A wild ride. That was all you could call it.

Captain Gold, clinging to his chair to avoid being dumped to the ground once more, enjoyed it. He could admit that. He’d never been surfing before, but after this, he just might take it up.

“Engineering to bridge.”

Gold reached up and tapped his combadge. “Gold here. Go ahead, Conlon.”

“Captain, we’ve almost got full power restored. This ride has actually given us the time to take the warp core off-line momentarily, recalibrate, and restart. That did the trick for most of the systems. The rest, unfortunately, are burned out and will likely need to be replaced at the source.”

“Good. Keep me posted.”

“Yes, sir. Conlon out.”

Gold turned toward Tev. “Tev, how we looking?”

“We are closing in on the station even now; estimated contact in five-point-four-five minutes.”

“And the gravity anchor?”

“I cannot be certain when it will fail, but its density is fracturing. There can be no doubt failure is imminent.”

“I understand, Tev.”

The Resaurian station now filled the forward viewscreen: an insignificant piece of flotsam desperately clinging to existence above God’s drainpipe. Just over a thousand meters long, the station was a large one indeed. Two cylindrical objects rose perpendicular (above and below) toward its stern, while several large extensions thrust down from amidships. A particularly large extension sat amidships on the starboard side.

“Captain, we’re now within fifty-five seconds of the station.”

“Wong,” Gold said in response to Tev’s warning, “prepare to engage impulse power upon my mark.” Gold leaned back, rubbed his hands on his face, and then roughed his hair. How many hours had he been without real sleep?

After all they’d been through, it looked as though they just might be on the verge of saving the ship from falling farther. Of course the problem he’d been ignoring for some time now would no longer be kept in abeyance. He sighed and glanced over at Tev again.

“Tev, when we latch on to the station, we can keep it from falling farther toward the event horizon, correct?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“But how do we get out again?”

He noticed Tev straighten slightly, a small smile creasing his porcine face. “The previous plan I had for saving the gravity anchor will be able to pull us back out of the gravity well and past the photon sphere. I’m confident the twin dekyon beams—the bootstrapping you called it—will be more than adequate for the task.”

“You say it will be adequate to rescue the da Vinci. But will it rescue our vessel and that mammoth station?”

Tev’s eyebrows lowered until he almost couldn’t see the Tellarite’s coal black eyes. Obviously he hadn’t made considerations for that, and it irked him. “No, Captain, it will not.”

“I know you’ll come up with something.”

If possible, Tev became even more stiff. “Back to the drawing board, Captain.”

Gold nodded, keeping his emotions tightly leashed. The worry that had plagued him as a nightmare from the start of this whole mess reared its ugly head once more. He’d lost so many people at Galvan VI. Now, it appeared as though those events might repeat themselves, with much more dire effect. The team he’d ordered onto the station had to be rescued. Had to be. But at the cost of the rest of the crew? Had he been determining his course of action based upon those dead ghosts that called to him? Had he put himself, and more importantly his ship and crew, in danger to try to make up for what had gone before?

The sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach warned him that that might be exactly what had occurred.

And in his next thought, he felt the right of it.

“Captain,” Tev interrupted his reverie, “the gravity anchor has torn away. Both the station and the alien vessel have begun a freefall.”

“Wong, engage at one-quarter impulse immediately. If we take a beating, the ship can handle it. We’ve got to make it to the station now!” Against the tidal forces at work, they would need to be right on top of the station if they hoped to stop its plunge.

As his ship thrummed with power and leaped forward, Gold couldn’t help but continue his earlier line of reasoning. He began to understand the enormity of what he’d done. Gripping the edge of his seat, he swore if they actually managed to get out of here, the dead would be laid to rest at last. Rescuing members of his crew necessitated risk. And when that risk passed beyond the pale and threatened to kill the rest of the crew? Who among them would say no?

It came with the uniform. It came with the job. Gold had allowed doubts to eat away at his convictions of duty. But not again.

“Captain,” Tev said, “we’re close enough.”

Gold stood up, unable to contain the sudden energy that flowed through him. “Engage tractor beam.”

“Tractor beam engaged. We’ve got the station. I’m punching a reinforced dekyon beam into subspace…now!”

The da Vinci rocked precariously over on its starboard side, as if wrenched by an invisible hand. A power conduit blew beneath the tactical station, flames licking out. Piotrowski grabbed an extinguisher and fought down the small electrical fire. But the vessel held.

“Matching shields,” Tev announced. “We’re synchronized, Captain.”

Gold tapped his combadge. If wishes could be turned into energy, she’d hear him even across the event horizon. “Gold to Gomez, come in.”

As reunions went, Sonya had heard of worse. Among a family of feuding Klingons, for instance.

Es’a and his small party from the lower decks were searched and put under immediate guard as soon as Rennan led them all into the upper decks that fell under S’eth’s dominion. The intervening levels had had the look of a battlefield, which they had been several times over the past century. Plasma-scarred walls, ruptured steam pipes, and exposed power conduits bore witness to that, along with the musty odors of dust mixed with old machine oil. It was a no-man’s-land through which Resaurian battled Resaurian over the fate of their children: to be raised inside the Demon, in relative safety, or risked to bring them home.

