Tristan was a young man of wealth and privilege. His father owned the largest shipping conglomerate in the tri-galactic area; his mother sat on the Interplanetary Council. Tristan himself was lithe and dashing with boundless confidence; he could have any girl he wanted, and Tristan wanted Mari.
Mari was a young woman just growing into her new good looks and was still surprised when young men noticed her. When the rich, cute, popular Tristan asked her out, she gaped in awe before stumbling out, "Yes."
Tristan picked Mari up in his Starhopper-class shuttle the *Rebellion* and took her to the Cloud Room, a restaurant six kilometers in the sky, where Mari watched the world revolve below them through the transparent aluminum dance floor.
After drinks and dinner and dancing and more drinks, Mari's head was spinning from alcohol, being surrounded by aristocrats who frequented the Cloud Room, and Tristan's gyrating proximity on the dance floor. He really does like me! she thought.
"I want to see the stars," Mari said.
Tristan blasted the *Rebellion* away from the Cloud Room at top sublight then accelerated to warp one the second he cleared the planet's moon. The stars smeared at Tristan's command; the sheer force of the jump pushed Mari back into her seat. Tristan's hands were strong and sure as he caressed the controls.
"Let's see what's shakin' over at Gamma Seventeen," Tristan said.
Mari hesitated; her father had forbidden her from Gamma Seventeen – the next closest star system – since the Dominion had annexed Alpha Seventeen. A Starhop was a fine civilian vessel, but it could only reach warp one; if they got into trouble, any military-owned ship could outrun them. . . .
"I don't know, Tristan," Mari said hesitantly, even as the shuttle soared past her star system's familiar planets and launched into the dark, abandoned sky beyond her home.
"Hey, sweetie, I'll be okay," Tristan said, gazing into her eyes and flashing that perfect smile. He ordered some more tulaberry wine from the replicator. "Trust me, I've gone there a million times. The third planet has the most warp danceclub you've ever seen. I really want to take you there," he added sincerely.
Mari smiled and sipped her wine. "All right," she said. "I always worry too much."
"Trust me, babe, it'll be –" *thud*. The *Rebellion* careened, stars swirling in the viewscreen.
"What was that!" Mari gasped.
"I – I don't know," Tristan said, his hands shaking as he took the *Rebellion* to a full stop.
"Warning," the computer said. "Hull breech on outer dorsal shell. Emergency shields engaged."
"Something hit us," Tristan said.
"We'd better go back," Mari said. All her courage had been stripped away by the threat of being sucked into space.
Tristan didn't answer, his face twisted in annoyance to cover up the same fear Mari's face made so obvious. Tristan laid in a course for home, but when he pressed *engage*, the computer beeped a warning noise and said, "Engines off-line."
"Why?" Tristan demanded.
"Excess stress will cause further damage to hull breech. Please execute emergency procedures."
"What does that mean?" Mari said. Panic clenched her heart – she swore never to let her feet leave the ground again.
"We're stuck," Tristan said.
There was nothing that could be done, except send out a distress signal and wait for someone to answer. They were on a common trade route, although traffic between systems had thinned considerably since the war. Tristan looked out of the viewscreen at the dark, empty space and told himself that someone would be along soon.
After two silent hours, an enormous, purply-blue starship descended upon the *Rebellion* and hailed them. The captain, of an unfamiliar alien planet but with a kind voice, offered to assist them.
"Can you can tow us back to our planet?" Tristan asked.
"Why don't you let us just fix your ship?" the captain said magnanimously. "We've got plenty of extra hull plating; really, it's no bother. It'll take us an hour or two, then you kids can be on your way."
"That's awfully nice of you," Mari said. She just wanted this nightmare to be over.
"Well, I'm a nice guy," the captain said. "And my maintenance crew could use an excuse to get off their butts. I just need someone to beam over here to give us your ship's specs, and then I'll send out some guys in EVA's to tack on a new hull."
"Sure, you can beam us right over," Tristan said before Mari could politely protest. Tristan closed the channel.
Mari hissed, "Are you insane? You want to beam over to a ship whose planet we've never even heard of? They could be Dominion!"
"Whoever they are, they're fixing my ship for free," Tristan said. "Besides, what would the Dominion want with a civilian shuttle? Look, if you're that worried, you stay here. I'll call you if there's trouble."
"But –" Mari protested.
Tristan sighed. "And I'll put up the deflector shields. The EVA's will be able to go through them, but no phaser blasts. Just push this button after they beam me out."
"All right," Mari said.
Tristan spoke briefly with the alien captain again and then disappeared in a golden transporter column, leaving Mari in the cramped shuttle. Minutes of silence turned into half an hour, and no call from Tristan.
"*Katanga* to *Rebellion,*" the radio crackled to life.
Mari jumped. "Yes?"
