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“Another ten seconds,” came el-Rashad’s crisp response. “Perhaps fifteen, if the local atmospheric variables are kind.”

Rising from her chair, Hernandez said, “Lieutenant Thayer, target phase cannons. Ensign Valerian, warn those DY-500s not to get too close. I don’t want anybody getting caught in the blowback.”

“Weapons lock is balky, Captain,” Thayer said. “Atmospheric distortions.”

Hernandez nodded in her weapons officer’s direction. “Understood. Aim manually. We’re running out of time here.”

“Aye, Captain,” Thayer said, beads of sweat coalescing on her forehead. “No pressure.”

“Both DY-500 craft have acknowledged our wave-off request, Captain,” said Valerian. “They’re steering clear.”

“Target is still descending in terminal trajectory, nearing minimum safe detonation altitude,” el-Rashad said. “And I’m reading a live nuclear warhead arming aboard the bogey!”

“Confirmed,” Valerian said.

“So this isn’t just an inert meteor falling on the outpost’s head,” Fletcher said.

Hernandez breathed a curse. “Of course not. That would be easy.” It made sense that the Romulan ships would carry nukes; they had probably used them to initiate the cascade of node failures in Altair’s warp-field detection grid that had caught Columbia’s attention in the first place.

The ship rumbled and shuddered beneath the captain’s boots, interrupting her reverie.

“Try and keep her level, will you, Akagi?” Thayer said. “You’re screwing up my manual target lock.”

“Sorry,” Akagi said, her face creased with concentration as her fingers moved in a blur across the flight control console.

“Target has passed minimum safe detonation altitude,” el-Rashad said.

“Lieutenant Thayer,” Hernandez said, injecting calm into her voice with pure force of will. “Are you ready to fire or not? We’re not gonna have any time for do-overs.”

“My manual target lock keeps drifting,” the weapons officer said. “Damn!”

The jumble of green-brown ground and dark ocean below was beginning to look uncomfortably close. Hernandez could actually see one of the Darro-Miller outpost’s larger seaside domes, right on the approaching daylit horizon.

“Hull temperature approaching critical,” el-Rashad said. “If we don’t detonate this thing right now, nothing we do later will make any difference.”

“Thayer?” Hernandez said, hoping the messiness of the real world would provide more favorable circumstances than el-Rashad’s pure math would suggest. She was well aware that the chaotic behavior of Altair VI’s thicker lower atmospheric layers could interfere with electronic targeting systems. But she also knew that this very same chaos could also help to neutralize any debris field created even at this low altitude.

“Outer hull temp has just passed twenty-five hundred degrees Celsius,” el-Rashad reported. “Approaching spec thermal limits.”

“Target locked,” Thayer said as Altair’s thick atmosphere rumbled and shook the ship again.

“Fire!” Hernandez said.

On the main viewscreen, the salvo from the forward phase cannons was nearly lost in the incendiary glow coming from the overheated hull. Through that tunnel of fire, all that Hernandez could see was the glowing point of light of the descending bogey and the shadows cast by the settlement structures and the nearby fields of ancient Altairian ruins, both of which still appeared to lie several hundred klicks distant.

A seeming eternity later, the bogey erupted in a gout of fire, which immediately blossomed into an orange sphere of thermonuclear destruction that encompassed the entire viewscreen.

“Akagi, take us clear!” Hernandez cried, getting back into her captain’s chair and hanging onto its arms for dear life as Columbia’s bridge tilted while the inertial compensators struggled to catch up to the pilot’s lightning maneuver. Everyone else on the bridge likewise anchored themselves to chairs and railings as best they could until the ship had leveled out.

Hernandez turned toward the main science station. “Outpost status, Mister el-Rashad?