The Arizona shuddered violently as it dropped out of warp two hours ahead of schedule. Cunha and Hernandez grabbed onto their seats in an effort to hold themselves steady despite the fact that the ship felt as though the field of gravity was twisting around them in a clockwise motion for the better part of a minute. Hernandez grabbed the control console and engaged several safety mechanisms in rapid succession. Cunha realized that the inertial dampeners must have been knocked out.

When the ship finally seemed to normalise, Cunha looked out the forward viewport to a breathtaking view. A vast field of pulverized rocks hung in space, trailing away from what was left of a fractured world. She couldn’t tell what the world might have looked like before it had been pulverized because the atmosphere had probably burned off during the collision. The center of the planet, now exposed, glowed a baleful yellowy-orange. Odds were that this hadn’t happened too long ago, but whether that had been days or years couldn’t be known without further study. She just hoped there hadn’t been anything living on that planet when disaster struck.

Her attention turned to the more practical matter of just where they were. This wasn’t supposed to be here, she thought. “What’s our status?” she shouted amidst the beeping and alarms coming from the consoles and other equipment aboard the runabout.

“Shields are down, warp drive is down, communications are down, and impulse is down,” Hernandez said. The pilot hit control after control, acknowledging the alerts and turning the alarms off one by one.

“So what works?”

“Environmental controls thankfully, the computer, the warp core, and maneuvering thrusters. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing this isn’t where we’re supposed to be.”

Cunha frowned. No There were two possibilities. Either the navigational system failed, or this partial planetoid had never been mapped. “I’m going to find out. Deactivating the prototype navigational system…” She cut off the power to the navigational system she had retrofitted. She flipped open a panel and began rearranging the isolinear chips she had just reconfigured earlier in the day. A moment later, she looked up to her primary console. “Rerouting power to the legacy system, and we’re…” She paused as her eyes widened as she looked over the readings.

“Yeah?” Hernandez asked.

“We’re about two light years off course,” She said as she slumped forward. Refitting this system should have been a simple matter of replicating the navigation system developed by Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, tying into like systems aboard this vessel, and turning it on. Nevertheless, the results were anything other than what was expected.

“Lieutenant, we have a bigger problem,” Hernandez said.

Cunha looked out the viewscreen and saw nothing new amiss. “What’s that?”

“The gravity of that fractured planetoid is pulling us in, and maneuvering thrusters aren’t strong enough to break away.”

Cunha’s heart began pounding. There were only two possible outcomes to this situation. Either they got the impulse drive back online before the collision, or they were going to smash into what was left of that planet. If they managed to soft-land on the portion that was mostly rock, their odds of survival were lower than she felt comfortable with, but not abysmal. If they hit the portion that was molten, their odds of survival were less than zero. “How much time do we have?”

“Not nearly enough… maybe a couple hours, if our sensors are working properly.”

Cunha could feel her heart pounding in her chest. The last time she’d felt panicked like this had been on Gour II, but that time she had Bashir and Turner present, both much more experienced officers than she was in crisis situations. This time Hernandez would be looking to her, even though odds were that he had much more practical experience aboard a starship than she did. She knew she needed to remain calm and project an air of confidence, even if it was entirely false. “I’m assuming the replicators are still online, right?”

“I can test them out, but they aren’t reading on the damage report,” Hernandez replied.

“Good, then we have a chance. I’m going to open up the drive compartment and find the damage. If we’re lucky, we just need to reconnect it to the reactor, or maybe the computer. If we’re not so lucky, we might have to replicate some components and get it working. In either case, this is a solvable problem.”

“That’s a relief,” Hernandez said with a smile. Cunha couldn’t help but feel that he was being facetious. Could it be that he was already completely confident in their ability to handle the situation? Her practical experience amounted to what she had learned at Starfleet Academy, and while it focused on competency and remaining optimistic, that didn’t mean that Starfleet didn’t lose ships of all sizes for a multitude of reasons.

“I want you to do me a favor,” she said quickly. “Unless I need something, stay at the controls and tell me if the status changes.”

“Understood,” Hernandez said.

“Ensign…?”

“Yes?” Hernandez replied.

“Have you ever faced a situation like this before?”

“A few times… similar circumstances… Why?”

“Because you seem entirely too calm for the situation,” she blurted out. So much for maintaining an air of confidence, she thought.

“Our situation hasn’t reached a level of crisis,” Hernandez replied calmly.

“How can you say that?” Cunha asked.