"We're about to start work on your hull. Don't be surprised if we make some noise," the alien captain said.
"All right," Mari answered. Almost immediately, she heard pounding and scraping on the ceiling.
Sleepy from all the alcohol, Mari decided to stretch out on the wide, overstuffed seat in the back. She soon nodded into a shallow sleep full of fitful dreams of invading Jem'Hadar. She woke frequently when the pounding and scraping above became too insistent.
Sometime later, Mari woke to the alien captain's voice over the radio again.
"Sorry about that, miss," he was saying.
"Excuse me?" Mari asked. It was then she noticed that the cabin had gotten cooler and some of the control panels were as black and lifeless as the dark space outside the viewport.
"My guys hit a relay and knocked out some of your computer systems," he said.
"Oh," Mari said. The shuttle was still empty and silent. Why wasn't Tristan back?
"We're real sorry, miss. Tristan asked you to message your planet to let your parents know where you are."
"Oh. Okay," Mari said. "Um, how do I do that?" Mari's knowledge of shuttle operations extended to telling the computer to do things for her.
"Oh, you probably lost computer voice interface, huh? Sorry again. We'll send the message from our ship, then."
"Thank you," she said, even though it was their fault for breaking the computer to begin with.
Panic began to rise in her chest. Without the computer, she couldn't call for help, or even adjust the environmental controls. What if the aliens *were*, and she was waiting patiently for their fleet to show up.
How cold could it get in a shuttle? Mari suddenly realized how very small the shuttle was – her head almost brushed the ceiling. Why weren't there any more ships around? The interior lights flickered half-heartedly, ignoring the oppressive fear of darkness filling Mari's chest like a bubble. Like the vacuum of space would feel expanding her lungs.
Do people who get sucked out of spacecraft know what space feels like? Do they actually feel the pressure build? Mari had read once of fish that live at the bottom of the ocean who are so used to the extreme pressure that if they get caught in a deep-sea net, the explode before they reach the surface. Mari imagined the ceiling of the shuttle peeling, groaning, renting, and pulling her into the deadly night. Would she feel cold? Or would her nerve endings lie and call space hot, like the time in biology lab when she touched the nozzle of the liquid nitrogen tank on a dare.
The scraping and clanking thuds above her head started up again. Mari flopped into the seat, exhausted and frightened but was too nervous to sleep.
She must have dropped off, though, because some time later she woke to silence. The computer was still unresponsive. She didn't know how to work the sensors, but a glimpse out of the viewscreen revealed a debris field that had not been there before.
"Shuttle *Rebellion*, please respond." A voice suddenly filled the cabin.
Mari shrieked before she realized the voice was coming over subspace radio. "Hello?" Mari said. "Um, this is the *Rebellion*."
"This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship *Enterprise*."
"Uh. Hi," Mari said.
"With whom am I speaking?"
"My name's Mari. This isn't my ship," she explained. "It's Tristan's. He beamed over to that alien ship and he isn't back yet. Did they finish fixing the hull?"
There was a pause on the line. "No," Captain Picard finally said. "Your shuttle still needs assistance. We would be happy to tow you back to your system, but for safety's sake, I would like to beam you over to the *Enterprise*."
Mari nodded. "All right, but we should really wait for Tristan to get back."
"And whom is that?" Captian Picard asked. Someone on his ship whispered something like, 'the humanoid remains.'
Captain Picard sounded tense when he insisted that he needed to speak with Mari in person.
In the *Enterprise's* observation lounge, where she sat at a long table with Captain Picard and several of his staff, Mari could see through the tall windows that the debris field was purply-blue and starship-sized.
"Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" Mari asked.
"I'm afraid I have the misfortune to tell you that we could not rescue Tristan," Captain Picard said.
"When you spoke with the captain who offered to fix your ship," the woman who had introduced as Counselor Troi asked gently, "Did you speak with him on-screen?"
"No," Mari said, "His transmissions were audio-only."
The Starfleet men and women looked uncomfortable.
"Why?" Mari asked.
"The aliens were Quarnoths," Captain Picard said. "They are, ah, serpentine in body construction." He seemed to be having trouble finding the right words. "When we boarded, the situation was most unfortunate. When we found Tristan, he had -- " the captain's mouth twisted oddly "—he had been killed. Our people barely made it out with their lives, and when the ship fired on us, we were forced to defend ourselves. You were lucky they didn't beam you out of your shuttle, too."
"They couldn't have," Mari said. "Tristan put up the deflector shields."
"That explains the hull," a bearded man at Picard's left said. To Mari, he explained, "The deflectors saved your life; the Quarnoths were trying to physically hack through the shuttle to get you out."
"But why?" Mari asked. "Why did they want us?" The alien captain had acted so nice, even inviting Tristan over for dinner.
Before his co-workers could shush him, a gold-skinned man said, "Quarnoths are known to consume humanoids."