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  No sooner had Gold moved to the Defiant’s command chair than he was thrown bodily into it as the mighty starship suddenly surged forward. There was only the briefest of rumblings from the deck plates as the ship’s massive warp engines received the single concentrated burst of power from the away team’s portable generators.

  In his mind’s eye, the da Vinci captain pictured the spike of energy instantaneously traveling the conduits that connected the generators to the ship’s warp drive, improvising an intermix reaction in the absence of dilithium. Gold didn’t pretend to understand the mind-numbing complexity that enshrouded the concept of warp propulsion, but he was content in the knowledge that he commanded people who did. He knew he could best serve the specialists comprising the rest of the away team by staying out of their way and allowing them to do what they did best.

  The main viewer registered the Defiant’s sudden explosive acceleration as crackling, multihued energy playing across the screen. It was felt in the ship’s hull as well, as deck plates and bulkheads groaned in protest at the vessel’s abrupt movements.

  “Look at that,” Gold said. “The rift is reacting to the warp pulse.”

  Just as quickly as it had begun, the sounds of the ship’s struggling warp engines died out. Their effects on the peculiar interspatial pocket surrounding the Defiant were still being felt, however. The frenzied collision of energy continued on the main viewer, its intensity increasing as the ship hurtled closer to the edge of the rift.

  Gold moved to the science station and activated the sensor controls. “It’s working,” he said after consulting the viewfinder. “The rift is beginning to open. Hold us on course, Soloman, steady as she goes.”

  At the helm, Soloman said, “Guiding the ship is . . . proving much easier than anticipated. It seems that . . . our theory about the rift’s resistance was correct.”

  The relative quiet of the bridge was abruptly shattered as the engineering station erupted in a shower of sparks and flame. A deafening explosion echoed in the confines of the ship’s nerve center, throwing metal shrapnel and shards of plastic composites across the bridge. Both Soloman and Gold instinctively ducked, throwing their arms up and turning away from the explosion to protect their helmet faceplates. Gold felt the outside of his suit peppered by debris and prayed its rugged construction would withstand the bombardment.

  “Soloman! Are you all right?” Gold called out as another console near the front of the bridge blew apart, sending both officers scrambling for cover yet again.

  “Captain Gold!” Gomez’s voice called out over his communicator. “We’re getting massive feedback from the warp pulse. It’s overloading our circuits.”

  Gold’s reply was cut off as sparks burst from the helm, causing the lights and indicators on the panel to flicker wildly as the systems contained within the console fought to retain control.

  “Get away from there!” he yelled to Soloman, but the Bynar needed no such prodding as he bolted from his seat and jumped out of the command well. An instant later the helm console was enveloped in a vicious ball of flame and exploding circuitry.

  “We’ve lost helm control up here,” Gold said into his communicator. “We can’t steer the ship.”

  “Captain,” Soloman called out, drawing Gold’s attention. “Look!”

  Gold turned in the indicated direction, and his mouth fell open. Beyond the bulkheads flanking the main viewer, the hull was losing its solidity and he could see stars and the roiling energy streams comprising the rift.

  “We’re shifting out of interphase,” he said. Without thinking, he looked to the deck at his feet and saw that the plating had begun to lose its cohesion there as well. Wiring and conduits were already clearly visible.

  “It’s getting too dangerous to stay here,” he said.

  Soloman nodded. “Phase shifts will be occurring . . . throughout the ship, sir.”

  Gold moved to the turbolift, pulling his manual door opener from a suit pocket as he went. “We can’t do anything more from here, so we might as well move. Gomez, are you listening?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Gomez replied.

  Forcing the turbolift doors apart with the opener revealed the darkened walls of the turboshaft. Leaning in, Gold directed the lights of his helmet downward and they illuminated nothing except more of the vertical conduit. Only a pair of narrow maintenance ladders, one on both the front and rear walls of the shaft, interrupted its smooth texture.

  “Where’s the auxiliary control center?” he asked.

  Gomez’s response was immediate. “Deck seven, sir. I’ve already begun routing power to that location. All you have to do is get there. We can . . .”

  The rest of the engineer’s report was drowned out by the sounds of rushing air. Even muffled as it was through his helmet, Gold immediately recognized the source of the sound.

  Decompression!

  Spinning around, he saw that a section of bulkhead near the main viewer no bigger than a desktop LCARS terminal had disappeared entirely. The area was expanding rapidly and the sounds of escaping atmosphere were growing louder.

  “That’s it,” he shouted over the rush of departing air. “Time to go!”

  Grabbing Soloman by the arm, Gold pulled the Bynar close to him and hurled them both into the yawning darkness of the turboshaft.

  Sonya Gomez and P8 Blue worked feverishly at the master systems console in main engineering, trying to divert power from damaged or unresponsive areas of the ship to those that could still be useful. Alarm indicators illuminated across the board, bearing mute testimony to the severity of the situation.

  “Bridge systems have gone totally inoperative,” Pattie reported as she consulted one display. “I am seeing power fluctuations in the remaining generators.”

