Five slivers of silver sped through the darkness of space toward their destination - a wing of four Jem'Hadar attack craft rapidly approaching Supply Base 901. Their engine ports glowed hotly with expelled plasma and their burnished hulls dully reflected the orange and yellow fires of the Briar Patch Nebula, revealing their existence to any watching eyes.
But there were no seeking eyes here in the deepness of space to mark their passage, and even the probing sensors beams sweeping ahead of the Jem'Hadar ships were cunningly deflected and redirected away rendering the five slivers effectively invisible.
A tight-beam tachyon transmission carried the voice of Lee Carter, pilot of the lead silver sliver to the rest of her team: "Sam, Max, Jo, Kimmie. Close in your formation and cut warp engines. We'll proceed on thrusters to that small asteroid field and wait there until the enemy ships pass, then come up on them from behind. Make sure your shields are tuned to maximum refraction."
A chorus of "Aye's" answered her instructions and she settled deeper into her couch to wait. The minutes ticked by slowly as she busied herself with her plane's passive sensor systems, watching for any sign that the Jem'Hadar had spotted them, but they appeared to remain ignorant of the ambush that lurked in their path.
Meanwhile, in the number three plane, Sam was contending with another problem. She'd removed her neuro-helmet and was shaking her head. Freed from the confines of the headgear, her long blond hair formed a golden nimbus around her head in the zero-g environment. She put a hand to her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut, determined to fight off the sudden feelings of vertigo and disorientation she was having.
As soon as the helmet came off, the discomfort diminished. She opened her eyes – the cockpit controls were no longer spinning in her vision – and breathed a sigh of relief.
She'd never had a reaction like that before. After a few more seconds of making sure the dizziness had truly gone, she decided to chalk it up to stress and fatigue – no need to alert the Boss at this point. She pulled her helmet back on, doing her best to stuff her hair back underneath, and returned to monitoring her instruments. The dizziness didn't return, and the entire episode was quickly forgotten.
Fifteen minutes later, the four Jem'Hadar attack ships passed within twenty-thousand miles of the Banshees' hiding place, never suspecting what lay in wait behind the rocks of the asteroid field. Carter flashed the "attack" command to her wingmates, and the five fighters shot forth under maximum acceleration.
At that speed, the distance to the enemy vessels was crossed in mere seconds, and the first volleys of phaser fire from the Banshees raked their targets before the crews of the attack ships knew what was happening. By the time the Jem'Hadar managed to erect their defenses, the Banshees had completed their first pass and were already banking around to come at them again. Their wingtips glowed brightly, then discharged crackling spheres of quantum energy at the Jem'Hadar, and when they passed the attack ships for the second time, only two enemy craft remained. The other two had been reduced to quickly expanding clouds of subatomic particles.
In the cockpit of the number three fighter however, Sam wasn't doing so well. She was fighting her controls and her vision unfocused for seconds at a time. The connection between her and her plane seemed to be breaking down, and she suspected a fault in her neuro-helmet was to blame for both that and the bouts of disorientation she'd started feeling again.
Ahead of her, Max's plane blurred crazily in and out of focus. It was all she could do to keep from crashing her own fighter into it from behind. The dizziness was becoming more severe by the second; she suddenly realized she might be in more trouble than she could handle. The cosmos around her spun wildly, and she was quickly overcome by nausea. Her vision blurred and dimmed, the edges closing in until all she could perceive was a vague blob of light directly ahead.
With the last of her waning strength, Sam tried to raise her arm to tug the neuro-helmet from her head but couldn't. Even though there was no gravity, her arm suddenly weighed several tons. Exhausted, she gave up. Her arms floated lifeless before her, her eyes closed, and her head lolled back against the cushions of the pilot's seat, still encased by the neuro-helmet.
In the number two Banshee, collision alarms suddenly sounded. Not knowing why, but always trusting in her instincts, Max banked her craft hard to the right. Startled, she exclaimed, "What the...!" as she stabbed the cutoff switch that killed the noisy alarm. Out the left of her cockpit window, she saw Sam's Banshee rocket by, missing her own fighter by only a few feet. The only thing that saved them both was her mysterious esper ability.
She snapped the toggle that connected her comm circuit to Sam's and shouted angrily, "Are you nuts, Sam?!? You almost got us both killed!" But there was no reply from Sam's fighter. Immediately worried, Max switched over to the Banshees' common frequency and alerted Lee of the situation. "Looks like Sam's in some kind of trouble. Her plane is out of control and she's not answering my hails."
Jo in Banshee 4 broke in on the conversation at this point. "Commander! One of the Jem'Hadar attack ships is vectoring straight for Sam!"
