Jo Schmidt lay in her berth aboard the Longbow staring at the underside of the bunk above her and listening to Alex Dalton snore softly, dreaming no doubt about skipping through fields of flowers hand-in-hand with her new boyfriend Dexter Gray. The little twerp.
Twice now the young copilot and sensor specialist of the Longbow had beaten her to crucial discoveries about the region of space they were currently in: first, their location in the Great Void 500 million parsecs from home; and second, the nature of the sub-stellar body just a few hundred-thousand miles ahead. Discoveries she should have made herself, and now she felt herself feeling jealously territorial and useless at the same time.
She automatically sought to rationalize her failure in a vain attempt to assuage her feelings of inadequacy. It wasn't her fault, she told herself. She was too busy worrying about the Breen probe ship to even begin to think about Great Voids or black dwarf stars. Of course Dexter made the crucial discoveries first; he was safely ensconced inside the Cat's Eye, protected by shields and phaser cannons and his boss, Matthew Cross, with nothing but time on his hands.
Too agitated to sleep, Jo tossed fitfully under her covers, accidentally banging her leg against the wall of the tiny stateroom making a loud noise, and bit back a colorful metaphor. Above her, the steady rhythm of Alex's snoring was briefly interrupted, but the young woman quickly readjusted her position and a few heartbeats later was blissfully snoring again. Jo settled herself and resumed her self-torment.
No, she wouldn't let herself become bitter. Dexter deserved all the credit for his discoveries. Despite his tender age and lack of experience, the young man possessed a keen mind and sharp eye. It was good that he had the chance to prove his worth to the squad in such a concrete way. She was happy for him. Now that that was settled, she deliberately set her train of thought on a new track before she changed her mind again.
The black dwarf. Jo thought back to the events of that afternoon after Dexter's recognition of their location in the Great Void. Following the briefing aboard the Longbow, the Banshees had returned to their starfighters and proceeded towards the sub-stellar mass Jo had discovered...
"One hundred million miles to target," reported Jo through the comm channel.
"I still can't see anything," said Max. "You sure we're going in the right direction, Schmidt?"
"Positive, though I can't understand it either. Judging by the mass readings, it's either a small brown dwarf star or a large class-U gas ultragiant planet. But we should be able to see either of those at this distance."
"Well, we'll know in a few minutes," said Carter.
For the next fifteen minutes, the Longbow and its escort of five Scorpion starfighters sped through the inky blackness towards the mysterious invisible stellar object, the thoughts of the two men and five women inside the ships equally impenetrable as they impatiently strained their eyes and sensors trying to spot something that apparently wasn't there. Finally, it was Dexter Gray who broke the silence with one of his trademark "I've got it!" exclamations. "It's a black dwarf!" he explained excitedly.
"That's impossible," replied Jo confidently, the full weight of human scientific understanding behind her denial. "Black dwarfs are the cold, burned-out cinders of white dwarfs, and take a bare minimum of fifty billion years to form. The universe isn't old enough for black dwarfs to exist yet."
"I know, Lieutenant," said Dexter, undeterred by his superior's dismissal or even the fact that his pronouncement went against all of human scientific understanding. "But look at the facts. We have a small stellar mass that is emitting no light. There's not nearly enough mass for it to be a black hole or even a neutron star, so what else could it be?"
"I see it!" said Sam suddenly, her normally timid voice betraying a hint of excitement. "I had to adjust my ocular implants to do it, but I see it!" The others quit their scientific debate for the moment and once again strained their eyes out their forward canopies. They didn't have Sam Becket's advantage of cybernetic eyes, but by now they were close enough for mere biological eyes to discern something, though it wasn't much.
In the starless jet-black sky, a tiny disk that was only barely less black became visible, a black spot drawn on a blacker canvas, growing steadily larger as the Banshees approached. No detail at all was evident; the black dwarf was a perfectly smooth eight-ball 300,000 miles across on a black felt pool table.
Annoyed that Dexter had once again stolen her thunder and determined to find some evidence that he was wrong, Jo read off sensor readings as they came in. "Temperature, 250 Kelvin... a little warm for a black dwarf. Radius is 305,400 miles." Data continued to pour in, but she stopped reading it out loud. To her chagrin, all of it seemed to confirm the Ensign's hypothesis. The thing in front of them was indeed the impossible -- a black dwarf star. While the petty side of her was angered, the scientist in her was quickly gaining ascendance. To be face to face with a black dwarf! They would re-write the pages of physics and cosmology when they got back.
