Most of the senior staff had arrived in the small conference room as requested by their Captain. Raiem finished reading a PADD he was holding and then glanced back up at his team. He could see a mixture of tension and exhaustion on their faces, a glint of determination in their eyes, and a hunger to escape their current predicament. He shared in all those emotions but especially the last. 

“Sorry I’m late, kids.” Hilga’s voice was muffled as her face popped up on on of the viewscreens in the room. She had a cylindrical tool in between her teeth and was obviously in the middle of doing something important. “Figured I’d multi-task this one. The EPS grid isn’t going to get itself back in order.” She finished, sounding clearer as she had grabbed the tool out of her mouth and put it to use. 

“That’s just fine. Thanks for joining, Commander.” Raiem stood from his chair and lightly paced with his hands clasped in front of him. “You’re all aware of our current situation. To say it is desperate would be underscoring. Any chance we can get enough power back to the engines to get us out of here?” 

Jezria shook her head but it was Hilga who spoke up, “Despite our current troubles with internal power management, which I should have fixed within the next twenty minutes, we just don’t have enough left to allocate the needed push to escape the current level of gravitational pull.”

“And that pull is only getting stronger, Captain,” Jezria added as she made eye contact with the team in the room, seeming to take her read on things before continuing. “Say we did manage to pull enough energy together in twenty minutes, as an example. We would need even more power to break free at that point.” 

“Even if we managed to break free, we would have enough energy to keep the ship habitable for another twenty hours at most. And considering we don’t even know where we are…” Mayvilis chimed in.

There was an audible grunt in the room. All eyes pinpointed on the short Evora, Lieutenant Yuzar, who had done so to garner the group’s attention. “Where we are is still quite a mystery. I’ve been trying ever so hard to solve it, but with power allocation the way it is at the moment, long-range sensor pallets and astrometric systems have not been a priority. Whatever we were thrown in and out of has put us in the third outer quarter of the gamma quadrant, many thousands of light years from where we were.” 

“Is there no way you can better pinpoint, Yuzar?” Hilga was the one to ask this on behalf of the group. 

Yuzar rolled her eyes. “Perhaps the powers that be should have thought twice before downsizing the astrometrics lab to a third of the size it used to be, with much less resource capacity. I believe it was something about needing more space for a larger sickbay, since this is now a medical variant vessel. I can’t work with what I don’t have. Simple as that.” 

Raiem raised his hand and arm forward slightly, taking control of the room. “That’s quite fine, Lieutenant. Please keep at it as best as you can. I would argue our more pressing matter is stopping our ship from sinking.” He got his science officer’s point, but now was not the time to argue the finer details of starship refit practices. 

“What about that planet, Captain?” Eddie now spoke but immediately gave a retreating look. He often looked up a lost puppy at times. 

“Yes – the planet.” Raiem finally finished pacing and resumed sitting in the chair at the head of the conference room table. “That is the main reason I called you all here. Lieutenant Nahl?” He looked to the trill and gave her a gesture to take the room. 

Jezeria tapped some controls in front of her, and it brought up some telemetry of their immediate area and positioning. It showed the black hole, Calistoga and this rogue planet they had discovered. “I am not sure why or how this planet remains in stationary orbit of the black hole. There are no life signs that I can detect, but there are massive power emissions from the planet. From what we can tell, it appears to be class D.” 

“Are those power emissions the cause of this planet’s ability to resist the gravitation pull of the black hole?” Callisto asked.

“Perhaps. Truthfully – all we have is suppositions at this point. It is unusual – but…” Jezria paused but was ushered on to continue by Raiem. 

She nodded and continued, “If there is an energy source there, it could be something we could use to potentially restore power. Not only that, but it could be a way for us to slow our own decent.” Jezria hit a couple more controls, and the image changed to show Calistoga maneuvering to intercept the planet and then maintain an orbit using the planet’s gravitation pull as leverage. 

Raiem’s eyes lit up, as did the rest of the room. It was a bold plan that would take some skilled piloting. There was also the question of if they even had enough gas in the engine to pull this off. 

“Can you fly that course, Eddie?” Raiem asked, making eye contact with the young pilot. 

The flyboy smiled and gave one of his staple chershire grins. “If you can give me enough juice to make those maneuvers and adjustments, I can use the black hole’s gravitation pull to our advantage and skirt us alongside the planet. I can do it, Captain.” 

“Commander Stamm?” Raiem and the room looked at Hilga on the monitor. 

“Oh. So you want me to scrounge together more thrust we don’t have?” She raised a brow and then groaned. “I’ll get you your engine power, but that’ll be it, Captain. We’ve got enough for one shot at this. I’m out of miracles for the rest of the week.”

Raiem clapped his hands together and gave a thankful nod to everyone. “All right, folks. We fly in fifteen minutes. With any luck, we’ll be out of the frying pan and onto the cutting board here shortly. Thank you, and good work.” 

The group all broke away from the table, save Mayvilis and Raiem. He leaned back into the chair and sighed after it was just the two of them. Mayvilis leaned into the elbows which were placed in the table. “You doing okay, Captain?” She asked in a genuine way. 

“If we do manage to even get out of this, we’re still apparently a long way from home in a California-class vessel. We won’t stand a chance out here this far alone for a sustained period of time, especially in our current shape.” He was beginning to think too far ahead, even after having coached his own team to focus on the present. 

“You’re right. We’re probably screwed even if we do manage to avoid being crushed and pulled apart into tiny bits by this black hole, but, we have a fighting chance at least. Let’s get this done.” Mayvilis stood and placed her hand supportively on Raiem’s shoulder. She had a fierce look of determination on her and managed to be the support he needed. 

“Let’s… Thank you, Commander.”