All Praxidi ships were designed for atmospheric as well as space maneuvers, which made putting the ship into a transpolar orbit the easiest part. (He allowed himself and everyone on board the brief joy of the red dwarf rising along the planet's horizon, because how often would he get to simply decide to do that.) Once that was done, he allotted an hour for prep time; any longer and the crumbling path would be too far gone for even the Twilight to manage.
It was as different a ship from the Dancer as could be possible, and the connection felt a great deal more intense. The grid was a dull roar around him, like a waterfall the size of a continent, and he was sensitive to even the slightest shift in gravity or fluctuation of the shields. It all went with the territory, of course: despite its age, the Twilight was a warship of the highest caliber, and the precision with which it was meant to be flown was reflected in what was made available to him.
Thankfully the warp core was designed for incredible levels of abuse, and apart from familiarizing himself with how to control it he didn't need to spend much time adjusting it. The computing clusters and the shields needed work, however, and when he was done, almost half of the ship was blacked out and sealed off to make more power available to them.
The others had occupied themselves in a variety of ways while he worked. Uhura had sent her last communication out, in the hope the Twilight wouldn't escape the nebula only to face a load of phaserfire, and was now refining the communications array; Xorila and McCoy had been discussing something in low voices (maybe how they were going to fix him once this was all over); and the General and his assistant had paid close attention to what he was doing to the ship.
He resolved himself on the viewscreen-his human self, which made the Assistant twitch-and said, "Alright everyone." They all left off what they were doing to look at him. "I'm leaving the viewscreen off until we get out."
"Thank you," McCoy said.
"It's as much for me as you, the last thing I want is you throwing up all over my bridge."
"Well since you put it like that I just might anyways."
He rolled his eyes and went on. "I'm strapping everyone in. I've increased the bridge shielding but there's only so much I can do about the suspension. Most of the ship is sealed off, but the halls and lifts from here to the hangar bay where we landed the shuttles are shielded and open." He didn't need to specify why, and saw in the set of McCoy's jaw and the determination in Uhura's eyes that they wouldn't be making use of those shuttles without him.
The six-point, snakechain harnesses slipped into place around each of them. McCoy looked nervous until Xorila showed him where the emergency release was, then relaxed.
He switched the viewscreen to a ship status graphic and shut off his display. After a final once-over of the navigation systems, he pulled the first set of jump coordinates forward and waited for the right fluctuation in the labyrinth's waves.
The narrow tunnel of their first clear path opened. He warned them, "Here we go," then spun the core into action with a flicker of thought.
The ship shot to warp so fast it took his breath away.
If he had thought the Dancer's flight from the Collindran warships had been a scramble, it was nothing compared to navigating the nebula's halo.
Jets of plasma formed without warning, cutting off routes and making new ones. Gravitational wells yanked the Twilight every which way as they waxed and waned. Billowing clouds of dust and gas buffeted the ship, destabilizing the warp field and shoving the ship off course with frustrating regularity. And once they cleared the last of the star's rings the going got considerably worse.
Their passage gave way to a wave of plasma and the warp field collapsed under the strain. The currents of the halo swallowed the ship and began to bear it wherever they saw fit. These weren't large, gentle waves, though; they were tiny, and the ship started vibrating so hard that he wasn't sure it would hold together. He adjusted the shields' frequencies and dampened the effect on the bridge as much as he could. At least none of them had been wrenched out of their seats.
A corridor leading out of the chaos opened and he dove the ship at it, and was rewarded with clear space for a handful of seconds. Though they were moving at nearly warp six, it felt like the ship was coasting, the ride was so smooth compared to those last horrible minutes.
This new tunnel was twisting and corkscrewing in dizzying patterns, but it was large enough that the borders weren't interfering with the warp field just yet. He took the opportunity and set the navigational computers to re-calculating a series of routes. This path was a switchback, but it would take them around the large anomaly he'd been avoiding at all costs. It was too dense to be just another collection of dust and gas, and he was worried it might be a protostar close to formation.
The tunnel tightened dangerously, and he looked at his options. None of them were very good, so he went with his instincts, choosing the one that felt right.
No sooner were they in the new lane than a gravity well tried to drag the ship towards the anomaly, and his immediate reaction was to resist. Another part of him suggested a different possibility, though-instead of this frantic dodging back and forth, he could use the nebula's landscape to his advantage. If a gravity well pulled, he shouldn't push, he should make its power his own. While it was true they were in a race for their lives, with the maze's collapse imminent, that didn't make a mad dash their best option.
