Prologue

"Good morning, my fellow stargazers!"

Lt. Ramayan Nayyar was still incredibly smug this morning as he breezed into Starbase 1's Observatory. The rest of the astronomy officers looked up from their sensor consoles to give their lanky department head some begrudging smiles as he made his way across the circular room.

Nayyar had done the enviable, something they all aspired to, and the reason they all looked skyward - he had discovered a new celestial body.

Four days ago, he had detected a comet passing through the Berengarius system, and there had been much celebrating. Mostly by Nayyar himself. It was a massive rock, about 16km across, bigger than the one thought to have killed the dinosaurs. It was unknown how they had missed it, put down purely to the size of the sky (against which even a large comet is but a speck), and they now kept a close eye on it as it passed between the seventh and eighth planets.

"And how is Nayyar's Comet this morning?" the discoverer asked with a big grin as he approached the main observation console.

The Gamma Shift officer regretted to inform Nayyar that she was unable to update him, as the main sensor satellites had been focused all night on tracking an ion storm that could pose a navigation hazard. But said hazard had now passed out of the sector, so Nayyar eagerly took the chair and redirected the satellites' attention towards his 'baby.'

What he saw wiped the smile off his face.

"Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!"

Some of the base's children had put on a school play of Jack and the Beanstalk in the main auditorium this morning, and Commodore North was in attendance by request. While this wouldn't be his usual idea of enjoyable theatre, he couldn't help thinking this was an historic occasion.

At almost 100 light-years from Earth, this was quite possibly the furthest ever performance of a pantomime to date. Not only that, but such artistic expression represented Starbase 1 starting to come into its own as a community. No longer was this just a Starfleet installation.

It was starting to feel like a home.

As he watched the child actors playing Jack and the Giant chase each other around the cardboard sets on stage, North felt himself enjoying the humorous, albeit stilted, portrayal of the old story, and was annoyed when he felt his communicator vibrate in his pocket. Not so long ago, he would have craved a distraction like that.

He discretely exited the auditorium, giving the children's teacher Mr. Simpson an apologetic smile. Outside, his aide, Lt. Vaughn, waited with a frantic Lt. Nayyar from the Astronomy Department. The doors slid shut behind him, cutting off the laughter of the audience, leaving fiction behind for rude reality.

"Sir, I'm sorry to bother you," said Vaughn, his cherubic features flushed, "but the Lieutenant insisted-"

"Lieutenant Nayyar, Commodore," the other man introduced himself, still agitated but finally standing still. "Chief Astronomer. I need to talk to you."

"I know who you are, Lieutenant," North said. His first passion was still stellar cartography, so he kept a close eye on the astro department. Even still, he didn't appreciate being summoned by a junior officer. "What's the problem?"

Nayyar tried to calm himself, running his hands through his thick hair and taking a breath. "You remember the comet I discovered earlier this week, sir?"

"Of course," North replied. "What about it?"

"Well, when I checked it this morning, I- I couldn't believe it!" Nayyar said, his words speeding up, his eyes defocusing. "I had to confirm with all the sensor satellites, and get three other people to check the readouts! It's unprecedented!"

North was growing impatient. "What is?" he asked firmly.

Nayyar gulped and met his intense gaze. "The comet, sir... It's changed course...

"It's now heading straight for us."

STARBASE ONE

"The End of the World"

Chapter 1

"At it's current speed, the comet will strike the surface of Berengaria Seven in approximately sixty-three hours," said Commander McQueen.

As Chief Science Officer, McQueen had worked with Lt. Nayyar to learn as much as possible about this deadly rock, and the duo now presented the facts to the senior staff in the main briefing room.

"Just over two days," North reflected, now used to a Berengarian day.

McQueen nodded gravely, her usual pluck gone. She touched a control on the wall and the large monitor behind her displayed a topographic map of Berengaria VII. "The asteroid will strike here, on the continent south of us, which we call... Lyonesse." She looked down sheepishly; her whimsical, Arthurian naming habit now seeming silly.

"What sort of damage will it do?" Captain Thorpe asked.

"Total," McQueen said. She hit another control and the monitor showed a graphic of the comet itself. "The comet is large enough that it will displace thousands of tons of earth into the atmosphere, blocking out the suns. The impact alone will cause massive tectonic activity worldwide, and massive tidal waves will wash over the other continents.

"Including here."

North let those words sink in, the senior officers reflecting on the impending doom. The base was designed to whether common natural disasters, of course, but kilometres-high tidal waves were another matter.

"Our options," he said, "are to redirect the comet, destroy the comet, or, if all else fails, evacuate the planet." Before anyone could react, he held up a hand. "That is a last resort, naturally."

"Wait a minute," said Chief Engineer Patel. "You said this comet changed course?"

Nayyar, who had been nervously silent throughout, answered. "Yes, sir. I speculate that it originated outside the system, since it hasn't been detected before, and it fell into orbit of the suns a few days ago. Sometime last night, it seems to have... redirected itself towards Berengaria Seven."

"Well how is that possible?" Patel asked. It was a just question.

"A mystery that bears investigation," said North. "Could be that a gravitational anomaly knocked it off-course, or... something more sinister." He didn't dwell on that option, instead addressing McQueen. "Commander, what do we know about the comet's composition?"

"Very little, I'm afraid, Commodore," she replied. "It seems to be composed of material that interferes with spectrographic scans at this range. A closer look may yield better results though."

North nodded. "So be it. Take a team in a shuttlepod to examine the comet more closely. Find out what it's made of; what it would take to redirect or destroy it. And try to discern how it could have moved."

"Yes, sir." McQueen turned to Nayyar. "Ready for a field trip, Lieutenant?"

"Me?" Nayyar gulped.

"It's your comet."

The astronomer just nodded. "O-Okay."

With that dealt with, North considered the unfavourable alternative. Evacuation.

"Captain, I want you to draft up an evac plan," he said to his First Officer, Thorpe. "I believe we have emergency procedures in place for just such a thing, but they may warrant updating."

"Aye, sir," said Thorpe.

"But be discrete." He looked around everyone else in the room. "That goes for all of you. We don't need to start a panic."

There were murmurs of acknowledgement. The Astronomy Department had already been similarly warned.

North took in the image of the comet on the monitor again. Another harbinger of doom, or a brush with death they'd laugh about in future?

He hoped it was the latter.

"Alright, people," he said. "We have a deadline. Let's move."