The Horizon dropped out of warp and Sheppard watched the viewscreen as the stretched streaks of stars resolved into pinpoints. “Long range sensors… is there any sign of the Arizona?”

Ch’qahrok ran a long-range sensor sweep, then replied, “Negative on contact with the Arizona.”

Sheppard was hardly surprised by this result, but if they had been able to detect the ship directly, it would save them the sleuthing work of following their warp trail. “Scan for its warp signature.”

A moment later, Ch’qahrok said, “I’ve found it.”

“Put it on screen,” Sheppard said.

Ch’qahrok tapped several buttons on his control panel and a three-dimensional star chart appeared on the bridge’s main screen.

“Does that match their initial flight plan?” Sheppard asked.

Ch’qahrok’s fingers flew over the panel in front of him and a second flight path appeared, which diverged immediately from the course that had been approved.

“No sir. If this were intentional, their flight path wouldn’t diverge from their departure from the Horizon,” Tavika said from the tactical station.

“I’m inclined to agree, but what’s your reasoning?” Sheppard asked.

“There is no turning at warp speed, at least not without taking the chance that you’re going to destroy the ship, so, if they were attempting to go off on an unapproved expedition in the Arizona, they would have had to start out along their approved flight plan, waited until they were well away from the ship, dropped out of warp, and then headed off along a different trajectory,” Tavika said.

“Deviating as soon as they left the ship suggests that the navigational system they were testing isn’t functioning as expected,” Ch’qahrok said.

“Are there any systems within five light years of here along their flight path?” Sheppard asked.

“I could give you a better answer to that from Stellar Cartography,” Ch’qahrok answered. “After all, it’s completely normal for a warp path to cut through several systems. The real question is whether there would be anything large in their way that would cause them to drop out of warp.”

“Mister Ch’qahrok, give me your best guess based on the data you can pull here. Feel free to double-check it in Stellar Cartography if you think you can come up with a more complete answer,” Sheppard said.

Ch’qahrok was silent for a moment as he examined all the stars that lie near the Arizona’s flight path. “I may have a possible theory on what happened to them,” he said. “Two point three light years from here is the exact point in space currently occupied by Odonus IV. That area was marked with a warning beacon following a recent collision with a smaller planetoid. This resulted in a large amount of debris scattered throughout the system. A ship at warp would automatically drop to normal space before hitting what’s left of the planet, but not necessarily before encountering some of the debris.”

“So for all we know, they could have struck a huge space rock at faster than light speed,” Ipesh Nod said from his Security station. “They might have been crushed on impact.”

A cold knot formed in the pit of Sheppard’s stomach. It was still a young crew, with only a few months behind them, but the thought of losing Cunha or Hernandez in something as trivial as a space accident worried him. They both had promising careers ahead of them, and the thought of seeing their lives brought to such senseless, untimely ends struck him as both tragic and unfair. “Set a course for Odonus IV. Engage!”

* * *

The thruster burn had bought them some time from their impending collision with the debris field, but not enough. Cunha slammed her phasic sequencer into the bulkhead as the impulse drive once again stubbornly refused to turn on. “I swear, I’ve practically rebuilt this thing from the ground up since we started working on it and it’s still not coming online!”

“Stay calm. Try again,” Hernandez said from the cockpit.

“How much time until we enter the debris field?” cunha called out to him.

“We crossed into it about three minutes ago,” Hernandez replied. As if to accentuate his point, she heard the concussive sound of a space rock impacting with the Arizona’s hull. The entire craft shook. She lost her footing and was hurled to the floor. She put her right knee and her hands out to stop the fall, and pain flared up as she struck. “Aah!” she called out.

The lights flickered off again. Not a good sign, she thought. A moment later, the artificial gravity gave out. If only that had gone out a few seconds ago, she thought, clutching her knee. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“We just got clobbered by a big chunk of rock and we’ve lost main power,” Hernandez said.

Cunha pushed away from the impulse drive, kicked her feet out, and propelled herself toward the cockpit. As she floated into the control area, she looked at Hernandez, who was likewise untethered. “So all systems are down. Power, life support, propulsion…”

“Yeah,” Hernandez said. He was keeping his voice low, but she could hear the defeat, along with the fear that hadn’t been present before. “If the debris doesn’t kill us, we’re still on a collision course with the planet.”

“How much time do we have left?”

Hernandez cracked a wry smile. “We’re already on borrowed time. We could get smashed to pieces right this second, or we could hit the planet in about an hour or so. Life support is out, so we might just freeze to death or suffocate first. Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I don’t want to die like this,” Cunha said.

