Over Reacting

Shaka suddenly leaned back into her seat, which in turn rolled into the back wall. "What the" Shaka and the Bridge crew watched in terror as the stars that streaked past them, stretched further and further until the individual colours of the spectrum were visible. It would have been considerably more beautiful if under controlled circumstances.

"Helm, what's going on?" Shaka demanded, rolling her seat forward.

"I'm not sure we're going past warp twenty!" Mr. Ambrose said nervously.

"We're going to burn out the whole damn slipstream drive if we keep up this pace. Computer, initiate auto-shutdown of the slipstream drive, authorization Shaka"

"Lieutenant JG Shaka. How nice to meet you," an unfamiliar voice said.

"Huh?" Shaka asked, stunned. She looked to the centre of the Bridge, where she was just working on the holo-communicator. "I've seized control of the slipstream drive," the creature said.

"I'm Xavier Holman." Shaka had no idea what the hell was going on or why, and she didn't really care. At times like these, she didn't think. She reacted. "Computer, initiate automatic shutdown of the slipstream drive, authorization Shaka"

"Don't bother." Holman said. "If it has to do with the slipstream drive, it doesn't work." Holman's image suddenly appeared on one of Shaka's monitors. "I'm everywhere." He said in a haunting voice. Suddenly, all of the buttons at the console disappeared.

"We'll see about that." She said, standing up. She walked to the turbolift determined to undermine this creature. *I'll just have to cut it off at the source,* she thought. When she tried to step into the open turbolift, she was thrown backward by a force field. She glared at the creature, who only glared back smugly. She hit her communicator; it didn't respond.

"Fine, you win this battle," she said, taking a seat at the science console. The creature looked at her, as though he was amused by her actions. Shaka frowned and looked away. *But not the war.* When she looked down, she began working casually, hoping Holman's guard was down. As soon as she pressed a sequence of buttons, a bolt of electricity jumped from the console to Shaka's chest; once again, she was thrown back. This time, she didn't get up.

"What the hell did you do that for?!" Devore shouted.

"She was trying to take the main deflector dish off-line; without it, the ship won't synchronise with the subspace slipstream. The ship would coast to a stop in normal space and the slipstream would fly off without us," Holman said, making hand gestures to demonstrate as he explained. "Clever, I'll give her that. She didn't quite realise that I've spent a lot of time researching this topic; I'm her equal, if not superior, in this field."

"I'm sure she'd be happy to hear you say that," Hansen muttered. He went to Shaka and put a finger to her neck. He put his ear to her mouth. He felt a faint pulse and heard some light breathing. "She's alive."