"They've massacred the entire planet," Marcum whispered. "Not even the fucking trees will survive this."

"Coms, 1MC."

"Go, sir."

"Crew of the Coyote, this is the captain," Accari started and seemed to lose steam, unsure what he wanted to say. He felt completely numb, unable to muster neither anger nor sorrow for what he'd just witnessed. "I know you're reeling. I know you've just watched something nobody could have ever expected. But we're still Fleet, and we have a job to do. We're going to remain in the area and offer any assistance we can, and then we'll begin going up what's left of the chain of command to find out what our new orders are. Many of you will want revenge, but we will serve as we always have and go to the place we're most needed.

"If any of you have—had—family on New Sierra, Columbiana, New London, or Arcadia, please, speak to your section chiefs so we can get a head count. I'll do everything I can to try and find answers for you. That is all."

"What's your plan, Captain?" Marcum asked.

"I'm going to hold fast for now, sir. We'll monitor the situation here, and if we don't hear from an appropriate authority within the next seventy-two hours, we'll make a decision then as to where we'll go," Accari said. "Most of the surviving CENTCOM brass will be too busy to worry about a single ship on detached duty. I'll also write up a full report and send it to Admiral Wolfe to make sure he gets an unvarnished version of what happened here."

"I-I think I'll need to use your office again for a bit," Marcum looked ashen and stood on shaky legs. "I'll need to find out where we stand as far as civilian leadership. We'll need some sort of unified response to send out to all the other worlds to make sure they know we're working on the situation."

"Help yourself, sir," Accari said. Joseph Marcum had always been a demigod in his eyes. The only man who Jackson Wolfe himself deferred to. Now, in the light of a still-burning New Sierra, he looked diminished.

Old.

Worn out.

He was a man who had seen too much already but had been forced to sit and watch just one more time as worlds burned. "And, sir, try to get some rest. We'll be here a few days."

"Thank you, Captain,"

Accari watched him go before sinking back into his own chair. The bridge crew was silent, each lost in their own grief. The pings and hisses of an active ship seemed unbearably loud in the absence of human noise, and the young captain, already a veteran of two wars, knew nothing would ever be the same again.

32

"This can't be real."

Jackson understood the sentiment. Barrett stood in utter shock as the images from four Federation planets splashed across the display in the Nemesis's bridge conference room. The only one he could look at was Arcadia. His adopted home. The place where his family had been before Pike had picked them up on a whim. He could have been there when this happened…they all could have been there. Perhaps he'd have been fishing in his pond with his son Daya when an antimatter explosion ripped them apart.