“Testing,” Haznedl said. The ops officer’s feminine voice was soft, barely audible through the subaural transceiver implanted in Gomez’s middle ear. The sensation of having a voice inside her head made Gomez feel like she was hallucinating.

“Susan, can you boost the gain on my transceiver?” Gomez said. A moment later, Haznedl’s voice sounded again inside Gomez’s head, this time as clear as if she was standing right next to her. “Testing,” Haznedl said again. “Better?”

“Much. Thanks.” Gomez sat on the edge of a bed in sickbay, staring down at her indigo hands. She was already attired in the rough, earth-toned cloth garb of a X’Mari civilian. Her tricorder was safely tucked away in a deep pocket along the leg of her pants. Her new, coppery hair spilled across the front of the heavy, dark-brown serape that covered her torso. Her feet were shod in heavy leather shoes, and each leg was wrapped from ankle to midthigh with a long, wide, supple strip of dark leather tied tight at the top with thin strips of hemp cord. Despite having been replicated less than an hour ago, it all smelled like vintage clothing, musty and rich with history.

Across from her, sitting on two other beds, were Hawkins and Stevens. Both men had already been cosmetically altered with nearly identical shades of dark-blue skin and dark-bronze hair. Only the slight difference in their eye color—Stevens had been given metallic-gold irises, while Hawkins’s were now metallic violet—enabled her to distinguish them from one another. Both were dressed similarly to Gomez, except that the leather wrappings on their legs stopped below the knee. That was a gender-specific detail that Abramowitz had insisted on when she submitted the replicator patterns for the away team’s disguises.

Stevens checked the settings on his tricorder. Hawkins tucked his tricorder under his serape and began stretching and testing the range of motion afforded him by the X’Mari clothing.

The door to the surgical suite opened and Abramowitz stepped out. The petite cultural specialist had been the last to undergo the procedure because she had been busy overseeing the others’ transformations into authentic-looking X’Maris. Her skin was now midnight blue, and her new head of rust-hued, copper-flecked hair was tied in a long, large-knotted braid that hung straight down her back almost to her waist.

Abramowitz walked over to Gomez. “I have to fix your hair, Commander,” Abramowitz said. “Turn around for me?” Gomez turned and sat quietly as Abramowitz rapidly braided her hair. Within a few minutes she was finished. Abramowitz stepped in front of Gomez and looked over the first officer’s disguise. “Perfect,” she said. “And if I may say so, blue is definitely your color.”

Gomez rolled her eyes and stood up. “Let’s go.”

The away team stood in the transporter room and stared at Conlon and transporter chief Laura Poynter. None of the away team personnel showed any sign of being willing to step onto the transporter pad. Conlon was quickly growing annoyed.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gomez said.

“I’m not saying it’s perfect,” Conlon said. “But if the ship can’t go into orbit to beam you down, then this—”

“Is suicide,” Hawkins said.

“I won’t lie to you, it could be a rough ride,” Poynter said. “But we’ve got plenty of documentation on previous, safe uses of this technology, and we’ve tested the living daylights out of it.”

“If I’d known you were planning on using a jury-rigged subspace transporter, I’d have aborted the mission,” Gomez said.

Conlon rolled her eyes. “Do you think we’d let you step on the pad if we thought it wasn’t safe? The transporter will work fine. My only concern is getting accurate beam-down coordinates from this distance.” Conlon was actually more concerned about interference from Teneb’s primary star, because Captain Gold had parked the da Vinci above the star’s north pole to conceal the ship from Teneb’s legions of satellites and radio telescopes. But given the level of agitation the away team was already exhibiting, Conlon thought it best not to tell them about that particular variable in the equation.

“Let’s say you can get us down more or less in one piece,” Stevens said. “How are you supposed to lock on to our signals to beam us up from this far away?”

“We can’t,” Conlon said. She continued before the team’s groans of dismay got out of hand. “You can use a tricorder or the probe’s transceiver to send a signal that’ll let us know you’re ready to come out. When we get it, we’ll warp in, do a high-impulse flyby of the planet, and grab you with a near-warp transport before the Tenebians get too good a look at us. We can go from signal to beam-out in thirty seconds. In theory.”

“If you can get us out with a near-warp flyby,” Hawkins said, “why can’t you beam us in the same way?”

“Captain’s orders,” Conlon said. “He doesn’t want the Tenebians getting more than one look at us. That means you only get one shot at this. You all go in together, you all come out together. If you choose to abort, that’s it—mission over.”

Stevens rolled his eyes. Abramowitz brusquely lifted her hands in a gesture of capitulation. Hawkins shrugged.

Gomez stared at Conlon. “Captain’s orders?”

“Uh, yeah,” Conlon said. “Is there a problem, Commander?”

Sighing, Gomez said, “No, no problem. He’s the captain, after all.”

Conlon had felt odd being the bearer of Gold’s orders to Gomez. She guessed that this was the captain’s way of tweaking Gomez for what happened at Rhaax.

Gomez stepped onto the transporter pad. The rest of the team followed her and took their positions beneath the phase-transition coils. Conlon nodded to Poynter, who took her post at the transporter controls. Gomez frowned at Conlon.