“Do you think I do?” Hernandez asked.

“No, I suppose not,” she replied. For the first time in her life, she felt truly helpless. She no longer could do anything to change her fate.

They were silent for a moment, looking at each other’s silhouettes against the fading light of the planet. Cold was already beginning to set in. She could feel it in her toes, and she could see it in the frost coming from her mouth as she exhaled. That didn’t take long...

“It’s getting cold,” Cunha said. “There’s cold weather gear stashed in one of these storage areas.”

“Check the mid-compartment,” Hernandez said.

Cunha pushed herself back. She heard a couple more smaller impacts on the hull, but they didn’t sound as though they were strong enough to puncture. She floated down into the mid-section of the runabout and she maneuvered to the left side where the survival gear should be stored. She quickly opened the storage unit and within were a pair of coats that would be enough to survive sub-zero weather. She pulled them out and hurled one of them toward the pilot. She then pulled hers on over her torso, zipped it on, then pushed herself back into the cockpit.

“Since we’re going to die, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” Hernandez asked.

Oh no. Not this. Not now, she thought. “Go ahead.”

“If you were back aboard the Horizon, what food would you want to eat?”

Cunha thought about it for a moment. She enjoyed a lot of food, but there was one dish she would definitely like to have again, if she had the chance. “Chicken Mozambique, just like my mother used to like to make. Chicken over rice. It’s orange, with lots of butter and garlic and crushed red pepper. Not replicated. I’d make it myself. What about you?”

“Spaghetti with meatballs,” he replied quickly. “Honestly, I don’t care if I made it myself, or replicated it, or had some that was made in the galley.”

“That’s a good choice,” she said.

“I have a confession to make,” Hernandez said.

“Alright?” she said.

“I volunteered for this mission.”

“Why?” she asked.

Hernandez sighed, and paused. “I’ve always considered myself a lower decks kind of guy. I’m lucky to have a bridge assignment. Anyway, ever since the Horizon launched, I’ve seen you around. I know you’re a senior officer, but I wanted to see if the two of us would hit it off. I’d very much like to have that plate of chicken mozambique, in your quarters, with the lights dimmed, and some guitar music in the background.”

“You’ve been crushing on me!” Cunha said with a slight giggle.

“Well yeah,” Hernandez replied. “I mean, who wouldn’t?”

“I guess I’ve been focused on my duties to think about much else,” Cunha said.

“Do you mind if I ask you another personal question?”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“You might as well. We’re going to die here.”

“Are you… attached?”

Cunha laughed. “No. Definitely not. I haven’t seen anyone… romantically… since well before I left the Utopia Planitia shipyards.”

“I know you outrank me, and this is all very improper….”

“No. What does rank mean right now? Does it matter if you have one pip or two?”

“Well, you know there’s no sex in Starfleet,” Hernandez quipped.

“Says you,” Cunha replied. “I’d counter that with personal experience, but I don’t think that’s quite the response you’re looking for right now.”

They were silent for a moment, and Cunha moved closer to Hernandez and looked through the darkness and tried to see his eyes.

“I guess what I’m asking is if circumstances were different, would you be interested in seeing me on a more casual basis?”

Cunha moved closer to him. She reached out and pulled him close. It was getting colder, and they should conserve their body heat together as a means of basic survival. “I hadn’t given it a lot of thought, but… I’d be willing to get to know you better.”

Hernandez leaned forward. Cunha could feel his warm breath on her face. Their lives were about to be cut very short, so what did she have to lose? She pulled him closer. She found his lips with hers, and she pressed them together and closed her eyes.

The compartment seemed to sparkle around her. She felt slightly faint. There was a warm blue glow surrounding them, and then… warmth.

Her body hit the floor. It was suddenly light. She looked around. They were sitting in the transporter room of the Horizon. Captain Shephard was looking at them with a bemused expression.

“I hope we didn’t interrupt anything,” he said.

Cunha looked at Hernandez, then at Sheppard. If she was dreaming she was back aboard the Horizon, she didn’t want to wake up. She suddenly began to laugh hysterically. Then she began to cry.

* * *

As a veteran of the Dominion War, this was not Kevia Turner’s first time in a Cardassian prison. She had seen one from the inside when she had been taken prisoner on Olmerak II. She had seen a couple others from the outside when she provided artillery support from the outside while others carried out raids to recover prisoners of war. In those cases, they had been at war, and the actions she had been carrying out were a part of the war they were fighting. In this situation, hanging from a rusty ladder that felt barely anchored to the concrete walls, she wasn’t even sure that their actions were legal according to Federation law.

