There were equal parts desperation and resolve in how Yuulik assembled her think tank in the observation lounge.  In quick succession, she plucked junior officers from auxiliary stations around the bridge.  Yuulik claimed the ones who could be quickly replaced by other officers in reserve.  The ones Captain Taes might not miss while she steered the crew away from the edge of destruction.  What they didn’t know was that Yuulik chose these ones for one more reason: they once walked hand in hand into a dark frontier.

“–reverse the spatial distortion caused by the flux energy–“

“–train the conformal transmission grid to shape the shield bubble into a shield spike–“

“–close every EM window across the shields, and to hell with the navigational sensors–“

All of them were brilliant in their own fields, science officers T’Kaal and Dolan and even junior engineer Addae.  Although their recommendations were promising, their ideas needed testing and tempering.  Talking over one another in collaborative overlap, they demonstrated their solutions through the holograms projected over the conference table.  

A representation of USS Constellation hovered in the middle, with different hull sections magnified to show the modifications they recommended to field distortion amplifiers and coolant loops.  After entering Underspace from the Delta Quadrant days ago, no one could imagine a starship could travel through Underspace for this distance or duration.  Previous Starfleet transits beyond the Swallow Nebula had taken less than half the time, and Constellation’s long road was only leading them to a tragic collision course.  Ahead of Constellation spun the wreckage of three ancient starships crushed together.

Yuulik didn’t need a hologram to tell her what other accelerator was putting pressure on her think tank.  Through the tall viewports, the Predator-class Kazon warship fired its phasers again.  From where she was standing, Yuulk felt like the phasers were aimed at her — right at her.  The shields flared up to protect both the hull and Yuulik once again.

A tactical system telltale sounded, indicating quantum torpedoes had been launched.  On the status monitor set into the bulkhead, a forward view showed six quantum torpedoes lancing through the swirling caramel corridor of Underspace.  Despite their velocity, they took over ten seconds to explode into the starship wreckage that was blocking Constellation’s path.  It took less than ten seconds to see the wreck hadn’t broken up as much as Commander Ache had promised.

“There’s something we’re missing,” Yuulik said.  “Our multi-phasic shields were reverse-engineered from Borg technology, and their cubes fly far more recklessly than we ever do.”

Throwing his hands above his head in frustration, Dolan asked, “You still want to crash through the wreckage?”

Shrugging helplessly, Yuulik posed the question, “Isn’t that what the Borg would do?”

“You’ll kill us all!” Dolan shot back.

“No, I’m asking you,” Yuulik said.  “I’m literally asking you all: isn’t that what the Borg would do?”

T’Kaal closed her eyes.  “Don’t do this.”

Yuulik enthused, “There must be something.  Something you remember.  The engineers had no technical manuals to explain the full capabilities of Borg shield technology.  They could only make assumptions based on our existing knowledge.”

“I don’t remember anything like that,” Dolan insisted.

“Nothing?” Addae challenged him from across the table.  “I remember.  Fragments.  Nothing solid or tangible, but I remember.”

“You were all assimilated,” Yuulik starkly said.  “You all attempted to build Borg Cubes at the Avalon Fleet Yards.  Even if you all only remember fragments, what if you each remember different fragments?  Complementary pieces to a singular puzzle.”

T’Kaal opened her eyes.  “Don’t do this.”

“We have to pool your faded memories together to find a way out of Underspace,” Yuulik demanded.  “If it’s beyond Starfleet technology, then we have to think like the Borg, and we don’t have time to brainstorm.”

Shaking his head, Addae said, “We can’t do what you’re suggesting, commander.  Our Borg DNA has been eradicated.  We can’t form a collective.”

“T’Kaal did it,” Yuulik said, “When Captain Taes needed to rescue artificial wormhole secrets from the mind of a dying Trill scientist.  You’ve all been in a collective before.  A little mind meld would be simplicity.  Don’t you understand: we’re all about to die!”

