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“What does it look like?” Abby answered evenly and unflinchingly. “I’m entering the Gate.”

Dacrophus’s eyes narrowed. “Then I’m following. But don’t try any tricks, my friend. You’ll regret them.”

Abby nodded. “No doubt.” She cast a glance at Worf. “You may terminate the communication, Lieutenant.”

The Klingon complied. The Yridian disappeared, replaced by the violent splendor of the phenomenon.

We proceeded for about thirty seconds on impulse power, Hel’s Gate looming before us. Then, hoping for the best, we minimized energy usage on board, cut power to our engines, and entered the phenomenon on momentum alone.

“There,” said Abby, leaning back in her captain’s chair. “Now we’ll see who regrets what.”

Over the years I had served in space, I had developed a great respect for those oddities the universe had thrown in my path. And yet, there I was, arrogant enough to believe we could defy something as fierce and powerful as Hel’s Gate and live to tell about it.

I felt like a particularly small and foolhardy minnow offering myself up to the leviathan of legend. And the closer we came to the heart of the phenomenon, the more apt the analogy seemed.

Running only on emergency power, we couldn’t have provided Hel’s Gate with much energy with which to batter us. Yet, batter us it did. The warbird lurched this way and that like a creature in torment, threatening to tear itself apart with its gyrations.

“I thought we would be safe if we cut power,” Worf barked.

“There must have been some energy already trapped inside,” I responded, grabbing the back of the captain’s chair for support. “Perhaps from previous attempts to run the Gate.”

“Thadoc,” Abby cried out, hanging on to her captain’s seat as best she could. “Report!”

“Shields down to seventy percent,” the helmsman shouted back, fighting a jolt. “No make that sixty percent. And falling.”

The captain turned to Worf. “Can we reduce power any further?”

My officer shook his shaggy head as an unnerving shudder ran through the ship. “Not without losing helm and life support.”

He’d barely finished when the captain’s seat seemed to fly out of my grasp. I had time to recognize that as an illusion, to realize it was I who was flying away, head over heels, before I came up against something hard with bone-rattling force.

Tasting blood, I fought to remain in control of my senses. Raising my head, I looked around and saw the bridge littered with bodies. No not corpses, I told myself, unless corpses were capable of groans and curses. My comrades were still alive.

But no one was at his or her post. And most alarming of all, with Thadoc stretched out limply against a bulkhead, there was no one piloting the Romulan vessel. In a place like Hel’s Gate, such a deficit could have proven devastating the difference between survival and being torn into a hundred bloody fragments.

In Thadoc’s absence, the helm was my post. My responsibility. Girding myself, I grabbed the bulkhead behind me and staggered to my feet. The deck jerked beneath me and I almost went sprawling again. But somehow, I stood my ground, and even took a few steps toward the piloting controls.

Another impact. Another few steps. Impact, steps. By then, I was close enough to hurl myself at the console.

My fingers closed on it just as the warbird whipped me backward again. But this time, I managed to hang on, my muscles screaming with the effort. With an immense application of will, I hauled myself into the helmsman’s seat.

My monitors showed me we were still on course, more or less. Making whatever adjustments I could without applying thrusters and adding to our miseries, I rode out the next upheaval and the one after that.

By then, Worf had wrestled himself back into place behind the tactical station. He called to me in his deep, booming voice.

“Are you all right, Captain?”

“Well enough!” I replied, despite the numbness in my side and the ringing in my ears.

Mercifully or so I thought the tremors began to subside a little. One by one, Abby and Thadoc dragged themselves