She moved a hand and a foot down to the next rung, and she swore she could feel the ladder pulling away from the wall. Below, the bottom of the shaft was lost in the darkness.

Thomas Riker had been sentenced to this prison because he had joined the Maquis, stolen a Federation starship, and then used it to attack a hidden Cardassian base. At the time, he had been legally extradited to the Cardassian authorities, tried, and imprisoned. While it was true that a large number of Starfleet officers disagreed with the way the matter was handled, and many of them sympathized with his cause, any further actions on his behalf by the Federation should have been handled by diplomats and lawyers, not spies. At least that was the way she interpreted the law as a commissioned officer in Starfleet who, as the first officer aboard one of the most advanced ships in the fleet, might have to uphold such laws herself one day.

Between those issues, and the fact that the nature of the mission had been kept secret from Captain Sheppard, she wasn’t comfortable with her role in this operation. At least, she thought, if they decide to court martial me, I have the defense of being here by captain’s orders. Of course that wouldn’t happen. Either they would be successful, in which case they’d hide under the protective shield of Section Thirty-One, or they’d be dead, in which case court martial would be irrelevant. In any case, the only one here who had nothing to lose was Thomas Riker, who was destined to spend the remainder of his life in this prison unless he found a way to escape.

And that brought up another thought. She’d been told that Riker had found a way to send messages to the Federation from the prison. That meant that he had to have had a contact at least within Intelligence to begin with, if not Section Thirty-One itself, and he was definitely trying to encourage them to launch some kind of effort to get him out of here.

She knew her unease with the mission was also exacerbated by the fact that their cover was already blown, they were outnumbered by the Cardassians, and the only reason they weren’t already in Cardassian custody is because they didn’t think to check the ventilation shaft… That was assuming that they hadn’t already run a scan, figured out their escape route, and were simply waiting to apprehend them once they reached the bottom.

The descent continued. Ground level wasn’t just within sight, but they were getting close to it.

“Out of curiosity, do we have a plan for making out the front gate after we leave the ventilation shaft?” Turner asked.

“Section Thirty-One magic!” Bashir replied sarcastically.

“I still have a few tricks up my sleeve,” Pressman said.

“Well, you might want to share with us what those tricks are before we simply decide that you’re going to use us as bargaining chips to get yourself out,” Bashir said.

“What—you think the Admiral here would just sacrifice us all to save his own skin?” Riker asked.

“Alright, there’s history here, and I want to know what it is,” Turner asked. “When was he an admiral, and why isn’t he any longer?”

“It’s a long story,” Riker said. “But the part you need to know is that back when I was just out of the academy, he used the Pegasus, the ship he commanded to break the treaty of Algeron. The crew mutinied, the ship was lost, and I had to protect him by force as we fled like rats off the ship. Starfleet didn’t know anything about this until much, much, later, at which time he was arrested.”

“Your brother was responsible for the truth coming out,” Pressman said.

“I know,” Thomas said. “Never mind the fact that he and I are a little more than just brothers. If I would have been in his position, I probably would have told Picard the truth about you myself.”

Pressman snickered. “Well, both of you were responsible for saving me from my crew aboard the Pegasus. Neither of you want anything to do with me, but I still owe you a debt, and I’m here to repay it.”

“You’re here to repay my helping you all those years ago?” Riker asked.

“Okay, forget it. I don’t care what this is about,” Turner said, sorry that she asked the question in the first place. “We need a plan, and forgive me if I don’t trust you to have already worked out all the details.”

“Commander Turner, are you familiar with the Carbomite Maneuver?” Ro asked.

“Of course, we studied all of Kirk’s missions in the academy,” Turner replied. She also knew that the maneuver in question was merely the bluff of mutually assured destruction.

“So you understand the psychological value of having a deterrent that the enemy believes is real,” said Ro. “One of the things Section Thirty-One is especially good at is using the enemy’s psychology against them. In the case of the Cardassians, they are by necessity extremely paranoid. It’s mostly valid paranoia, given the fact that for most high-ranking officials, there really are people out to kill them. At any rate, a bluff is even more effective on Cardassian than Human psychology.”

“I thought part of bluffing is establishing that sometimes you’re telling the truth in order to make them unsure whether or not you’re lying,” Turner said. Basing their survival on a bluff seemed to her a foolish tactic to bet their lives on.

“I can appreciate the strategy,” Riker said. “A well played bluff is much more effective at getting your opponent to fold than being dealt a good hand.”