If they got back.
But there was little time to worry about that now with the discovery of the century a mere twenty million miles ahead. "I'm reading a second space body now," she announced. "It's in close orbit around the black dwarf just coming around from the far side.... It's a class-R planetoid. Surface conditions marginal; temperature varies from minus 180 to plus 120 degrees Fahrenheit depending on distance from geothermal vents. Atmosphere has a lot of sulfur compounds but is more-or-less breathable."
"Any life signs?" asked Carter.
"Scanning," replied Jo, but she never got that far. Space around the six Banshee squad craft was suddenly filled with brilliant light, a thing not seen in this long-lost corner of the universe for billions of years, followed seconds later by a violent shock wave from disruptor near-misses.
"It's the Breen probe ship!" cried Alex.
"It must have cloaked and followed us!" said Sam.
Captain Cross' stentorian voice cut off all further chatter. "Break and attack!"
Instantly, the five Scorpion starfighters banked around in tight arcs and sped off in the direction of the looming Breen vessel while the larger Longbow spiraled away in an elaborate evasive maneuver. Each Scorpion became the center of a burgeoning flower of phaser energy as the orange beams licked out in all directions from spinning turrets seeking a target that was no longer there.
"Dammit! They recloaked!" shouted Max. Her Scorpion was in the lead, and she searched the inky sky in vain for the elusive probe ship.
"These guys can teach the Romulans a thing or two about cloaking technology," muttered Carter. She had placed her fighter on an identical course as Max's, gambling that her XO's supernatural esper prescience would succeed where their eyes and sensors failed and lead her straight to the Breen's hiding place. Sure enough, Carter's wait was a short one. Directly ahead, a shimmering effect like heat distortion on the desert sands became visible, and in the next breath she and Max suddenly found themselves in a deadly game of chicken with a ship a hundred times the size of their small fighters. Max reacted instinctively, releasing the entire payload of her Scorpion's torpedo pod simultaneously, sending twelve quantum explosives bowling point-blank into the prow of the Breen ship before arcing away. Carter reacted a second later, firing her own missiles before she too dodged aside.
The impact was of biblical proportions. The energy released by a dozen quantum explosions and Carter's missiles engulfed the entire forward half of the Breen probe ship in a blindingly white sheet of fire, the alien vessel's shields hopelessly outmatched. The force of the explosion stopped the massive vessel dead in space as if it had hit a brick wall, and Carter could only imagine the total chaos inside the ship as any Breen that weren't holding onto something were picked up and slammed against the forward bulkheads.
The glare of the plasma fire receded, revealing the scope of the damage they'd done to the Banshees' eyes. The entire leading edge of the Breen probe ship was a smoking ruin. Emergency forcefields covered some of the gaping wounds, but not all. Plasma from fried systems leaked out into space in thin, sparkling streamers as the stricken craft turned ponderously on its Y-axis in an attempt to escape. Apparently, its captain had had enough for one day and decided discretion was the better part of valor. It slowly picked up speed, fleeing for the comparative shelter of the class-R planetoid.
"Now's our chance to finish them off!" yelled Max, already banking her fighter to pursue the Breen ship, barely-pent rage thickening her voice into an almost-unintelligible snarl. She had spent three years after the Dominion War fighting on the Federation's borders in a rough mercenary unit, and had seen her fill of sneak pirate attacks, bloody raids and unprovoked violence there, and so had no patience for it and no mercy when it came to dishing out retribution against those who still practiced those kinds of tactics.
"Negative, Lieutenant Commander!" barked Captain Cross. "Rejoin formation immediately. You gave them a good licking; I doubt those Breen will be back anytime soon."
For a moment, it looked like Max was going to disobey Cross' orders and finish off the Breen probe ship anyway, the consequences be damned, but at the last instant she turned her plane around and headed back to join the group.
...and now here they were, in orbit above the planetoid, sacked out in the Longbow's crew module, trying to get some rest, waiting for a dawn on a benighted world that hadn't seen a ray of sunshine in ten billion years, keeping watch against the inevitable return of the Breen from wherever they had slunk off to after the battle. The black sun still brooded in the sky above, an oppressive presence that weighed on everyone's spirits. The steady rhythm of Alex's snoring in the bunk above hers slowly lulled Jo to sleep, dreaming of blue skies and sunshine.
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