The trip would be relatively short, just around Phoebe, one of Saturn’s many moons, and back. Once Will had agreed to it they had suited up, made sure the two Type-6 shuttles were prepped, and with some other cadets distracting the shuttlebay crew, they’d made their getaway. Will recognized the stupidity of his action—he had come here instead of letting Trinidad take his place because he didn’t want to break a comparatively minor rule, and now here he was smashing a huge one. But he’d still thought they would be able to get away with it, and if they flew well, they might even get away with just a minor talking to instead of a real punishment.
But that had been before things started to go wrong. Now he knew that he’d be lucky to avoid expulsion. If he even lived long enough to be expelled.
Will had been first out of the bay, but not by much. He thought he was coaxing every available ounce of speed from the shuttle, but somehow Paul found more and pulled ahead. Will had stayed close behind, though, as they neared Phoebe. Circling the moon and whipping back would require the most careful flying—she was large enough to have a faint gravitational pull, and the trick was to get in close enough to make a narrow turn without getting so close it bogged you down. Paul was, Will thought, going in closer than was necessary or wise. He’d been tempted to follow suit, but then had noticed his instrument panels reacting violently and had pulled back.
This is trouble,Will thought. Unless he misread his instruments, Paul was caught in an ion storm near the moon’s surface. That was when Will decided that he was not, in fact, having any fun at all. He tapped his combadge. “Paul! Are you all right?”
What he heard back was static, and then Paul’s voice, fragmented and breaking up. “... trouble... storm is making... can’t pull... ”
Paul’s ship disappeared from his viewscreen then, though he could still follow its progress on his instrument panel. It seemed to be diving toward Phoebe’s surface. “Paul, get out of there!”
He heard only static in reply.
“Emergency, Starfleet Academy Flight Range,” Will called out, “this is shuttle—hell, I don’t know what shuttle I have. Do you read me?”
“We have you,”a voice answered. “Where’s the other one?”
“You need to make an emergency transport,” Will insisted. “He’s going down on Phoebe.”
“We can’t even see him, Cadet,”the voice reported. “We can’t get a lock. There seems to be some interference.”
“It’s an ion storm,” Will told the voice. “That’s why he’s lost control of his shuttle.”
“He lost control because he tried to fly a shuttle that was in for repairs into an ion storm,”the voice said. “We’ll send an emergency evac team out after him, but we can’t transport him off there with the storm going on.”
Damn it!Will thought. He’d known better than to let Paul egg him into this stupid game, and now it had all gone sour, as he’d somehow known it would. He made a quick decision and hoped it was the right one. “He’ll never live long enough on the surface for your team to get there,” Will said. “I’m going in to pick him up.”
“Negative, Cadet,”the voice instructed. “Don’t try that. Just wait for us.”
“Riker out,” Will said, and broke off communication. “Computer,” he said out loud, as much for his own benefit as for the computer’s, “we’re going in.”
“Inadvisable,”the computer argued. “Atmospheric conditions are too severe.”
“Nevertheless,” Will explained. “We’re doing it. Shields at full power.”
The computer is obviously smarter than I am,Will thought. It knew this was a fool’s errand. But it complied with his commands, and he started the pitched descent toward Phoebe’s icy surface. As the shuttle entered the ion storm, Will felt it buffeted about in spite of the presence of the shields, and he knew that without the shields he’d be a dead man for sure. Of course, it’s early yet,he thought.
But something happened as he piloted the small craft down, through the battering of the storm and the entry into Phoebe’s thin atmosphere. Where flying had been mechanical for Will, something at which he was skilled but which he had to think through, now, suddenly, he was doing it all almost unconsciously. His hands made the right moves across the control pad, manipulating the pitch and yaw of the ship as it dropped closer and closer to the surface, controlling the direction and speed, following the locator beacon that Paul had, at least, managed to deploy. He did it all smoothly and without hesitation, as if he’d been flying all his life, and even when he realized what he was doing he was able to keep doing it. Concern for Paul had taken the self-consciousness out of piloting the ship and the abilities that had become ingrained through hours and hours of practice and training had taken over.
Phoebe grew enormous in the viewscreen, its surface rugged and terrifying. Vast chasms of ice whipped past beneath him, and tall jagged cliffs. If he had to land on this moon, he realized, they’d both be waiting for the emergency team from the flight base, and the chances were that neither of them would survive. He would try to avoid landing, even though that left only one option, and it wasn’t much better. But as he neared the locator beacon he prepared himself to take it.
He tapped his combadge again. “Paul, can you hear me?”
There was no response. Maybe this was all moot, he knew. Still, he had to take the chance. “Paul, do you read me?” No answer.
That didn’t matter. He was closing fast and his best shot, maybe his only shot, was coming up. Leaving the ship’s control on autopilot for the moment, he turned to the transporter controls. Scanning for Paul, he was almost surprised when the transporter got a lock almost immediately. He was very near, then—otherwise the ion storm would have interfered. But he couldn’t transport Paul on board with the shields up, and lowering them during an ion storm, this close to the moon’s surface, was virtually suicidal.
It was also the only thing he could do. With Paul’s coordinates locked, he braced himself as best he could. “Shields down,” he said, following it with “Energize.”
As soon as the shields went down the shuttle was pounded by the storm, driving it into a downward spiral. Will fought for control, but the moon’s harsh surface spun sickeningly toward him. “Shields up,” he muttered, struggling to find voice with the g-force pulling at him. The deflector shields returned to full power, or as much as they had left to give after being bombarded by the storm, offering Will a modicum more control of the shuttle. But he was still dropping fast, spinning like a top.
So instead of trying to fight the spin, he decided to go with it. He turned into the spin, and pointed the nose down instead of attempting to pull up. For a moment, the surface was right there in front of him and he was certain he’d miscalculated. But in the next moment his maneuver paid off—he had turned completely away from the surface and was skimming above it upside down. His stomach lurched but he knew that he would live for at least a few more seconds. Now he pointed his nose down farther, except down was up. Once he was a safe distance off the surface he righted the shuttle. Getting out of Phoebe’s atmosphere and away from the storm was a relatively simple matter now. He blew out a sigh of relief, and then remembered why he had gone down there in the first place.