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amounts of power the Artlnts were stealing were what made the difference, then their chances of survival were very slim indeed. But there was nothing they could do but watch their boards and make their time reports.
    “ Fifteen seconds shield duration remaining. Shields at ninety-five percent, ” Sayad reported.
    “ Ten seconds to first possible impact. ”
    And the bridge went silent with waiting. Time had been dragging before, but now it seemed to have ground to a complete halt. How long since that first blast of light through the wormhole? Five minutes? Ten? An hour? A day? Any answer seemed possible. It was as if time no longer had any real relation to the clock numbers that were beating down on them.
    “ Ten seconds of shields. Shield decay rate increasing. Shields at ninety-two. ”
    “ First possible impact in five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Ze— ”
    And it came down on them, a half heartbeat early. The ship lurched violently to one side, the shields holding, but only just, as the first wall of debris ripped past, hitting the shields a dozen times, a hundred times, in the space of a second. The ship fell into a violent tumble, pinwheeling across space. The shields weakened under the drumbeat of blast debris tearing into them, but still they held, diverting, deflecting, slowing the impacts. Something tore off a stanchion and crashed into the floor. The lights died, and alarms began to scream. Then came the horrifying, echo ing bangs of impacts directly on the hull as debris pene trated.
    In the darkness came the shriek of tortured metal, the sudden, terrifying first drop in pressure, the sudden cold feel of air being sucked away that told of a hull breach somewhere not far off. Death and terror seemed on all sides of Sayad in the Ughtless compartment. Another shriek of torn metal, another hull breach, and then—
    The rest was dark and silence.
    It was not until hours later, until the damage-control crews had sealed the hull breaches, until power was restored, un til the ship ’ s tumble was slowed and then stopped, that Captain Anton Koffield even had time to realize that Ensign Alaxi Sayad was among the dead.
    He could read the story off the gouges cut out of his ship ’ s bridge. A ricocheting piece of debris, a wedge-shaped piece of the intruder, a full ten centimeters long, had torn through the hull and bounced around the bridge interior, caroming a half dozen times off the decks and bulkheads before zeroing in on Sayad. It had caught her in the side of the head, stabbed deep into her skull. Death had come to her in the darkness, and in an instant.
    It was not until later still, until thirty hours after the attack, after the initial repairs were complete, and he was sitting in the galley, staring blankly down at a stone-cold meal he could not force himself to eat, and could not remember preparing or ordering, that he realized how close that fragment had come to him. His head had been less than half a meter from Sayad ’ s when that fragment had torn through the hull and into the bridge compartment. It so easily could have, should have, been him who was killed.
    It took scarcely any imagination at all for Captain Anton Koffield to know there would be times without number to come when he would wish, most devoutly, that it had been him.

CHAPTER TWO   The Fog of Time
    Seven days after the attack, Anton Koffield sat in his working cabin, examining the ship ’ s department reports with a certain degree of gloomy satisfaction. Things were getting back together. Life aboard the Upholder had returned to a grim version of normality. The hulls were patched, and the last of the “ emergency ” and “ urgent ” repairs were complete. Navigation, propulsion, defense, life support, and detection were all reported as operational again, though relying on backup systems in some cases.
    Some damage could not be repaired until and unless the Upholder reached port, if she ever did. But there were still a thousand