Knight grimaced as whatever was happening to the Phantom ran its course. He and his crew were powerless to stop the anomaly's flux. After a moment further of turbulence, both the Osbourne and Defiant were again visible on the viewscreen--only briefly, however.

The crew was thrown from their seats as a small cloud of flotsam and jetsam pelted the Phantom. A small particle cloud that would normally be no threat wreaked havoc on the ship; its deflector shields were inoperative. The lights across the ship winked out to total darkness; a few seconds later the backups engaged.

Knight leapt to his feet. "Report!"

Senel crawled back into his seat and took a look at the ship's status report. "We have minor hull breaches from decks five and below. Major structural damage; main power is off-line; shields off-line; deflectors off-line; sensors are at twenty-one percent; long range communications off-line--"

"That's enough," interrupted Knight, "In brief."

"We are dead in space, emergency power reserves are fluctuating--I estimate less than ten hours until the energy reserves are completely gone."

"Hail the Osbourne and Defiant," ordered Knight tersely.

"This is Perevoz standing by Sir."

"Is the Phantom all right?" asked T'Senishra, the concern evident in her voice.

"No," answered Knight. "We took heavy damage from a passing stellar cloud. What's your status?"

"Not good, Captain. Something seems to be making the Osbourne crew exceptionally irritable. A couple of fights have already broken out--our medical staff just can't deal with the flood of patients," reported Perevoz, the sound of her voice deeply serious, "Any repairs we made to the power grid were pretty much for naught--though most of our systems are still intact."

"Give me some good news, First," uttered Knight.

"I'm afraid I have little to offer Captain, though the Doctor has already diagnosed the medical problem. The anomaly is overstimulating the nervous systems of most of the humanoid crewmembers. Since the Osbourne has been here the longest with a crew that's still alive, they are experiencing the worst of the problem," recited T'Senishra. "We are currently investigating possible courses of action to take against the overstimulation."

"I'm afraid we can't help in that matter, Commander. Two of the three primary cores are off-line and the third is functioning at less than fifty percent capacity--I'm unable to pass along any helpful information," said Knight, shaking his head slowly.

"More bad news, Sir," began Iv'Oor. "I've checked our current position, and we are no longer in neutral space. We've phased some five light-years inside Tholian space."

"I regret to inform you I have more bad news, Captain. Lieutenant Hersch and his team managed to restore some sensor capability and we've determined that the Defiant will phase out of normal space again--to where, we cannot say."

"Osbourne, do you have transporters or shuttlecraft running?" asked Knight hesitantly.

"No Sir." Perevoz paused. "Commander Guitarrez also tells me we don't have access to any useful information--the feedback the Osbourne first encountered corrupted most of its database files."

"Commander, I assume that the Defiant's transporters and shuttlecraft are not operational as well."

"That is correct Sir. We do not have enough available power to open the shuttlebay door, let alone power up a shuttle."

Knight closed his eyes and sighed a heavy sigh. "Lieutenant Perevoz, see if you and the Engineering teams can't piggy-back the Osbourne's distress systems onto the Defiant's. Use a maximum range setting."

"We'll get started on it right away, but the range is unlikely to carry very far past the border," replied Perevoz.

"Whatever you can do, Lieutenant. Time is of the essence."

An hour later the situation was not much better. Knight typically disregarded the religion of his childhood, but in the most desperate of times, that same religion was the only thing holding him together. He sat helpless on the Bridge--not being an engineer, there was little he could actually do to repair the ship. If nothing else, he hated the feeling of being helpless.

Knight's silent contemplation was abruptly interrupted by a shrill alarm coming from the Tactical station. "Report!"

Rojc set about interpreting the sensor's findings. Having nothing better to do, he had written a small program to sound an alert if there was sensor contact with any starship; a futile effort considering the sensors were barely functioning. After a moment, he had an idea of what he was looking at. "More bad news Captain. There's a Tholian patrol coming about--their shields and weapons are activated, from what I can tell."

Knight leapt out of his seat. "Onscreen! Can we hail them?"

"That particular communication relay is malfunctioning, Sir. We can receive, but not send hails," answered Senel from OPS.

"Damn it! Can't we get some kind of signal out?" Knight was concerned to say the least--Tholians had a history of shooting first and to hell with questions.

"They should be receiving our distress call," reported Senel. He paused. "Captain, they are hailing us."