He turned the ship into the gravity well, concentrating instead on evading the plumes of dust and plasma that it took them through. Their speed crept up, and up, to the point where the warp core began to complain. He adjusted their course just so, into a narrow gap between two churning dust lanes. Their built up momentum tore them free of the gravity well and sent them careening towards another.
He fell into a rhythm, letting the results of the navigational systems' calculations guide him. It was no less exhausting, but it led to less acute strain on the ship and himself, and the later was becoming more relevant the longer their escape took.
Exhaustion threatened and he was starting to worry he couldn't get them out when they dropped out of warp into open space as far as the sensors could read. He was so surprised by the change that he brought the ship to a stop and hovered there.
On the bridge they were wondering what was going on, so he showed them by enabling the viewscreen. In front of them hovered two ships, one night-black, the other pale grey white, and behind them the nebula's halo shimmered.
They'd made it out.
After so much motion and speed it was disorienting in the extreme to sit there, out of warp, with dust and plasma seething off the ship's shields. He felt rattled and close to blacking out from the sudden absence of the strain he'd battling. (Losing consciousness right now would be dangerous with the ship so precariously reorganized around his recent needs, so he concentrated on not letting that happen, and was sure it was the Pilot he had to thank for the ability to do so.)
The Enterprise and the Shadow were scanning them. He dropped the shields so they could see everything they needed to, and told himself it was just his imagination that it felt like he himself was being poked and prodded in strange and uncomfortable ways. He waited for them to hail, because he knew they would, and until then he planned to let himself wind down. (In the back of his mind the sensors informed him the maze was all but disintegrated.) He focused on the two ships before him.
Looking at the Enterprise through the Twilight's sensors was an amazing thing. He'd thought he had an intimate knowledge of her already, yet that had been his own vanity as the captain. Only now, suspended in space as her peer, was he scratching the surface of such understanding.
He felt a signal brush against the communications array, and was surprised to find a channel he'd never noticed before. He recognized its purpose despite the lack of familiarity; this was the channel all Pilots used to interact privately. He responded, driven by a need to connect to another Pilot, if only just once.
The other Pilot's introduction was a complex construct of emotion and thought. They were shy because they were young and had only met two other Pilots, and they were also curious, because his signature was wholly unlike those other two. An undercurrent of surprise cut through these reactions; they had brought a Pilot for this ship, and yet here he was, already in service.
He realized he had no idea how to formulate a multilayered reply, and stuck to the basics. He admitted that he'd never met another Pilot at all.
The other's surprise redoubled; hadn't he just flown a warship through a fluctuating nebula? Surely no inexperienced Pilot would have been tasked with such a difficult mission.
He revealed he'd only been piloting the Twilight for a fraction of a subcycle, and that his service was from necessity alone, and his previous ship had been destroyed when he was only eighteen cycles in service.
There was a lengthy pause, then the other Pilot's stunned realization came across like a cold breath in his own chest: Dancer's Fifth.
He didn't deny it. The Shadow's Pilot expressed amazement, and not, to his surprise, doubt. It occurred to him the connection between them might be such that lying would be a pointless exercise, and it took some effort to not pull away from the implied intimacy. His guarded nature would gain him nothing here.
He wondered how they could know about him, and the Shadow's Pilot flooded him with the stories that had sprung up in the wake of the Dancer's destruction. It was strange, to have what he'd experienced relayed back to him in such vivid imagery, with the added perspective of the crew and captain, and stranger still to know it had spread far and wide among the Praxidi fleet's ships. And now, added to that, his unbelievable survival and the flight of the Twilight's Shining Teeth through a halo that few ships had ever navigated. (The Shadow's Pilot was ever so proud they would get to add that part.)
He was excruciatingly embarrassed, and hoped none of this would reach Spock or McCoy. (Please, please not McCoy.) The Shadow's Pilot didn't seem to understand his reaction, except to recognize they might want to change topics, so they did that. They wondered if he would be taken out of service, since they were carrying a new Pilot.
He told them this was certain, and that Pilot would be Twilight's Ninth.
The other Pilot seemed sad to hear this, and they were honored to have met him.
The possibility of remaining a Pilot wasn't something he'd even considered, but for a few brief seconds he savored the impossible idea. He knew, if he told the General he wanted to, that it would be done; there would be nothing the crew of the Enterprise would be able to do to stop it from happening. But that same crew was the very reason he couldn't: he owed them far too much as their captain, and he owed some of them so much more as a friend.
He thanked the Shadow's Pilot, returning those same sentiments in kind, then turned his attention back to the Enterprise, which was hailing them.