  “Cut the feed,” Gomez ordered. “Stand by to route whatever’s left to deck seven, section 21-Alpha.” With three of the away team’s five generators committed to the ship’s warp engines, the remaining units were being tasked with providing power for the other systems Gomez had determined were necessary to control the ship and complete their mission. Now more than ever, the vessel’s design was working against her. Though well-constructed and possessing a performance record nearly unmatched in the annals of Starfleet history, Constitution-class starships had never been intended to rely on small, localized power distribution schemes. The huge power plants normally used to drive the ship and its multitude of onboard systems were, of course, unavailable to her, so she would simply have to make do with what she had.

  “Sonya,” Elizabeth Lense called out from the other end of the bank of consoles, “I’m reading a massive feedback in the other generators.”

  It had been a gamble, Gomez knew, tying the generators directly into the warp drive. Forcing the momentary burst of energy required to jump-start the ship’s mighty engines was definitely not something the power units were designed to do.

  A massive explosion rocked the engineering room, slamming Gomez and the others into consoles and bulkheads. The concussion wave was still washing over them when two more blasts erupted in the chamber, sending flame and shrapnel in all directions. Gomez could hear it burrowing into the walls and the control panels around them, but they were partially protected from the explosions by a wall separating the master console from the rest of the engineering area.

  “Is everybody all right?” she called out as she regained her feet. No one reported any injuries as Gomez tentatively stepped around the wall and peered into the main engineering area. A scene of utter destruction greeted her.

  The overloaded generators ultimately had succumbed to the tremendous energy impulses forced back into them from the Defiant’s warp engines, unleashing a sizable portion of their considerable power into the room. The resulting explosions had decimated the chamber, destroying consoles, power distribution nodes, even hurling debris into the ship’s impulse engines. Gomez doubted that more damage could have been inflicted had the room been subjected to the detonation of a photon tor
pedo. It was saddening to see the once-vibrant heart of the starship reduced to near ruin.

  At the master console, Pattie had already shaken off the effects of the explosions and had returned to work. “Power has been rerouted to auxiliary control, Commander.”

  Gomez acknowledged the report, knowing that the two remaining generators were the only things preventing the Defiant from reverting to the lifeless hulk they had originally discovered. Already burdened with the requirements of supplying power to essential systems, the surviving units might also be needed to deal with whatever awaited them on the other side of the rift.

  As if sensing her troubled thoughts, Lense said, “You’ve done all you can, Sonya. It’s up to the captain and Soloman now.”

  The sentiment, well-intentioned as it was, did little to ease Gomez’s mounting frustration. What she really heard was: There is absolutely nothing more you can do about it.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Okay, so it’s taking more than three minutes.

  A bead of perspiration rolled into Duffy’s right eye as he lay on his back, his head once again shoved through a bulkhead opening and into the mesmerizing glow of the da Vinci’s warp-drive control system. He squinted and blinked the sweat from his eye, trying to refocus his sight on rerouting circuitry paths.

  When he first stormed into main engineering and tore open an access panel seemingly at random, other engineers looked at Duffy as if the space madness had finally caught up with the young commanding officer. He now chuckled to himself as he thumbed the controls of his handheld nanopulse laser and sealed the last of the shorted connections. Even a seasoned engineer might have needed precious minutes simply to track down the problems keeping the da Vinci’s warp engines from functioning. But Duffy had suspected just where to start looking in the system for effects from the deflector dish feedback loop, and his instincts had been correct.

  He squirmed his way out of the bulkhead and pushed himself to his feet. Pointing to one of the engineers standing nearby, he called out, “Conlon! Finish up here!” The ensign rushed to work as Duffy sped out of engineering, calling over his shoulder, “And let me know the instant it’s ready!”

  Though his work in engineering wasn’t complete, Duffy knew he had to be elsewhere. Never in his life had he wanted to be on the bridge of a starship as badly as he wanted to be now, he realized as he sprinted down the corridor. His momentum nearly carried him into the nearby turbolift’s doors before they could whisk open with their signature pneumatic hiss.

  “Bridge!”

  Come on, come ON!

  The car began to move and he stared at the ceiling, as though he could urge the turbolift to travel faster through sheer force of will. After a handful of seconds that seemed to last an eternity, the doors finally parted and he didn’t so much step onto the bridge as he hurled himself onto it. Panting, he looked at the main viewscreen, ready for anything.

  Nothing was there but black, empty space. His breathing slowed somewhat as he whirled to face Corsi, who stood almost where he had left her just . . .

  “Six minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” said the security officer after a glance at her console. “Welcome back, Commander.”

  He gasped at her, trying to regain his composure. “We still don’t have warp, but we will.” He moved to the center seat and plopped himself into it. “Fabian, keep working. I’m playing a hunch that we’ll have time for one more shot at this.”

  McAllan spoke up from his tactical station. “Commander, the Tholians are approaching. They’re in viewing and communications range.”

  The final grains of sand were falling through the hourglass, and the crew of the da Vinci was out of options. Duffy wanted to get a real look at the threat that had hung in his mind’s eye for what seemed like forever.

  “Put them on screen.”

