The admiral peered at him. “You’re finally taking my advice? Evacuating?”

The president snorted and gestured at the flickering screens. “Would it even be safe to attempt now, with all this subspace disruption? No, Lance. I need to go address the people of Earth. Prepare them however I can for… what’s to come.”

Cartwright briefly touched his sleeve. “There’s still the Enterprise. They’ve come through for us again and again.”

Lorg threw him a skeptical look. He may have been Martian-born, but he still had a Tellarite’s love of argument. “That was with James Kirk in command. Oh, I know how vital Captain Spock was to those successes. But take it from someone who knows—your perspective changes a great deal once you’re the one on top. And it can take a while to adjust to that change. You don’t want to know the blunders I almost made in my first year in office.”

He shook his head. “I wonder if sticking Kirk in the Academy is really the best use of his talents. Oh, I know, I know, he has his flagship and his occasional ‘special missions.’ But you folks chose a hell of a time to keep him on the bench.”

U.S.S. Enterprise

Entering Sol system

The Enterprise dropped out of warp just inside the Main Asteroid Belt. The subspace instability would let it come no closer to the raging vacuum-energy storm—a storm that the bridge viewscreen’s tactical display showed expanding directly in Earth’s orbital path. “It’s no more than two hours from intercept,” Jason Nadel reported from the science station.

“Unable to reach Starfleet Command,” Cadet Ferat reported from communications, worry in her voice. “Even at this range!”

“Not unexpected, Cadet. Continue monitoring.” Spock kept his tone calm and matter-of-fact, in hopes of encouraging the same response from the cadet crew. “Helm, proceed toward the flare zone at full impulse.”

“Aye, sir,” T’Lara replied, maintaining her calm more successfully than the others.

Spock worked the intercom control on his chair arm to contact main engineering. “Mister Scott, how quickly can you rig the main reactor to generate the verteron field?”

“I began the reprogramming the moment we dropped out of warp, sir,” Scott reported a few moments later, the unevenness in his voice suggesting he was pacing briskly around the engineering complex as he spoke. “But the circuit reconfiguration, the emitter realignments… at least twenty minutes to do the physical work, up to half an hour for testing and calibration.”

“We shall need to bypass full testing, Mister Scott, as we do not have adequate time.”