Carter didn't hesitate for a second. Immediately she began snapping orders. "Max. Lock a tractor on Sam's plane. See if you can divert her from the enemy. The rest of us will take out that attack ship."
By the time Lee finished barking orders, Max's plane was already racing to catch up with Sam's stricken fighter. Jo and Kimmie formed up on Lee's wing and streaked in a different direction toward the threatening Jem'Hadar ship.
Purple beams of anti-protons sprayed from the nose of the attack ship, but splashed ineffectually against the Banshees' metaphasic shields. The Banshee fighters proved to be extremely efficient against old Dominion technology, and quickly dispatched their target. The fourth Jem'Hadar, deciding to exercise the better part of valor, turned sharply and retreated back the way it had come at the top speed it's damaged engines could manage. Lee decided to let it go.
Meanwhile, Max had succeeded to snare Sam's ship in her tractor beam. She's then transmitted its Prefix Code to shut down its engines. Still, all attempts at communication had proved ineffective. She could see Sam's limp form in the cockpit, her head drooping to one side, leaning against the transparent canopy. As far as she could tell, there was no damage to Sam's craft, and no anomalous sensor readings. Any explanations as to what had happened would have to wait until they got back to the station.
So, with Carter in the lead, Max towing Sam's plane, and Jo and Kimmie taking up protective flanking position on either side, the five Banshees returned home at top speed.
By the time the Banshees arrived back in their hangar deep in the bowels of Pylon 3, Sam had awakened and regained most of her senses. The five women were standing now in the middle of the flight deck – Sam still a little wobbly – and everyone was talking at once. Lee was trying to get everybody to shut up, but was being less than totally successful. Finally Max put her fingers to her mouth and let out a shrill whistle. That got everyone's attention.
"You should have reported it, Sam," said Carter, clearly not at all pleased.
"At first it was no big deal," said Sam, trying to defend her actions, although she knew Carter was absolutely right. She was looking at the floor, shuffling her feet uncomfortably. Her natural timidity coupled with the fact that she knew she'd made a bad mistake was taking its toll. "I didn't want to bother you right before the battle with my little nausea, because that's all I thought it was at first. Then, when it hit the second time, it knocked me out before I could call for help."
"Next time, bother me," snapped Carter. "You almost got yourself and Max killed out there!"
Sam snapped to attention and answered as crisply as she could muster, "Yes Ma'am!" but her acknowledgment was definitely still more sullen than crisp.
Carter felt bad about dressing down her teammate like this, especially after what she'd been through, but it had to be done. If they were going to continue to fly successful missions together, they had to work as a team, and that meant communication between them. No matter how trivial it seemed. She let the expression on her face soften a little and placed her hand on Sam's shoulder. "Why don't you go to the infirmary and have the doc check you out."
Sam nodded and turned to leave, but a clattering noise made her spin around again.
Kimmie was standing a little ways apart from the rest of them, wiping her hands on her flight suit pants, an expression of disgust on her normally perky face. She dropped Sam's neuro-helmet that she'd been examining; that's what the noise had been.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Max.
Kim turned to face her comrades. The expression of disgust on her face had now been joined by one of puzzlement. She sputtered for a few moments, trying to put into coherent words what she'd discovered. Finally, she clamped her mouth shut, squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated for a few seconds. She summoned the professional engineer within her and proceeded to explain in a rational voice.
"I was going to check out Sam's helmet for malfunctions. After all, she explained that the first time, the dizziness had gone away after she removed the helmet. I thought maybe she was experiencing some kind of neural recursive feedback loop between her cybernetic implants and the neuro-helmet. This is new technology, after all...."
"Get to the point, Kimmie. If there is one," grumbled Max impatiently.
"Right. Well, look what I found...." She bent down and gingerly picked up the fallen neuro-helmet again, careful to handle it as little as possible. The others, including Sam, gather round to watch. Kim tipped the helmet over, and out from the inside oozed a glop of green goo. It splogged onto the deck with a squishy sound, then just sat there, jiggling.
"Ugh," said Jo, taking a step backward and holding her nose. "I thought we'd seen the last of the Smelly Jelly!"
"Wait a second," said Max. She too had taken a step away from the odious blob on the floor. She turned to face Sam. "How could you not know that there was Smelly Jelly in your helmet when you put it on?"
"Are you kidding? With this nose?" Sam was referring to the hyper-sensitive cybernetic implants that replaced her normal olfactory sense. "Believe me, there was no Smelly Jelly near me before we launched on the mission."
"Then how did it get there," wondered Lee out loud. "And why?"