  The dark of space vanished in a flash as an amber glow radiated from the main viewer. There it was: A deadly hexagon of Tholian ships linked by the powerful energy web, burning with what seemed to be a life of its own. The formation did not waver from its course as it bore down on the da Vinci.

  Duffy didn’t blink. He stared at the viewer, refusing to let the web scare him from saving his crew.

  His crew.

  “Hail them,” he ordered. “And get ready for a fight.”

  The Defiant’s auxiliary control center was a room pulsing with life, energy, and purpose as its doors parted to admit David Gold and Soloman.

  “Bless you, Gomez,” the da Vinci captain said as the pair moved to the room’s central control console. A quick glance of the display readouts there showed that they would be able to control all available systems from this point.

  That’s good, Gold thought, because we’re running out of places to go.

  The journey from the bridge had been an interesting one, with Gold and Soloman using their suits’ small maneuvering thrusters to control their descent into the turboshaft. By comparison, forcing the doors to deck seven had been easy, after which Soloman’s tricorder had guided them here.

  Intended for use only in the event of the main bridge being destroyed or otherwise compromised, this room harbored none of the aesthetic niceties that so characterized the ship’s primary nerve center. It was designed solely with function in mind, and at that moment such efficiency suited David Gold just fine.

  “Activate the viewscreen,” he said. Soloman found the necessary controls and seconds later the screen on the far bulkhead flickered to life, its blank slate replaced with the now-familiar chaos that was the rift. But it wasn’t all that was visible.

  “Stars,” Gold whispered. Indeed, the fabric of space, with its millions of stars, was growing more distinct with each passing second. The bold plan put into motion by Gomez and her team had worked, and the Defiant was emerging from the rift.

  “Captain,” Soloman said, “sensors are detecting the da Vinci. She is holding station . . . just within transporter range.” Continuing to consult the limited information provided by the ship’s scanners, the Bynar added, “I am also reading six Tholian vessels . . . on an approach vector.”

  Looking at the displays himself, Gold pointed to one that displayed a large, undefined energy reading. “What’s that?”

  “It is similar in configuration to . . . the energy webs normally created by . . . Tholian vessels,” Soloman replied. “Though it is not a deployment . . . I am familiar with.”

  “They’re pulling it like a big fishing net,” Gold said, experience and instinct giving him the answer. “They mean to snare the da Vinci with it.”

  Soloman nodded. “It is of sufficient strength to . . . overcome the da Vinci’s shields.”

  “Stand by on the thrusters,” Gold said before tapping his communicator. “Gold to Gomez. I need whatever power you have left for the deflector shields, and that phaser bank if you have it.”

  The engineer’s reply was most definitely lacking in enthusiasm. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that, Captain. This ship can’t go into combat.”

  Gold was well aware of what he had at his disposal. One hundred years ago, this vessel was the match of just about anything the Federation’s known enemies could throw at her. Now, however, she was a shell of what she had once been, barely able to move at a limp and with no real weaponry. Realistically, the Defiant stood no chance of withstanding any sort of prolonged battle.

  But that wasn’t what he was after. He knew his team of engineers wouldn’t understand immediately, but that was only natural. After all, he was out of his element in the midst of most engineering problems. But now they were on his turf, playing a game he had more experience at than he liked to readily admit.

  “I know, Commander, but hopefully we won’t have to. I just need the old girl to come through one more time.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  As he studied the bank of tactical displays dominating the forward bulkhead of his ship’s command center, Nostrene could not help but be amused at the readings th
ey conveyed. Scans showed that the Federation ship was still maintaining station near the last known position of the derelict vessel that had led Starfleet into Tholian space. It now hung broadside and vulnerable to the energy net.

  The human in command of the rescue ship had to know that any attack against a Tholian ship would not go unanswered. Further, if he had paid any attention to the intelligence briefings Starfleet had surely provided regarding the Assembly, the human would also know that when attacked, Tholian vessels always retaliated without mercy. Any competent commander would almost certainly realize that a single ship stood no chance of survival when faced with such a situation. The prudent course of action would be to flee rather than risk capture or destruction.

  And yet, the Federation ship remained.

  “Are they damaged?” Nostrene asked.

  Overseeing the subordinates at the sensor and weapons stations, Taghrex replied, “Not severely, Commander. Their hyperlight drive appears nonfunctional, but they have full use of weapons and defensive systems.”

  “Can they outrun us at sublight speeds?”

  The second-in-command turned to study the sensor displays once more before replying. “For a time, but ultimately we can overtake them, and then the energy net will do the rest.”

  Nostrene nodded at the report. Even though their six ships could deploy only weakened defensive shields while generating the energy net, he was not concerned. Once ensnared in its confines, the force of the mesh would quickly deplete the power reserves of the enemy ship and leave it helpless against Tholian weapons. The Starfleet crew would be at the mercy of their captors within moments.

  Taking another look at the scanner readings for himself, Nostrene shook his head and tried to understand the thought processes of the Federation ship’s commander. Even without hyperlight capability, the human surely must know that being a moving target was more desirable than being a stationary one. Nostrene decided that he must either be a reckless maverick or a naïve fool.