Bounding into the warp engineering deck, Kellin moved like a man on a mission.  Because he was.  Not just any mission, but a mission for the captain.  The crew was in danger and every moment mattered.  Taes needed her XO’s honest opinion on whether any of the bridge crew’s fantastical plans would work or if more desperate measures would be necessary.  

Despite the urgency, Kellin still blew past four engineers to close the distance with science officer Leander Nune.  As Kellin approached, he found Nune tapping commands into the master systems display amid a cluster of more engineers.

“How are the deflector modifications looking, Nune?” Kellin asked, a little breathless from the sprint.

Nune tapped a finger on the schematic of Constellation’s deflector dish.

“How do they look to you?” Nune asked without looking back.

Kellin’s shoulders tensed up.  He squinted at the digital schematics.

Diffidently, Kellin was quick to ask, “Do you care, or are you being polite?”

“When have I ever been just polite to you?” Nune asked, and then he met Kellin’s eyes.  “I care.”

Standing taller, Kellin answered the original question: “Flavia doesn’t think she found the right resonance pulse frequency on her first shot.  With the right frequency, these modifications should–“

Swiping a palm over the aft of the starship schematic, Nune interrupted with, “What in the Great Fire is that for?”  –He elbowed Kellin in the arm as he used to do, grabbing his attention as viscerally a possible– “Someone’s modifying the shield geometry around the nacelles.  And now the secondary hull, too.”

“Someone here?” Kellin asked.

Tabbing through an LCARS frame in the corner, Nune replied, “No, the bridge engineering station.  Biometrics read… Ensign Addae Danbo.”

“How will that protect us from the wreckage in our path?” Kellin asked.

Sounding increasingly surprised with each word, Nune surmised, “Our shields are harmonising with the Kazon’s deflector array.”  –He swiped more sensor readings over the MSD– “We’ve achieved a harmonic resonance coupling with the Kazon’s forward deflector.  We can– we can use the Kazon ship to amplify our pulse.”

“Captain!  Impact with the wreckage in ten seconds!” Nova announced.  She spun away from her operations station to lock eyes with Captain Taes.  Despite the urgency in Nova’s voice and the fear behind her eyes, Taes respected the precision of her countdown.  Taes offered a look of appreciation and a nod, and Nova spun back to her console.

“Nine seconds…”

“Let’s find out,” Taes ordered.  She swept a hand in Flavia’s direction, giving her the go ahead.

“Eight seconds…” Nova reported.

Taes held her breath.  Unlike their phaser and torpedo attack on the wreckage, there was no visual signature through the viewscreen when they took one last shot at the wreckage with the coupled deflector beams.

“Seven seconds…”

For two more seconds, the wreckage began to vibrate at the same frequency as the resonance pulse and then, in a blink, the entire mass of twisted duranium whisked through a subspace radial wall.  Constellation was saved for another moment longer, if their shields could hold out against the Kazon.  With the wreckage ejected from Underspace, there was time for the proximity alarm to go silent.  There wasn’t enough time for Taes to let out the breath she was holding.

“Captain!”  This time, Nova’s voice rose to a shriek.  “The Kazon have shifted their flight vec–“

She couldn’t even get the words out in time.  The swirling tunnel of Underspace filled the viewscreen and then vanished in a flash, leaving nothing but a swirl of stars in normal space.

“They turned the resonance pulse against us,” Nova deduced.

Momentarily less concerned with how they escaped Underspace, Taes asked, “Can you locate any navigational buoys?  Where have they left us?”

Yuulik strode out of the observation lounge. She rounded the command platform, and rather than lurking over the shoulders of science or operations this time, she took a seat in the mission specialist chair to Taes’s left.

After a soft gasp, Nova remarked, “We’re back in the alpha quadrant.  In the Deneb Sector.  Who knew Underspace extended this far?”

“I can’t say that came up in my negotiations with the Turei, lieutenant,” Taes admitted.

When she said that, Taes was already leaning in to Yuulik by her side.  “However did you do that, commander?” she asked at a whisper.

Yuulik blinked twice.

Softly, she replied, “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”