Hernandez shrugged. “Right now we’re on a bad trajectory, but we have time to get this bucket going again. You’re the Horizon’s chief engineer. If you can’t do it, I don’t know who could.”

“And if the answer is that nobody could, given what’s left of the ship? This doesn’t make you nervous?”

“Lieutenant, we’re in deep space and we’re far from home. I’ve served aboard starships long enough to know that safety out here is an illusion. Any starship is one mishap away from destruction, and that’s assuming that we don’t catch some alien disease, get our atoms scrambled in a freak transporter accident, or get incinerated in a completely unnecessary space battle. There’s always the risk that we won’t come back,” Hernandez said.

“So how do you deal with it?” Cunha asked.

Hernandez smiled roguishly. “Nothing has killed me yet so I keep doing what I do. It’s worked so far.”

Arrogant, she thought. “Tell me, are all pilots like you?”

Hernandez laughed, which helped set her at ease. “You mean carefree yet competent? I think it’s in the job requirements.” There was something about his company that she was finding enjoyable and engaging. There was a gravity about his personality that she couldn’t deny, which was something she’d rarely encountered in her peers at the Utopia Planitia shipyards.

“Well good. Keep reminding me that we’re going to get out of this,” she said. “Now, let’s see if we can get the impulse drive online.”

She walked toward the aft and into the Command Sled portion of the ship. She turned a handle in an effort to access the impulse drive. The handles turned, but the access panel didn’t open. It should have released slowly and easily, but instead, it refused to budge. She put her strength into it, but found that it wasn’t any more willing to move. “The access panel must have buckled. Give me a hand,” she said.

Hernandez moved to the panel. “Maybe if you try to open it again, I can get my fingers around a corner,” he said.

“I’ll try,” Cunha said. She turned the handles again and tried to force the panel open. The metal pulled apart slightly and he put his fingers inside and began to pull in the same direction as Cunha. She kept pressure on it while he worked his fingers inside so he could offer more assistance.

That was when her grip failed and the access panel slammed closed again. Hernandez began to howl in pain, his fingers clearly crushed by the pieces of the panel slamming back together.

“Sorry!” Cunha yelled as she grabbed the handles with renewed strength and began pulling on the hatch again. A moment later Hernandez slipped his fingers out, but she could see the bone and muscle where the skin that had been sliced away. If it had cut any deeper, his fingers would have been cut clean off.

She looked to Hernandez’s face and saw that it was already pale, a sure sign he was going into shock. She led him to a seat at the table. The blood was beginning to flood the wound. She looked back to him. “I… I don’t know what to do.”

She could tell Hernandez was fighting through the pain and the shock. “Go under the command consoles… find the medkit.”

Cunha fought off her urge to freeze under the pressure and ran to the fore of the ship, then ducked under the console. There was a white rectangular box there, which she’d looked right at several times when installing the navigational system. She unhooked it and brought it back to Hernandez.

“Load a dose of anesthetic into the spray applicator… then release it above my jugular.”

Cunha fumbled with the various vials, finally coming up with one containing a clear liquid. She loaded it into the hypospray injector, then released it as near his jugular as she could.

A moment later, Hernandez appeared a bit more relaxed. “Alright, now use the dermal regenerator on my fingers.”

Cunha grabbed the device and activated it. She brought it close to his left hand, then paused. “I’ve never had to use one of these before,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. Just turn it on and move it over my hand. It will be able to detect what it needs to do.”

Cunha nodded and brought the device over his damaged hand. On the first pass she could see the severed meat begin moving back together. A couple more passes and the bleeding had stopped and the muscles were knitting back together.

“I suggest we use the plasma torch next time we try to open that thing,” Hernandez said with a wry smile.

“Yeah,” Cunha said. She wondered briefly how it was possible that she outranked him.

* * *

Erik Pressman took the lead, having committed the path from the beam-down site to the prison to memory prior to their deployment. He could have had them beam directly into their destination, but doing so would have put the access protocols they’d acquired to the test, and he wasn’t confident enough in them to risk it. Instead, he walked them in through a rocky path from the vacant shuttle landing pad outside the gates. This would be considered irregular, but he had a plan for that. The fact was that most people tried to break out of a prison, not into one.

