Five seconds after the small but powerful engines were pushed into "warp burst" mode, the vessel's quantum capacitors were fully drained, and in a spectacular radial blast of transwarp particles, the Manticore plunged back into normal space.
A sharp intake of breath and a wheezing coughing fit came from the back seat of the small cockpit, along with a few muttered and half choked-off profanities. From her place in the forward position, Kim just smiled. She'd had the same reaction the first time she experienced the warp burst maneuver.
"You okay back there?" she asked with a wry smile.
"What a rush!" said a recovering Thomas Riker. "Back in my day, we risked a warp core breach if we pushed our engines up to warp nine. We just did better than warp thirty!"
"Yeah. Starfleet's made a lot of progress in the last ten years," said Kim appreciatively, patting the console in front of her affectionately.
Now that the immediate excitement was over, Riker turned once again serious. He asked, "Do you think the Arizona ID'd us back there?"
"Well, we had to drop our refractive shields right before we went into warp burst, so I'm sure they know it was the Manticore. But I doubt they had time to scan your life signs before we burst, especially since they were running in gray mode."
"Will they come after us?"
"No way," said Kim confidently, partly to reassure her passenger; partly to reassure herself. "Their mission to G'Kar is too important to delay while they chase after us, and by the time their mission is over I'll be back at SB901."
"And the first thing your captain will do is clap you in irons," said Riker. Kim suddenly felt his hand on her shoulder, and felt an involuntary thrill. Riker said gently, "I appreciate your helping me like this. You're putting your career on the line for a total stranger."
Kim tried to shrug it off. "It's no big deal," she said as nonchalantly as she could.
She felt Riker's hand leave her shoulder and heard him settle back in his seat again. He said in a lighter tone, "So, just why are you throwing away a promising career to help a perfect stranger?"
"Uh...." Kim suddenly had no words. Riker's question had resurrected painful memories of the last few days -- the conspiracy, a slap, angry words, then running, running through seeming miles of corridors until she found this man....
"Let me guess," Riker was saying, still jovial, scratching his goatee in mock concentration. "Boyfriend troubles," he joked.
Kim gasped involuntarily. His guess had hit the nail right on the head. Suddenly angry at Riker for being so smug, but mostly angry at herself for letting her emotions completely take over her life and lead her into this impossible situation -- she was beginning to realize that now -- she yelled, "Just shut up, Tom! You don't know anything!"
Taken aback by the sudden unexpected outburst, he just said, "Okay, okay. Calm down, Lieutenant."
Kim sniffed, and fixed her attention on the flight controls.
The awkward silence that followed stretched into minutes, broken only by the irregular beeps and hums from the computer. Kim considered breaking the silence and apologizing to Tom for yelling, but just as she was about to open her mouth, his low voice cut her off.
"I'm sorry for getting you into this, Kim," Riker said. "I could tell right from when I met you that there was something wrong. I should've stayed hidden, but I didn't. I took advantage of your vulnerable condition and convinced you to go AWOL. And now you're going to be in more trouble than you've ever been in before, and all because you just wanted to do what was right -- to help a person in need...."
"Kinda like what you did at Orias," she replied. "You did what you thought was right."
"Well...," he began, then decided to divert the conversation from that topic. "If you want, I'll come back with you to your station," he offered. "I'll tell them I forced you into all this. You'll be off the hook."
"Absolutely not!" said Kim firmly. "I'll drop you off, then I'll go back and face the music." After a second's pause, she added, "And I'll try to patch things up with Garek...."
"All right --" began Riker, but his next statement was chopped off by the wail of the fighter's red alert siren.
Kim snapped into action, making full mental connection with her neuro-helmet and her Banshee's sensors. "Damn!" she hissed between clenched teeth.
"What is it?" demanded Riker from the back seat.
"I was so busy talking that I wasn't paying attention to flying," she said roughly. "We've been spotted. Hang on!"
Riker gripped the sides of his seat and hung on as Kim sent the nimble Banshee into a series of wild evasive gyrations. Outside the cockpit, Riker could see explosions begin to blossom all around them as their adversary tried to zero in on its elusive target.
"Why don't we just go to warp burst again and outrun them?" he shouted above the whine of the straining impulse engines.
"Warp engines are off-line for another eight minutes until the quantum capacitors recharge. The last burst drained them," yelled Kim back. The blast from a particularly close miss rocked the plane, and Kim yanked the stick hard to the left in response. "Damn Jem'Hadar," she cursed. "Where did they come from anyway? There's no bases around here."
"They must have a hidden base here somewhere," concluded Riker from the rear of the cockpit. "They're probably planning an ambush for the Arizona when she passes by here."
