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More flashes from outside assaulted his eyes as he checked the charge indicator on the stock of his pulse rifle. Then he tried to move toward one of the landing ramps to follow the other MACOs into battle.

But his boots seemed to be bolted to the deck.

“Come on, trooper,” Guitierrez said, the almost maternal compassion he’d heard in her tone earlier hardening to cast rodinium toughness. It was obvious that she was done coddling him.

Once he’d managed to get himself moving again, she said, “You’re lucky my husband lost the coin-flip, Private.”

“Coin flip?”

She nodded. “To settle which of us was going back into the MACOs to fight the Romulans, and which of us got to stay home to change the diapers.”

Idaho’s stomach lurched at the thought of soiled diapers. Bring on the Romulans instead. “How’s that lucky for me?” he said.

“If the toss had gone the other way, I can guarandamntee you wouldn’t be getting such gentle treatment from him.”

Although he had no memory of how it had happened, he was now outside the dropship, keeping pace as his squad sprinted through a scorched, stump-laden field toward a distant row of burned and blasted structures and even more remote, haze-shrouded towers. Columns of MACOs advancing from the other dropships toward the same destination were visible from both sides through the scattered remnants of an incompletely defoliated jungle that bore scant resemblance to the images of the vibrant, Cretaceous-era Berengarian jungle that Sergeant Mankiewicz had shown the company at the mission briefings. A fog-shrouded valley lay in the distance beyond the ruins toward which all the MACO units headed.

“Starbase 1,” Corporal Guitierrez said, maintaining a brisk pace as she walked slightly ahead of Idaho. “And the Vulcan science outpost. Or at least whatever bits and pieces are still there since last November.” She tossed him a look over her shoulder. “Stay sharp, kid.”

The squad walked on for what felt like hours as fear and residual motion sickness dilated Idaho’s sense of the passage of time. Berengaria sailed across the cloud-decked sky, oblating and spreading across the horizon as evening approached. The tumbledown structures in the distance appeared no closer than they had been a seeming eternity ago.

Idaho saw, or imagined that he saw, a group of small, dark figures approaching from the direction of the ruins.

On a cue from Lieutenant Stiles, Sergeant Mankiewicz raised a fist to signal the group to stop, and Idaho instinctively complied. Another hand signal ordered the troopers to take cover. Idaho did that as well, though he could see he had been among the last to complete the task. He willed his hands to stop shaking, but to little avail.

I’m gonna get everybody here killed, he thought as the dark, distant figures continued their relentless approach. It wasn’t his imagination playing tricks; whatever was coming was real. Following the lead of Sergeant Mankiewicz and Corporal Guitierrez, Idaho readied his weapon from behind one of the outsize charred tree stumps.

“Remember, kid,” Guitierrez said as she hovered beside him. “Stay cool. Do your job.”

He nodded dumbly. Idaho’s thoughts flew to his mother, who had fled to Earth once Alpha Centauri had started to look too vulnerable to a Romulan attack.

Mom’s never gonna see me again, he thought. I’m gonna die here.

The ranks of approaching figures had grown close enough by now to be positively identified as essentially humanoid, though their bright silver helmets obscured any other fine details. For all he knew, they were reptile men under that headgear, or bipedal starfish.

Romulans, he thought, his spine shuddering with dread.

Responding to Mankiewicz’s hand signals, the MACOs began to power up.

Another hand signal. Then MACO pulse rifles volleyed and thundered, just like in that damned Tennyson poem. More flashes of light assaulted Idaho’s eyes, and Sergeant Mankiewicz vanished from right in front