Chapter 1 Tom Paris was well aware that bringing a shuttle into a planet's atmosphere was easy if you followed procedure; it only became challenging -- and interesting -- if you deviated from Starfleet's carefully regulated system.
He had developed a number of ways to cheat the routine, but the only one that consistently provided what Tom wanted -- the ineffable thrill that accompanied danger -- was what he had termed the Yeager maneuver, after an ancient but renowned pilot of the twentieth century. Now he had the chance to try it again.
Captain Janeway had deposited an away team, including the ship's senior officers, on an unoccupied M-class planet that promised abundant foodstuffs as well as time off their starship, Voyager. She then took the ship on a diplomatic mission to a nearby system where she hoped to secure safe passage through a part of space rumored to be rife with danger.
Tom had requested shuttle time during the away mission, not an unusual request. Logging shuttle time was required duty for every pilot, a necessary means of keeping one's skills honed. First Officer Chakotay hadn't hesitated when Tom suggested he use this downtime to log a few hours on his file.
The request was legitimate, of course, and Tom had no pangs about making it, even if he did have an agenda that had gone unspoken. The two functions weren't mutually exclusive, and he saw nothing wrong with combining them.
Now, at the controls of the Starship Voyager's shuttle Harris, he saw the planet looming before him. It was a watery sphere, much like Earth, and the marbled blue-and-white orb gave him a few pangs of nostalgia -- a fact which surprised him, for he usually found himself far happier in the Delta Quadrant than he had been at home. He shoved the feelings aside and made the necessary preparations for entering the atmosphere, which, his instruments told him, would first be encountered some thirty thousand meters above the surface.
First would come the mesosphere, where molecular structure was thin and porous, bleeding into the stratosphere, where atmospheric pressure heightened and friction became a genuine concern; finally, the descent into the full oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and the landing. The Yeager maneuver was accomplished just at the transition from mesosphere to stratosphere.
Atmospheric flight was always done under thruster power, and as such was accomplished much as it had been with pre-warp vehicles. There were safety mechanisms in place now, of course, that hadn't been available to earlier craft, but safety systems could always be taken off line. That was the first thing Tom did as the image of the planet filled the window of his ship, growing larger by the minute.
At the point where gravity began to exert a substantial pull on the shuttle, Tom tilted up the nose of the vessel and cut the thrusters, so that the ship began sinking toward the surface tail first, without power.
And that's when his body went into an autonomic response: pulse rate increased, blood pressure heightened, and adrenaline was released. These systemic reactions were biochemical and as old as man's earliest ancestors, but to Tom Paris they provided a state of crystalline awareness that was almost hallowed. All his senses sharpened as endorphins flowed into the brain, creating a mix of fear and pleasure that were mysteriously and inextricably linked.
He stared only briefly into the black sky, which, he knew, would soon begin to change color, becoming more blue as the atmosphere thickened. From now on he had to keep his eyes down, locked on the control panel. Because very soon the shuttle would be pulled into a violent spin, and a glimpse out the window would produce instant and disabling vertigo. Then he'd be doomed.
The only way to restart the thrusters now was to get the ship into a dive, nose-down, so that air was forced through the intake manifolds, which would start the magnaturbines spinning and build up the RPMs. Atmospheric oxygen would then combine with fuel from the shuttle's tanks in a supersonic combustion chamber, providing power for the thrusters.
The ship snapped into a flat spin, whirling right over its center of gravity, like an ancient pinwheel. The force of the spin drove Tom back against the seat, his head on the outer edge of the circle.
This was the moment he'd waited for.
He could pull out of this if he functioned perfectly. He needed every sense, every instinct keen and chiseled, responding with diamondlike clarity. And that's what the fear gave him -- intensified awareness that would allow him to make the moves to save himself.
The trick now was timing. He had to gauge -- through a combination of skill, experience, and luck -- just the right time to maneuver the nose of the ship down. Too soon and it would throw him into an end-over-end tumble from which it was almost impossible to escape. Too late and the atmosphere would be dense enough to keep the shuttle nose-up and he would continue to spin out of control, screaming into the atmosphere at a speed that would incinerate him.
His body was being slammed against the seat with increasing pressure, his head filling with blood from the centrifugal force of the spin. He forced his eyes to bore into the control panel, watching as the altitude was displayed. He was falling about fifty meters a second, three thousand meters a minute. He estimated he'd have to engage his emergency drogue field at an altitude of about thirty thousand meters, and that was coming up fast.
At thirty-one thousand meters, he realized he was in trouble. His vision was darkening and his head throbbed as blood sloshed through it. He'd better engage the field now...but he knew it was too soon. He'd go tumbling into an endless somersault until he and the craft became a hellish fireball.
He had to wait...until it felt right. But how would he know when it felt right? Maybe his judgment was becoming impaired by the unnatural rearrangement of his bodily fluids. Go ahead, something told him, the altitude's close enough...engage the drogue field. His fingers slid with practiced ease to the controls.
But no! screamed through his mind, and his fingers responded, poised over the panel, refusing to enter the command. The ship was now under thirty thousand meters. Was he heading for dangerously turbulent atmospheric levels?
Wait...wait...wait ...
Darkness was overtaking him, and the panel was nothing more than a dim arrangement of lights that swam in his field of vision. Much longer and he wouldn't be conscious to enter the field engagement command. Hang on, Tom...hang on...
Suddenly, the startling image of the incident from long ago -- another time when he had told himself to wait...wait...wait -- ripped through his mind like a phaser, and he cried out involuntarily. He thought he was over that, had long ago purged himself of those awful sights, but there they were in his mind's eye, brilliant and indelible, shot through with colors...colors of fire, colors of death...
The shock of the memory cleared his vision briefly and he saw that he was under twenty-nine thousand meters above the surface.
Now.
His fingers danced on the controls and the drogue field engaged...within seconds he would feel the tug as the ship nosed down and fell out of its spin. He drew great gasps of air because now he felt light-headed and dizzy -- had his eyes flicked for a half second to the window? He was sure they hadn't, and yet he was unaccountably queasy...why wasn't the nose pitching down? Had he entered the wrong command? The beginnings of panic crackled in his mind like arcing plasma.
That wouldn't do. Can't panic. Think. Nose down...why not happening...think...
He had just promised himself that if he got out of this, he'd never flirt with danger again -- when the long-awaited tug