They walked a narrow path along a rocky ridge, and they could see the lights from the facility below. It was night, and stars shone clearly in the sky above. Pressman and Bashir were equipped with lights that would help them avoid falling off the cliffside to their deaths. Turner and Ro each wore authentic looking wrist restraints behind their backs, though they were designed to be unlocked with a quick wrist movement. The entire team carried phasers under their clothing, which were hidden from sensors with small bioelectric fields.

They turned a corner in the trail at which point it began sloping steeply downward. From behind, Pressman heard a small pile of rocks kicked over the edge and slide down the cliffside. He looked back to see Turner’s lead foot dangling over the edge. Bashir lurched forward, grabbed her by the waist, and pulled her back before she could plummet.

She inhaled sharply and looked at the doctor. “Thanks,” she breathed.

“Don’t mention it,” Bashir said quietly.

“We all have Starfleet training,” Ro said testily. “We should be able to walk a path without broadcasting our position to the enemy.”

“Sorry, my foot slipped,” Turner said.

“Can we all just focus on getting down to the prison gate?” Pressman asked.

“Yes sir,” Ro replied. Pressman wasn’t certain if the two Horizon crew members remained silent as a means of quietly acknowledging his order, or to signal their contempt. In either case, he remained silent, letting the subject drop. He was accustomed to the distaste from Starfleet officers simply because Section 31 existed… And he was even more accustomed to it from Starfleet officers who recognized him and knew why he was forced out of the service seven years ago.

Moments later, they found themselves standing in front of the prison’s gate. They could see a razor wire-topped fence surrounding the installation, though Pressman knew that it was only used as a backup means of keeping prisoners from escaping if the power failed. Approximately a meter out from the fence was a shield generator that would deliver a shock so powerful if touched that it would send most beings into cardio failure. In front of them was the gatehouse, and they were not only already aware of their presence, but had their spotlights trained on them from twenty meters out.

“Stop where you are and state your business!” came an amplified voice from within.

“I’m Suhed Bitt,” Pressman said, projecting his voice as much as possible to be heard. “I’m transferring two prisoners from the Agiadon brig.”

“Interrogator, we’re sorry. We weren’t expecting you.” the voice replied.

“Well now you are. I suggest you open the gate and let me in before I decide to launch an investigation into the prison’s efficiency,” Pressman said. He knew that things weren’t the same in Cardassian controlled worlds since the end of the Dominion War, but the threat of an efficiency inspection from a superior should still be enough to frighten them into compliance.

“Absolutely!” said a guard. A moment later he saw the static effect as the force field directly to the right of the gatehouse dissipated. Pressman wasted no time leading his three companions into the facility.

As they left the gate behind, the main facility rose up ominously before them. A building a dozen stories high with a trapezoid base was topped by a circular shaped main office that overlooked the entire grounds.

“It looks like they bought your story,” Bashir said quietly.

“They should,” Pressman said. “The real Suhed Bitt outranks everyone at this facility, as well as all but two officials on this entire world.”

“How do you know they won’t get on the subspace comm and verify that it’s you?” Bashir asked.

“They’ll probably try,” Pressman replied. “But they won’t get very far. The real Interrogator is currently stranded in deep space between systems on a ship with a disabled hyperdrive and no comms. It’s going to take them at least a week to restore their comm system so others can mount a rescue. By then, we’ll be long gone.”

“How do you know all this?” Turner asked.

“Because I sabotaged their ship,” Ro replied coolly. “We ran a long range scan aboard the Horizon and confirmed that they’re dead in space before boarding the probe.”

They covered the distance to the prison facility quickly and heavy the main doors unlocked and rotated upward as they approached.

A Cardassian guard stood inside. “Do you have a destination for these two?” he asked.

“Nothing but the finest. They get a week of solitary confinement before being allowed to join the other laborers,” Pressman said. It might have sounded harsh, even for Cardassians, but the solitary cells were located on the tenth floor, which was one hallway down from where Riker was supposed to be.

The guard nodded. “Very well. Would you like an escort?”

“Not necessary. These two know better than to try anything stupid,” Pressman said with a meaningful gaze at Turner and Ro. Both women took his cue and lowered their gazes.

“The main elevator is just down the corridor. I assume you have the passcode to unlock the cell doors?”

“I do,” Pressman said as he began walking in the direction the guard had pointed. In truth, he didn’t have the passcodes to open the doors, but he did have the next best thing tucked next to his phaser—a tricorder loaded with a program that had been proven to make short work of Cardassian security protocols. If that didn’t work, he had a golf-ball sized device with just a few molecules of antimatter, which was more than enough to blow a hole in the wall large enough to gain access to the cell. Of course, using that would assuredly set off dozens of alarms, so he hoped he wouldn’t have to resort to it.