Sonya allowed nothing to slow down the small group, however, even waving about her phaser (recovered from Es’a) a few times to make her point. Rennan shook his head over those theatrics, but they got the job done faster than his personal style of calm argument.

“We’ll try your way next time,” she promised, heavy on the cynicism. Neither of them believed that, but it kept him from complaining aloud.

From the final corridor leading up to the bridge, Sonya wondered if there were ruptured steam vents ahead as well. A great deal of hissing rolled together to make a crash of white noise. The equivalent of Resaurian shouting, she realized a moment later, as her universal translator finally made headway against the static.

Panicked shouting.

The bridge was a beehive of frantic activity. Resaurians slithered and ran, coiled into the backs of panels, and labored to rush replacement parts where they were needed. The ozone scent of electrical fires stung Sonya’s sinuses. Her eyes teared up from the acrid smoke. Even as they arrived, another junction box blew out in a storm of white-hot sparks. Pattie swarmed over with an extinguisher held in each of her forward legs, spraying down the box with heavy, one-two doses of dry powder.

“Commander!” the Nasat exclaimed, seeing her commander lead the small contingent forward.

Dropping one canister and throwing the other to a nearby Resaurian, P8 Blue swarmed forward on all legs to wrap Sonya in a stifling embrace. Being hugged by a five-foot-long pill bug was no small matter. It took Sonya a moment to extract herself, trying all the while to flag S’eth over so she could calm him before he noticed for himself. Too late. One of his patrol guards made it across the room first.

“Nest-breaker!”

S’eth’s hissing shout was enough to momentarily halt most of the work on the bridge. But engineers would be engineers no matter their race. The repair teams fell back to work, leaving the matter to S’eth, who abandoned his perch near the blackened main viewscreen to slither forward with reinforcements.

Rennan had caught Corsi and Vinx by now. Stevens had heard Pattie’s shout, and come running with Lense. The team was back together, and everyone tried to talk at once and louder than the quarreling Resaurians.

“Your fault!” S’eth accused Es’a. “It must be your fault. Our anchor is deteriorating and it is accepting no reinforcement.”

“Us?” Es’a recoiled. “You cause intentional power failures when you know the condition of our systems, and you blame us?”

Sonya held up a hand for silence. Didn’t get it. She pointed her phaser at the overhead and squeezed off a quick shot, scoring a trail of red sparks. Everyone ducked except for Rennan and Sonya. Bickering ceased.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said with a forced calm.

“I know.” Holstering her weapon, content to let Vinx and Corsi cover the assembled group, she held up her hands again. It was the work of a moment to explain to the rest of her team about the young Resaurians, and the sabotage perpetrated by S’eth’s people in their first attempt to free the station from the black hole.

“Whatever your past difficulties,” she said, “you have to put them aside.” The station shook, violently. Some of the children Es’a had brought with them cowered behind him. “Obviously the station is no longer stable. If it cannot be fixed, we have to get it out of the Demon. Now.”

“Impossible,” S’eth hissed. “The phase variance in our power distribution system will overload the reactors. We cannot disengage the safeties.” He glared at his rival. “You are as impatient as your father.”

“I’ve already made a start at solving that problem,” Sonya told him, heading off any further shouting. “I’d be done by now if I hadn’t worried that you might blow up something else as a means of delaying our escape.” As if caused by her words, the bridge lights flickered uncertainly, then brightened again. “I think we can stabilize your systems, and hold them steady long enough to get out of the black hole.”

“You think! Long enough!” S’eth waved away her promises. “That is not good enough, Commander.”

“Okay. Then we can all stand around here glaring until the Demon swallows us whole.” It was a sobering thought. One which shut S’eth up for a moment, and allowed her to outline the basics of what they needed.

Stevens nodded at once. “You’re using the La Forge-Brahms matrix. I can handle that.” He retrieved his personal tools. Es’a directed one of his people to take Stevens below. Corsi so obviously wished to follow, but sent Vinx with them instead.

“It’s at least another hour’s work,” Sonya said. “Which means Fabian can do it in thirty minutes. Can we hold on that long?”

S’eth shook his head. “Not at this rate. We’ve blown three junction boxes trying to reinforce the anchor. It will fail at any moment.”

“Then we need to invent a new anchor. And we need to contact the da Vinci to update them on our situation.”

“It cannot be done,” S’eth told her, though he seemed more subdued than hostile this time.

Es’a scoffed. “Always ready to quit. Duck your head into your nest and hide from the universe.”

S’eth puffed out his neck muscles. “Our communications equipment is beyond salvage. We have even lost our main viewer. It is not possible.”

That worried Sonya. Her team could work miracles at times, but three impossible tasks in thirty minutes seemed beyond even her current best estimates. Just a little help would have been welcome.

“Gold to Gomez, come in.” Captain Gold’s voice, loud and insistent, spoke from her combadge.

Smiling with her first measure of relief since arriving on the station, Sonya held a hand up to her badge, tapped it to open a channel. “Gomez here, Captain. You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice. We have serious problems, please stand by for update.” Tapping the channel closed for a moment, she gave S’eth a heartening smile. “We’re the S.C.E.,” she reminded him, and herself as well. “Impossible just takes an extra ten minutes.”