• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

As I watched, enthralled, a dark red light appeared in the core and discharged itself into space. It happened again a few seconds later, and yet again a few seconds after that, as if the phenomenon were shooting gouts of blood from a severed artery.

A grisly image, I’ll admit. Nonetheless, it was the one that sprang readily to mind.

“There it is,” said Abby, unable to keep a note of awe and amazement out of her voice.

I turned to her. “You sound surprised.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I am. I don’t know.”

Then I realized how it had been with Abby. She had been so intent on getting her brother back, so focused on putting together a ship and an adequate crew for that purpose, she hadn’t had time to fully consider what she was getting herself into.

And now that she was able to see it with her own eyes, now that it blazed before her with a wild and hideous intensity, it had taken on a reality for which she was unprepared.

But Abby was nothing if not resilient. She turned to Thadoc.

“Any sign of the mercenaries’ ships?” she asked.

She was unconcerned about giving away any secrets. After all, there were only four of us on the bridge at the moment myself, Worf, Thadoc, and Abby herself and we were all aware of her search for her brother.

The helmsman consulted his monitors. “No, no sign.”

To be sure, there were no mercenary vessels represented on the viewscreen either. But then, with the light display coming out of Hel’s Gate, it would have been easy for a ship or two to conceal themselves.

“But they were here,” Worf pointed out from the tactical station.

Abby looked back over her shoulder at him. “How do you know?”

My lieutenant frowned. “I’ve picked up traces of at least three ion trails and possibly more. The traces are faint but unmistakable. And they all lead into the phenomenon.”

“Into it,” Abby echoed pensively.

But not necessarily through it, I thought. What’s more, I suspect I was not the only one completing her comment that way.

“Even if there is a dimensional entry in there,” I said, regarding the savage brilliance of the thing’s core, “I don’t see how anyone could have lived to reach it.”

“A point well taken,” Thadoc grunted.

I had a sudden flash of insight. “That is,” I noted, turning to Abby, “unless you’ve got something up your sleeve.”

She returned my scrutiny without giving away a single emotion. “In fact,” she admitted, “I do.” She eyed the screen. “The approach typically taken by those who enter Hel’s Gate is that they try to negotiate the phenomenon under full power.”

“A mistake,” I deduced.

“A big mistake,” Abby explained, “since Hel’s Gate tends to reflect energy back at its source. The key, according to my brother, is to enter the phenomenon under absolute minimum power.”

“Without active propulsion,” I noted.

Abby nodded. “Exactly. You just coast through it on momentum, at the lowest possible speed.”

“Sounds nerve-wracking,” I observed.

“And difficult,” she agreed, “in that you’ve got to figure out what the lowest speed might be. But it’s the only way through.”

Indeed, I couldn’t think of any other. I considered the phenomenon anew, weighing what Abby had told me.

“Let’s try it, then,” I said.

Of course, Abby would have done so with or without my encouragement. In any case, she had Thadoc plot a course and a speed.

“What about the pirates?” Worf asked.

Abby looked at him, a smile finally pulling at the corners of her mouth. “They’ll have to figure it out on their own.”

The Klingon didn’t object to the strategy and neither did I. After all, I had no great desire to remain in the company of Captain Dacrophus and his cronies. And if it took something like Hel’s Gate to pry them away from us, so be it.

“Full impulse ahead,” Abby ordered.

“Full impulse,” Thadoc confirmed, and moved us forward.

“Captain Dacrophus is hailing us,” Worf reported.

Abby hesitated a moment. “On screen,” she said, obviously no longer concerned about concealing my identity.

A moment later, the Yridian’s visage filled the