Just in Time

"That's the last of the deuterium fuel." Shale remarked to Chu as they both heard the thrusters stutter and die. Now everything aboard the heavily damaged Hellcat was silent. They had however managed to stop all the broken consoles from 'sparking'. The only sounds left were those being made by the two occupants, the only light from the one working wrist beacon.

Suddenly the Hellcat shuddered.

"What was that ?" Chu enquired as the movement of the ship brought him back to full alert.

"Probably the influence of the black hole taking effect." Shale replied.

Chu rose from the floor where he had been sitting and looked out of the window.

"No it isn't." Chu remarked "Look."

Shale struggled with his injured arm to try and reach the window as well.

"It's the Leviathan." Shale stated. "We're saved."

"But why is it coming straight at us ?" Chu asked.

The large Akira class vessel was indeed approaching them head on, the large forward hanger bay doors open like a giant mouth, ready to devour the much smaller vessel.

"You're right." Shale remarked. "And their coming at us fast."

But there was nothing the two crew of the Hellcat could do but watch and wait.

The Leviathan got closer and closer, it's mouth wide open.

As they got closer, Chu and Shale could see right inside the 'belly' of the beast. Strung across the hanger were arresting nets, designed specifically to stop disabled shuttles. But they were designed to 'catch' shuttles and usually the ships were moving at relatively slow speeds.

The Hellcat was three times the size of a runabout and the Leviathan was approaching at almost half impulse.

"We'll not be stopped by the nets." Shale exclaimed "They're approaching too fast, we'll simple 'fly' straight through and out the rear of the hanger."

"They must have some idea of what they're doing ?" Chu replied.

"I suppose so." Shale said. "Hang on, this is going to be a rough landing."

The Hellcat entered the hanger bay and 'hit' the first set of nets. The vessel shook violently and broke through the webbing. The vessel continued on and hit the second set of nets. These too broke and the vessel continued on, breaking through the third set of webbing and heading straight for the rear hanger doors.

Suddenly the vessel was pulled violently backwards as if some great hand had grabbed the Hellcat by the tail. The vessel slowed right down and started to be pulled back into the centre of the hanger bay, eventually coming to rest on the solid deck.

Five minutes lapsed before they heard anything. The doors to the cockpit opened and in stepped Doctor Katts.

"Everyone all right ?" She asked.

"Shale's got a clean fracture to his left lower arm, we've both got burns and bruising, but we're alive." Chu remarked.

"Do you think you can walk ?" Katts asked Shale.

"I think so." Shale replied, shuffling towards to door.

Once out into the hanger bay, they both got their first look at the damage.

The Hellcat was a mess, one of the warp nacelles was missing and the other had a major hole in the side. All the ablative plating on the rear half of the hull had been 'burnt' off, revealing the blackened duranium hull plating underneath. The whole vessel was a blackened mass.

"This is going to take sometime to fix." Shale remarked.

The two runabouts that the Leviathan carried aboard slowly came to rest on the opposite side of the hanger.

"We'll get the Hellcat back in no time, but for now let's get you two to sickbay." Katts remarked.

Shale reluctantly was placed onto a stretcher and wheeled away, as Chu and the Doctor walked behind.

Chu hadn't realised until then that the Leviathan was still moving at the same pace.

"Why are we travelling so fast ?" Chu enquired.

"We've been having problems with the ship's systems, they appear to have gone haywire. At the moment we're trying to regain control of the auxiliary warp drive. Every time we attempt to bring it back online, we start travelling at warp four in a random direction. When we received your curtailed distress call, it took us over an hour just to manoeuvre the ship onto the right course." Katts answered. "Commander Devore will be able to tell you more than I can."

Two hours later the command crew was seated in the conference room. The warp drive was back under control and navigation had been restored. At the table was Commander Barker in the Captains' position, with Commander Devore to his right and Shale to his left, his arm now repaired and resting in a sling. Further down the table were various engineers and technicians.

"So what's the situation ?" Chu enquired.

All the engineers started talking at once.

"People, please let's not panic." Sierra stated.

Lieutenant Karrie stood up from her chair. With Taline and Tyra both with the Captain on his little retreat, she was acting chief engineer.

"Commander, we traced the fault to the computer system but we don't have a cause. Every time we trace the source of a malfunction, it seems to rectify it's self and the cause disappears. It's like there's something in the computer system, something that's always one step ahead of us." Karrie reported.

"Gremlins." Shale remarked.

Sierra laughed. "So you think we've got mythical creatures running around the ship causing problems." She remarked.

"Sound like that to me." Shale replied, upset by Sierra's reaction to his comment.

"I agree." Chu remarked. "There's obviously an intelligence at work here. Lieutenant is there any pattern to the malfunctions, are these 'gremlin's' moving through the ship in a straight line."

"I don't know." Karrie replied. "Most of the systems that have failed have been secondary or backups. The most serious was of course the warp drive and navigation, but they didn't exactly fail."

"Explain." Chu asked.

"Our course was laid into the navigational computers and the warp drive was brought online, there were no indications of any problems. It was only after we jumped to warp that the navigational computer was temporarily affected by a power surge in the ODN network. That's what sent us off course, we were unable to shutdown the impulse engines because one of the injectors had stuck open. Once we traced the problem and freed the injector, we regained control." Karrie reported.

"Check to see if there's a pattern to the malfunctions." Chu requested.

"I will Commander." Karrie replied.

"I think it's time we reported all this to the Captain." Sierra remarked.