The blurry image of six menacing Tholian Webspinners was replaced by that of the Tholian commander. "I am Commander Vrax of the Territorial Annex of the Tholian Assembly. You have invaded our space with three vessels! We demand an explanation!"

"I am Captain Xanthus Knight of the Federation Starship Phantom. I assure you, we have no hostile intent," began Knight, hoping to placate the Tholian Commander. "We have suffered severe damage and accidentally drifted into your space--"

"An accident you will not live to regret!" shouted Vrax, "You lie like the Federation dog you are! Why else would you direct your "distress call" towards the border if not to signal a raiding party?"

"Scan our vessels, Commander," Knight implored of the alien. "You will see I am telling you the truth--we have sustained heavy damage."

"No doubt in battle with our fearless brethren! We shall avenge them with your destruction!" The Tholians abruptly terminated the communication.

"Shit!" cursed Knight. "Get them back on the comm. Use smoke signals if you have to!"

Senel quizzically raised an eyebrow at the Captain's remark, but chose not to question his terminology as he searched for a way to signal the Tholians with the equipment they still had operating. No such equipment seemed appropriate for the task. "I am sorry, Sir. There is nothing I can do."

"The Tholians are coming about, Captain. Our shields and weaponry are off-line," reported Rojc.

Knight tapped his comm-badge. "Phantom to Osbourne and Defiant--tell me one of you has functioning communications equipment!"

T'Senishra was the first to respond from the Defiant. "We have fully functional comm equipment Captain, but the Engineering team and Mr. Nicot tell me it will take several hours to route power to the appropriate systems."

"Perevoz here Captain. We've tried hailing the Tholians but they aren't interested in talking."

"Tell them we surrender, Lieutenant! Anything, just re-establish communications with them," ordered Knight fervently.

"It's no good Captain--they aren't acknowledging our signal. And we also don't have any offensive or defensive capabilities, not that they'd do much good in the first place."

Knight briefly thought of suggesting the Osbourne try to make a run for it if they had warp drive, but quickly dismissed it. That would get them killed all that much quicker, and Knight wasn't willing to let anyone die or admit defeat quite yet.

"The Tholians are setting up their Web--estimated time to completion, five minutes," reported Rojc, "After that I calculate it'll be about another hour or two before the Web crushes all three ships."

"I don't think the Osbourne crew has that kind of time left regardless, Captain. Whatever this anomaly is doing to them is literally driving them mad--we're doing our best to keep them isolated and separated from one another, but it's only a matter of time before their fury gets the best of them--and us."

"First, any progress on a deterrent to the effects of the anomaly?"

"Doctor Arona has extracted all possible useful data from the Defiant's crew. We are unable to get access to most of the computer so our efforts have hit a wall. I should add, Captain, that the madness shall soon begin to affect the Phantom's crew and away teams shortly."

"We need options, people," barked Knight harshly. "I refuse to just lay down and die!" Knight stopped himself and got his emotions under control. "Shift all your work to accessing the computer cores--the cure for this should be in there somewhere. If the Web hasn't crushed us by that time, we'll deal with that problem then. Phantom out."

Nethrax looked at his commanding officer with a hint of uncertainty. "Are you sure it is wise to destroy them without substantial evidence, Vrax?"

Vrax made a high-pitched buzz that clearly indicated his displeasure in his first officer's question. "They are in our space, that is all that we must know."

Ledron, the Tholian command ship's Operations officer hesitantly decided to support the first officer in his questioning. "We are detecting some sort of interspace phenomena, just as they are describing, m'Lord. Indeed, we have determined that some of their crew's life signs are becoming weak or anomalous."

"Yes," said Nethrax, bobbing in agreement. "And the damage to the large vessel is consistent with the effects of a passing class-9 particle cloud on a vessel with no deflectors!"

Vrax stomped his feet twice in succession. "Enough!" he shouted. "Your place is not to question!"

The crew somberly looked away from their leader, ashamed of themselves for being rebuked.

Vrax awkwardly jerked his head, a new plan suddenly having presented itself to him. "Operations! Then you can confirm that the Federations will die?"

Ledron bobbed up and down. "Yes m'Lord. It may take several hours though."

"That will do," the Tholian commander answered chillingly. He turned to his Tactical Officer. "Tethor! Continue to have the Web sap the Federation ships' energy, but do not have it crush them! When they are all dead, we shall take the information we desire from their databanks. It will be a glorious victory for the Assembly!"