“The probe is picking up what appears to be a Jem’Hadar fighter,” said Szarka, her voice calm and detached. “Wait, make that fighters, plural.”

“Where?” asked Anand.

He tried not to count the number of times he clenched and unclenched his hands while he waited for the answer.

Finally, Szarka shook her head and growled. “Too much interference from all these damn holes in subspace. Still trying to triangulate it.”

Mentally bracing for the inevitable proximity alert, Anand turned his attention back to the interview with Gomthree that he was going to have to cut short. “Ixabi? Qsshrr?” he asked, his voice low. “Can you hear me?”

“YES.”

He managed to avoid flinching again as they answered simultaneously in flat, detached voices, but it was still rather unnerving.

“Well, we’ve detected more Jem’Hadar fighters somewhere inside one of these vacuoles,” he said, trying to calmly explain the situation to whoever was listening. Was Gomthree listening? “If they return to normal space, we will have to make a run for it.”

It occurred to him that the tone of voice he’d instinctively adopted was the same one he used with his four-year-old niece when telling her to look both ways and hold his hand while crossing the street. It was a non-threatening but authoritative persona that seemed appropriate when dealing with a skittish space-borne creature, or at least its proxy.

“Can you warn Gomthree for me?”

No response. They both sat in unmoving silence.

Anand glanced back at Ang, who shook his head as he approached.

“There have been no fluctuations in any of my readings since they first established contact,” said Ang, ticking through the various charts and screens on his tricorder.

“Captain,” said Szarka, finally looking up from her station, “The probe that picked up the Jem’Hadar is the one inside the vacuole directly over us.”

Anand wondered if anyone else’s insides had just turned to ice at that announcement. 

“Zamora,” he called, “Kindly put some distance between us and that vacuole without moving us any further away from Gomthree.”

“On it.”

The harsh tone of the proximity alert felt like an arrow through his chest, but he still managed to affect some degree of detached calm when he asked, “Is it the Jem’Hadar?”

“No sir,” said Ensign Bolen from ops. “It’s Gomthree. It seems to be– yes, it’s moving closer to us.”

“Okay, why?” Anand asked, too quietly for anyone to hear. He assumed.

“RUN,” said Ixabi and Qsshrr, speaking in unison again. Whatever conversation they were having with Gomthree was apparently one he wouldn’t be privy to.

“It’s, uh…” said Bolen, glancing rapidly from his console to the viewscreen to the console again. “It’s advancing towards us head-on. Collision in fifteen seconds.”

“Zamora?” Anand called out.

“Moving us outta the way, 0-mark-270,” she responded, though she sounded a bit dubious as she also flickered her gaze between the controls and the viewscreen.

“It’s shifting course towards us again,” said Bolen. He was beginning to sound more irritated than worried. “Five seconds to impact.”

“I’m trying to get us out of the way,” said Zamora through clenched teeth, tapping furiously at the controls.

“RUN,” said Ixabi and Qsshrr. “GO. FOLLOW ME.”

Gomthree emphasized the point by nudging the ship, shifting purposely to glance the dorsal hull even as Zamora continued accelerating downwards. There was a rippling of energy along the shields, and the bridge shook. Anand wobbled but managed to keep his footing.

“OW,” came the voices in unison.

“Shields holding,” said Bohkat. “No structural damage detected, and this is why you have a chair.”

“Right right right,” said Anand absently. He took a few steps back and gripped the armrest as he perched himself on the edge of the seat, a compromise between his need to be up and moving and his acknowledgement of Bohkat’s common sense.

“Gomthree is continuing on its course,” said Bolen, “Now moving away from us.”

“FOLLOW ME.”

Anand stared for a moment at the back of Ixabi and Qsshrr, neither of them moving or offering any further commentary. He sighed.

“Zamora,” he said, “Follow Gomthree so that it doesn’t attempt to ‘encourage’ us again.”

“Following,” acknowledged Zamora.

Again, the proximity alert cut through all other noise on the bridge, sharper still because there was no doubt as to what set it off.

“The Jem’Hadar fighters we ID-ed have just returned to normal space,” called Szarka. “Two of them.”

“Red alert,” called Anand, and though he’d aimed for ‘authoritative’ he thought it sounded more ‘resigned to an unfair fight’. “Zamora, keep us as close as you can to Gomthree. Bohkat, aft torpedoes if you’re quite sure you can make the shot; we haven’t got many to spare.”

“I am well aware,” Bohkat said mournfully.

Streaks of blue energy shot past and disappeared into nothing ahead of them once, twice, three times, and then the ship shuddered and shuddered again, and sure he wasn’t at risk of face-planting into the deck plating, but Anand hated how intensely he could feel it through the chair.