“And away we go,” Gomez said with flat sarcasm.

Conlon moved behind the control panel next to Poynter. “Conlon to bridge. We’re ready, Captain.”

“Stand by,” Gold said over the com. A few seconds later, he continued. “Commander Corsi says the beam-in point is clear. You’re good to go.”

“Acknowledged.” Conlon nodded to Poynter. “Energize.”

Poynter keyed in the transport sequence. The room filled with the deep hum of the energizer coils charging to maximum power, followed by the almost musical rush of white noise that accompanied the dematerialization sequence. As the away team’s glowing silhouettes vanished from the transporter pad, Conlon prayed for their soft landing and safe return.

Abramowitz felt the irresistible tug of gravity as she began to materialize. She had warned the others that Teneb’s gravity was just slightly higher than what they were accustomed to aboard the da Vinci, and to pace themselves accordingly.

The transporter’s annular confinement beam released its hold on her. She had just enough time to blink at her majestic view of the moonlit Scorla Hills before she realized that she was falling.

The rest of the away team plummeted beside her. They had materialized in mid-air, more than five meters above a river. For a moment, she almost dared to hope the river would break their fall. The coursing water rushed up to meet her.

The away team splashed into the river. Abramowitz had barely registered the stinging cold of the water before her feet struck a slippery mass of rock that had been concealed just beneath the river’s frothing surface.

Her left ankle shattered on impact. She shrieked in agony as her legs buckled. Her left femur broke as it slammed against the submerged boulder, and she fell on her side. Her left arm struck the jagged crest of the rock. She felt the bone break beneath her bicep, as she slipped swiftly beneath the frigid water.

She cried out in pain, tried to shout for help. She gasped for air and instead pulled water into her lungs.

Back to the surface, she commanded herself as she looked upward at the water-distorted crescent of Teneb’s moon. Use your good arm. Air! Swim! Her body refused to obey. She felt leaden. She reached out toward the light as she sank. Her outstretched right hand seemed to be several meters away.

Then it was in the grasp of another hand.

She was back above the surface, gasping for air, with no recollection how she’d gotten there, being pulled to shore. She was so cold, almost numb, that she started shivering uncontrollably. She couldn’t feel her feet. Her teeth chattered violently despite her attempts to stay still.

Hawkins carried her out of the water and gently laid her down on her back a few meters from shore. Gomez and Stevens were right behind him. Gomez already had her tricorder out and was scanning Abramowitz.

“It’s bad,” she said, as much to the two men as to the injured cultural specialist. “Left ankle shattered, multiple breaks in the left femur, fibula, and tibia. Left knee joint dislocated. Multiple serious fractures in her pelvis. Broken humerus.” Gomez put away the tricorder and took out a disguised emergency medical kit that Dr. Lense had put together.

“You two go find some kindling and firewood,” she said to Stevens and Hawkins. “We have to warm her up before she goes into shock. Once she’s stable, we’ll move out.”

Hawkins stopped Stevens with a gesture and pointed at Abramowitz as he spoke to Gomez. “ ‘Move out’? She needs to get to sickbay.” Gomez opened her medkit and took out two transparent adhesive patches. She gently affixed them to the underside of Abramowitz’s upper right arm, and they seemed to vanish as they absorbed into the faux-blue skin.

“We can’t get her back to the da Vinci without aborting the mission,” Gomez said. “Her injuries are serious, but they’re not life-threatening. Once we stabilize her, we’ll set her up with some camouflage and supplies. If we need any cultural advice, we can reach her on the subaural transceivers.”

Hawkins looked like he was considering further protest, but a silent, withering glare from Gomez convinced him otherwise. “Yes, sir,” he said. He turned and followed Stevens away from the river, up a slope toward some trees.

The dermal patches released their painkillers into Abramowitz’s bloodstream. The pain in her leg abated. Gomez opened a watertight compartment in her backpack and took out a rolled-up blanket. She gently placed it under Abramowitz’s head. “You’ll be okay, Carol,” Gomez said. “I promise.”

“I’m going into shock,” she said through a shaking jaw.

Gomez spread another heavy blanket over her and tucked it under her. “No, I’m gonna fix that right now,” Gomez said. “As soon as the guys come back, we’ll build you a fire. You’ll be okay here while we finish the mission.”

Abramowitz felt almost disembodied by the sedative side effects of the painkillers. She blinked slowly. A weak smile trembled across her lips. “Well, hurry up, then,” she said. “No offense, Commander, but I want to go home.”

Commander Zila hunched over the regional road-and-municipality map, his pale-blue hands planted flat and wide apart on the table on either side of the large, laminated document. It had been more than three days since the UAO had fallen from the sky, and he was still no closer to finding it.

On the opposite side of the table stood Legioner Goff, Zila’s divisional second-in-command. Neither officer had enjoyed a decent night’s sleep in three days. As they cross-referenced field reports here in Zila’s meticulously organized command office, it looked like tonight wouldn’t be any different.

“Where the hell can it be?” Zila said, slapping the table with his palm. “It’s got to be somewhere in the hills.”