“And as I said,” said Ro, “Cardassian paranoia makes the bluff more likely to succeed, by about twenty percent over Human subjects.”

“Say they don’t buy it. Then what?” Turner asked.

“Then we fall back on our combat training,” Pressman said. “And it’s far better than what Starfleet teaches you in the academy.”

“Meaning what?” Turner asked.

“Meaning they know thirty ways to kill you with a combadge,” Bashir said cryptically.

Pressman was the first to reach the ground floor, followed by Ro, Bashir, Riker, and finally Turner. Across from the ladder was a doorway with an access panel next to it. Riker stepped up to it, entered a code, and the door hissed open. “The main gate’s just down the hallway,” Riker said.

“And my bet is they’re there waiting for us,” Pressman said with his phaser drawn. He began walking forward, making as little noise as possible. Turner followed, her own phaser held at the ready. It didn’t matter how many hostile engagements she’d participated in, there was always a sense of anxiety and dread as she neared danger. That was where training kicked in. During the Dominion War, when hostilities broke out, in her mind she was already as good as dead. Her body was trained to react in a certain way when faced with phaser fire, or pulse grenades. It wasn’t until after she had survived it that she would allow herself to shake uncontrollably, or just start crying. And it wasn’t just her who reacted that way. Most officers she’d fought alongside had similar reactions. It was the ones who didn’t—the stone cold soldiers who actually seemed to enjoy fighting—that she worried about.

Just ahead, she could see the reinforced double doors that were made of transparent aluminum, and the panel that controlled them. From her position in the hallway, she could see the back of one Cardassian at the controls, though she knew the area it occupied was large and provided space for several more Cardassians who didn’t want to be seen.

As they entered the room, her suspicions proved true. The Cardassian at the controls spun around, a spiral wave disrupter in his hand. She recognized Onrad, the prison warden immediately. As he stepped forward, so too did five other Cardassians, each of them armed with their own disruptors.

“I’d freeze if I were you,” Onrad said.

“Put that away,” Pressman said impatiently, almost as though the warden was little more than a minor nuisance.

“And you would have me step aside and allow you to go free, along with my favorite inmate?”

“That’s what I’d recommend, yeah,” Pressman said.

“And what would possess me to do that?” Onrad asked.

Ro stepped forward, a small black device in her hand that Turner hadn’t seen before. “Because if you don’t, we’ll all die together.”

Pressman’s left hand produced a similar device from his pocket. “She’s right. We’re all equipped with one. All one of us has to do is activate this and the craft waiting for us in orbit will unleash a bombardment of torpedoes that will flatten this entire facility.”

“And can you explain why we haven’t detected this vessel?” Anrad asked.

“New technology adapted from Borg that the U.S.S. Voyager encountered in the Delta Quadrant, thereby circumventing the Treaty of Algeron,” Pressman said.

“A cloak?” Anrad asked.

“Not exactly,” Pressman replied. “It’s easy enough to locate if you know what you’re looking for. Of course… you don’t know what you’re looking for, and you’re wasting precious time. We can activate it at any time, and that will be the end for everyone here.”

“Suppose I don’t believe you,” Anrad said.

Pressman shrugged and smiled. “That’s your prerogative, I guess.”

“Yes it is. In fact, once we realized you weren’t Cardassian, we located your stealth probe and vaporized it. Even if you escape this prison, you have no way off this world. I suggest you drop your phasers or my men will open fire,” Anrad said.

Pressman sighed, dropped the device in his left hand, fired his phaser at the warden as he lunged for the entry controls. The phaser struck Onrad directly in the chest. His chest glowed briefly, and he fell to the floor in a lifeless heap.

Pressman activated the main gate controls. Then, as the double doors began to open, he fired at the control panel, which exploded into a shower of sparks, permanently inoperable. “Let’s go!” he yelled.

Turner began to run, passing through the main gate in less than a second alongside the others. They were back outside, in the dirt and gravel outside the prison. A short sprint more and they’d be clear of the shield and able to beam back to the stealth probe.

She heard the unmistakable sound of disruptor fire behind them, and she knew all she could do now was hope they could find cover before taking any shots.

Pressman suddenly cried out and fell to the ground. She looked behind her to see the former admiral lying on the ground, clutching his lower torso. Riker spun around, lowered his shoulder, grabbed Pressman, and slung him over his shoulder. “Don’t wait, just go!” Riker yelled.

Turner heeded that advice and kept running. There were some large boulders up ahead that would make good cover… if she could make it that far.