“Aft shields down twelve–” Bohkat was interrupted by another rumble. “Twenty percent.”

“FASTER.”

The single word from Ixabi and Qsshrr had Anand wondering when he’d have to try to pull them out of their conversation–they were too vulnerable like this–when Ensign Bolen shouted, “Gomthree is going to warp!”

“Should I match speed?” asked Zamora.

“Can you do it without hitting a vacuole?” asked Anand. “I don’t want to risk even sideswiping one.”

Zamora tilted her head to the right just so, projecting her voice while keeping her eyes on the controls. “Neither do I. Trust me, I can do it.”

Anand nodded to himself. “Then do it. Match speed.”

Another shudder. “Shields down fifty percent.” 

Then the stars on the viewscreen elongated. Another blue jet of energy raced alongside them, and they began to outpace it.

“The Jem’Hadar fighters have also gone to warp,” said Ensign Bolen.

“CAREFUL.”

The warning came just as Gomthree dropped out of warp. Zamora dropped to impulse right on its heels, as if she were the one in telepathic commune with the creature.

“Stay with it, Zamora,” called Anand as Gomthree flew straight into the distorted form of a subspace vacuole.

Three seconds later, the Babylon followed.

There was a flash of light.

“Still nothing?” Anand asked. They’d dropped into the vacuole a full sixty seconds ago, and the Jem’Hadar fighters had certainly not been that far behind them. They had the scorch marks to prove it.

“Nope,” answered Ensign Bolen.

“Nada,” confirmed Szarka.

“They might have hit the vacuole still traveling at warp,” offered Zamora. She punctuated her statement with a quiet explosion sound effect and a soft chuckle.

“Or they might be waiting on the other side for us to re-emerge,” said Bohkat.

Anand hummed his assent and drummed absently on his armrest for a brief moment before swiveling toward the rear of the bridge.

“Szarka,” he said, “Check our map and see if this is one of the vacuoles we sent a probe into. Maybe we can call it back to the ship and send it out the other side to take a peek for us.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Szarka, bobbing her head in approval and whistling a tune to herself as she went to work at her console.

Anand could appreciate her good mood; they’d shot right through the vacuole and hadn’t immediately pancaked against a solid planetoid or been annihilated in an antimatter collision. In fact, the space around them looked very much like the space they’d just left behind. Anand fancied that even some of the stars aligned the same.

“So maybe it does know where it’s going,” he said to no one in particular.

“Not exactly,” said Ixabi, popping up off the ground as if she’d only just sat down.

“Ixabi!” Anand said with relief as he propelled himself out of his chair. He glanced at Qsshrr, and she also stood up an inch taller and spun around to face him. “Qsshrr, are you both alright?”

“A bit disoriented, but otherwise fine,” said Qsshrr. “Lieutenant Ixabi?”

“Yeah, me too,” Ixabi said absently, nodding as she fidgeted her hands. Then, with more enthusiasm. “Captain, we did it! We spoke to Gomthree–me and Qsshrr–and it understood us and responded and everything!”

“You did?” Anand asked, crossing his arms. “You were both nearly catatonic until just this moment. Just speaking in unison in clipped phrases that seemed to be coming from Gomthree rather than from either of you.”

“It was not a very in-depth conversation,” Qsshrr conceded. “The disruption from the Jem’Hadar aside, Gomthree found the noise of the bridge to be quite distracting.”

The proximity alert blared again. “Gomthree approaching,” said Ensign Bolen. “More slowly this time,” he added in a dubious tone.

Anand inhaled deeply through his nose and pressed his palms together. “Can you,” he said, turning to Ixabi, “Ask it not to knock into us again?”

“Oh.” She glanced over her shoulder at Gomthree approaching on the viewscreen. “I don’t think it’s trying to get our attention this time. I think it’s just curious.”

Sure enough, the creature slowed gradually, halting once it was close enough to take up the entire viewscreen. It drifted there, rotating about its central axis but keeping its nose aligned with the ship.

“Huh,” said Anand. Now more than ever, it was definitely bringing to mind a whale of some kind.

“Captain,” said Ixabi, cutting through his reverie. “I think Gomthree wants to beam us aboard it.” She indicated herself and Qsshrr. “So that we can communicate more clearly. May I have permission to do so?”

Before he had a chance to answer, there was a tingling on his skin and he realized that he was dematerializing along with Ixabi and Qsshrr.

And as soon as he finished processing that thought, the three of them were standing in a dimly lit cave. Solid, Anand confirmed with a touch, but it looked eerily like skin stretched over an uneven frame. Pulses of light in varying hues shined through the wall, and he could hear distant rumbling and a sound that reminded him of whalesong.

He had a pretty fair idea of where they were.