her. “My God,