Goff shook his head. “Can’t be. We’ve cordoned every road and stopped every vehicle within five hundred tiliks of the impact site. We emptied every X’Mari camp we could find. It isn’t there.”

Zila pushed himself away from the table and paced in front of it. He scratched his head and thought aloud. “Maybe the X’Maris buried it,” he said.

“Yes, maybe,” Goff said. Zila could tell the legioner was less than convinced. He forced himself to consider other scenarios, no matter how implausible they might seem.

“If the X’Maris don’t have it, and we don’t have it, is it possible that there are foreign agents in play?”

“Definitely,” Goff said. “But they’d still have to move the object. Sync-Com radar indicated it was about the size of a class-six warhead. Not exactly the kind of thing you can hide in a backpack.”

“So we’ve intercepted everything on the ground, and found nothing,” Zila said. “And we know the nofly zone hasn’t been breached.” He stopped in front of the table and loomed over the regional map once again. He pressed his pale-blue index finger onto an X, drawn in grease pencil onto the map’s clear plastic cover to mark the object’s impact point. He traced the route of the Scorla Pass away from the impact point and into the hills.

Then he retraced his finger’s path across the map, back to a notation on the map that was so tiny it almost escaped notice. “Hand me a magnifying glass,” he said. Goff grabbed one off the shelf behind him and handed it to Zila, who put it to his eye and leaned down to scrutinize the map close up. “That’s a bridge,” Zila muttered. “It’s a flezzing bridge. What does it cross?” Goff opened the cabinet beneath the shelves and grabbed a topographical map of the region. He unfurled the map, which was printed on clear plastic, and laid it over the road map.

A hairline-thin blue line snaked through the Scorla Hills and passed beneath the road map’s infinitesimal bridge icon.

“It’s on the water,” Zila said. He followed the blue line of the Scorla Ria across the topographical map toward progressively lower elevations until it intersected a much thicker blue line. “By now it’d be on the Ulom River.”

“But we’re watching the river,” Goff said.

“For smugglers and terrorists,” Zila said. “Not for one small watercraft just floating by. Whatever carried the object out of the hills had to be small enough to navigate a narrow, shallow stream for more than a hundred and twenty tiliks.”

“How many safe havens are there along that stretch of the river?” Goff said.

Zila scanned the names of the towns that lined the Ulom River downstream from its intersection with the Scorla Ria. “Tengma. Raozan. Kinzhol. Lersset. They’ve all been short-listed as X’Mari guerrilla bases.”

“Assuming that the X’Maris are the ones who have the object,” Goff said.

“They have it,” Zila said. “Pull all the regiments out of the hills and secure those four towns, now.”

“Yes, sir,” Goff said. He snapped a crisp salute and held it until Zila returned the gesture. Then he turned on his heel and strode quickly out of the commander’s office.

Zila picked up a red grease pencil and carefully drew an X through each of the four towns he’d just marked for death.

Gomez tied her pack shut and slung it over her shoulder. A few meters away, Stevens and Hawkins were already packed and waiting for her to lead them onward to the crash site. The sky overhead was peppered with stars; morning was still more than seven hours away, and the crisp, cold bite of winter was in the air.

Abramowitz was swaddled in thick blankets and propped up in a sitting position against a large rock formation next to the river. Within her reach on her left side was a neatly arranged assortment of water canisters and provisions, enough to last for up to two days. On her other side was a large pile of dry kindling and an ignition device, all arranged next to a stone-ringed concavity in which a small fire crackled.

Hidden beneath her serape was her tricorder and Gomez’s medical kit, complete with another day’s supply of painkiller patches. The whole comfy setup was concealed behind a makeshift screen of camouflage netting that Hawkins had tied together from spare hemp cord and local foliage.

Gomez crouched next to Abramowitz. “You feeling any better?”

“I’m okay,” she said with a nod. “Pain’s under control, and I should be fine here—assuming you guys don’t drag your heels.”

“I like you all drugged up,” Gomez said with a smile. “Makes you talk like an officer.”

Abramowitz chuckled and groggily shook her head. “Nah, just a mean cripple. Now go, you’re wasting time.”

Gomez gently squeezed Abramowitz’s shoulder. “Okay. Hang tight, we’ll be outta here in no time.”

Gomez stood up and stepped around the camouflage screen. She walked over to Hawkins and Stevens, took out her tricorder, and checked the readout. They did likewise.

“I’m tracking the probe’s energy signature,” she said. “Bearing one-eight-six. Range, four hundred fifty-four-point-three kilometers and opening at a rate of roughly three kilometers per hour.” Both men adjusted their own tricorders.

“Range and bearing confirmed,” Hawkins said.

“Roger that,” Stevens said. “That heading takes us right past the crash site, thirty-two-point-four kilometers from here. That’s about…what? Six hours’ walk?”

“More like seven,” Gomez said. “We’ll check it out on our way south. Let’s move out.” She adjusted the shoulder straps of her pack for a bit more comfort, then started walking forward into the night as a flurry of snowflakes fell like a white blanket across the uneven path ahead of her.