They stepped into the lift and Pressman said, “Floor ten.” The lift began to move, and the doors opened up to a hallway that was empty, save for the force fields blocking access to all the cells he passed, each containing two or more inmates. Most of them were sleeping at this hour. The smell of sweat, blood, and dirt hung in the air. Most of these people were forced to work the dilithium mines, and were probably lucky if they were afforded one shower in a month.

He turned a corner, at which point he arrived at the cell he’d spent so much time and effort preparing for. Two men were lying on cots within, with thin blankets pulled over their sleeping forms.

Pressman pulled the tricorder from the hidden pouch under his shirt in the small of his back and passed it in front of the access panel controlling the force field. The device automatically connected to the computer system, at which point Pressman used it to access the system. Once he located the control for the force field, he deployed the program that had been designed to override Cardassian security codes.

As the device worked, he saw one of the figures move under the sheet in the cell. He remained still, but that wasn’t enough to stop a bearded figure from sitting up in his cot within. “Who’s out there?”

Pressman remained silent. He’d be lucky if Riker recognized his voice, and if he did, there was a good chance he’d be confused by his Cardassian appearance.

“I know you’re not a guard,” Riker said. “If you were, you’d have that force field down already.”

Pressman sighed. The tricorder still didn’t have access to the force field controls, and Riker was making noise, which could call attention to them and their activities. He decided that honesty would be the best way to handle this situation. “Erik Pressman. I’m here to get you out of here.”

“Pressman?” Riker said in confusion. “Captain? Wait, Admiral... no. Why do you look like a Cardassian?”

“I can explain everything later,” Pressman said. “In the meantime, I’m waiting for this thing to open up your cell.”

“You’re going to be waiting a while,” Riker said. “The Cardassians just upgraded their security measures a month ago.”

Pressman’s eyes widened in surprise. In all likelihood, the program on his tricorder wouldn’t just fail to lower the force field, but would probably also trip every alarm in the system. He hit a button and powered it down. “Damn. I really didn’t want to have to blow a hole in the wall.”

“You don’t need to,” Riker said.

“I don’t follow.”

“I already have the access code,” Riker said. “Input four, seven, two, omega, five, alpha.”

Pressman did as instructed and the force field dissipated. He looked at Riker, whose hair and beard had grown full, long, and unkempt. He barely resembled the young officer Pressman had known so many years ago. “I’m impressed. How did you manage to get that code?”

Riker shrugged. “You spend enough time in a place and eventually you learn their best kept secrets. I’ve been moving around freely at night for the better part of a year.”

“That’s impressive,” Pressman said, “But we have to get out of here. I’m worried they’re already on to us.”

“I can’t do that,” Riker said.

A wave of incredulity passed through Pressman as he looked at the man he’d come here for. Did he not want his freedom like any other normal person? “Do you understand what I’ve had to do to get here? The hours I’ve put in? The arrangements we made? You’re not going to get another chance like this.”

“This isn’t the time for bullheadedness… even if you can’t help it,” Ro said.

“Cap… Admiral…” Riker sighed. “Erik. I can fully appreciate what you’ve done to get me out of here, but I’m locked up here with several members of the Maquis. I don’t go unless they do.”

* * *

Roert Anrad’s comm panel chirped in his room. His eyelids parted a sliver and he looked around. The room was still dark. It was still the middle of the night, and they were disturbing his sleep—something all of his subordinates at the prison had been instructed not to do except in the case of an immediate emergency. In the twelve years he had held this post, it had happened three times.

He rose to his feet as the comm system chimed again. “I’m coming,” he said dourly. “Computer… lights.”

His room was immediately bathed in soft illumination, allowing him to see well enough to find his way to the comm unit without tripping over his furnishings. He stumbled there wearily, then faced the holo-camera. “This is Anrad. This had better be good.”

“My apologies, Overseer,” said a guard whose face he recognized but whose name he didn’t remember. “We may have a situation.”

“What do you mean ‘may?’”

“Interrogator Suhed Bitt arrived with two prisoners who were identified as former members of the Maquis. A short time later, a security system detected an outdated Federation program trying to hack the door to one of the cells.”

“Which cell?”

“Tenth floor, block forty-seven-B.”

Anrad frowned. He was familiar with that cell number for some reason. Who was in that one…? “Thomas Riker!”