Kim picked up where Riker left off. "And we accidentally sprung the trap before they were totally ready because we burst ahead of the Arizona."
"We have to go back and warn them," concluded Riker.
"Right," said Kim. "But first we have to evade these fighters for another seven minutes until the warp engines come back on."
"Can you do it?"
"Just watch me," said Kim, but her shaky voice belied her confident words. "Now shut up and let me do my job."
Riker renewed his grip on the seat and clamped his mouth shut. He wished he had something to do instead of just sit here like a piece of inanimate cargo, but their fate was totally in Lieutenant Tycho's hands.
Under Kim's skillful direction, the sleek Banshee fighter danced a deadly waltz with its opponents, three in all. Spheres of rapidly expanding plasma and brilliant lances of coherent energy filled the night as the battle raged. At one point, a pair of crackling blue fireballs from the Banshee connected with the exposed underside of one of the Jem'Hadar "battle bugs", cracking its shell wide open and spilling its contents into the void. Seconds later, the wreck was engulfed by a massive fireball of its own, vaporizing what was left. The two remaining battle bugs however, seemed to harden their resolve and attacked with more ferocity than ever.
"We're not going to make it!" shouted Kim over her shoulder to her charge. Another violent explosion heaved the cockpit upward. Outside, the Banshee's shields sputtered pathetically under the continuous assault. Smelling blood, the Jem'Hadar moved in for the kill.
"I'm going to have to ditch us somewhere! Program the automatic distress buoy to transmit the record of this battle. Hopefully, the Arizona will get it in time to avoid the Jem'Hadar ambush no matter what happens to us!"
Glad to finally have something to do, Riker began feeding the instructions into the Banshee's computer. A few seconds later, he shouted, "Done!"
Kim pushed the throttle full open and aimed her ship directly at a small planetoid about fifty-thousand miles distant. "Time to play 'follow the leader', boys," she muttered at the closing Jem'Hadar ships.
They took the bait. In a line, the three ships, one Banshee and two battle bugs, hurled themselves at the face of the planet. As the surface drew nearer, the Banshee made contact with the outer layers of the atmosphere. Shields sputtered brightly, then flashed out, and the nose of the Banshee began to glow dully orange. The scream of the racing atmosphere hurt their ears, but Kim didn't let up.
Behind the fleeing Banshee, the Jem'Hadar battle bugs were having a worse time of it. Not designed for atmospheric flight, their shields had also failed and their outer hulls were already glowing white hot. But so intent were they to destroy their foe that they gave no heed to the danger they were in.
Without warning, the lead ship began buckling. The engine pylons bent unnaturally, then gave way altogether. A blinding explosion followed moments thereafter.
Finally, the remaining battle bug decided it had had enough, but it was too late. It tried to pull up, but its engines were no match against atmospheric drag and the gravity of the planetoid, and the last Jem'Hadar ship met the same fate as the other.
Elated, Kim whooped a triumphant battle cry. "Whoo-Hooo!" but her exhilaration quickly turned to near-panic when she tried to pull out of her suicide dive. The controls fought her. "The atmospheric friction's melted the maneuvering thrusters!" she hollered back to her passenger. "I'm gonna have to use just the impulse engines! Hang on to your hat!" She couldn't tell if Riker heard her over the scream of the wind outside.
The surface of the planetoid was coming up fast. Kim pulled on her stick as hard as she could, trying to level out their flight. Otherwise, any search party would have to look for their pieces with a microscope. Ever so slowly, the Banshee's nose pulled up. Their flight leveled out, but they were still traveling at an impossible speed.
Suddenly, from beneath the horizon in front of them, a long range of tall mountains rose. They were directly in their flight path, and there was no way she'd be able to pull up in time to avoid them. At their speed they'd impact in mere seconds. There was only one thing to do.
"Punch out!" she yelled. Reaching back behind her head with both hands to the twin ejection handles, she braced herself and pulled as hard as she could.
Explosive bolts blasted away key points holding the Banshee's cockpit to the rest of the plane and small hydrazine thrusters boosted the entire cockpit upward and away from the stricken fighter. As the cockpit tumbled none-too-gently earthward. Kim watched stone-faced as her plane plowed into the mountainside at better than Mach 20.
Seconds later, the ground rushed up to connect with the falling cockpit. The hydrazine thrusters cushioned the landing as much as possible, but their initial speed had been so high that the touchdown was extremely rough.
Cockpit canopy shattered, metal shrieked and tore, and human occupants were thrown around inside like a couple of beans in a maraca at a Mariachi festival. Hopefully, the emergency beacon will survive and transmit our warning to the Arizona, thought Kim.
Her last thoughts were of how glad she'd be to get back to the station and see Garek again.