“Hmph,” Torres said, taking the canteen back and replacing the cap. “Interesting.” Looking up at the sky, she asked, “Sun will be up soon. If it’s this bad now, we’ll want to be under cover by the time it rises. How much farther do we have to go?”
“Approximately three-quarters of a kilometer,” Seven replied.
Torres smiled. “That’s not bad. We can do that in a half-hour if we keep up this pace.”
“Yes,” she said, surprised at how reasonable Torres sounded.
“As long as we’re going in the right direction.”
“If you’re so afraid I’m taking us in the wrong direction, please check your tricorder.”
“I don’t want to waste the batteries,” Torres said, starting again. “And it’s okay. I trust you. Well, your nanoprobes. But, wait, didn’t you say they were getting tired?”
“I said nothing of the sort,” Seven said, following the engineer.
* * *
“I’m going to power up the secondaries now, Captain,” Joe Carey said, but before he did, he walked up behind the captain and tried to draw her away from the couplings. “I’d feel better if you stepped away from them.”
The captain started when he touched her, but otherwise did not move. “I’m okay here, Joe. The coupling will hold.”
Carey sighed and backed away. She was probably right. Hell, not probably. Of course she was right. In all his years in the service, he had never known a commanding officer who knew so much about her ship’s engine room. While most captains had a working knowledge of their ship’s power plant, few, if any, knew their way so intimately around the engine’s guts as Kathryn Janeway. If Carey hadn’t known for a fact that she had been a science officer before she was a captain, he would have bet holodeck time that Janeway had been a microspanner-wielding, atom-crunching, antimatter-pushing, lubricant-stained engineer.
“It’s just the way this radiation is degrading the bioneural systems, Captain,” Carey said, then let the thought trail off. He was finding it difficult to focus, though the captain had explained that was due to the rads coming in through the shields. Refocusing, he finished, “If another circuit blows out, we’re going to lose the secondaries again.”
“I know, Joe,” the captain said, not taking her eyes off the coupling. “Harry told me half the packs on the bridge and the Montpelier burst. But if we get shields up to full power, the bio-neurals won’t be vulnerable.” She flicked her eyes up to Carey’s. “So throw the switch.”
“Aye, Captain,” Carey said and was grateful when she broke her gaze away. When she was like this, looking into the captain’s eyes was like staring into the engine core without filters: beautiful, yes; thrilling, even, but the fire would burn right through you. He turned back to the console—another one of Chief Torres’s jury-rigged masterpieces—and triggered the sequence. A moment later, indicators showed power pulsing through the secondaries.
“How’s it looking, Joe?”
Carey studied the flow and, even as he worked, felt the fog that had been impeding him lift a little. Sensor readouts that he had struggled to understand only minutes ago were now looking like old friends. “Good, Captain. It looks good.” He straightened, pleased, but suddenly feeling every ache in his body. “We’re dumping more power into the shields than the specs say we should….”
“But B’Elanna and Seven have altered the shields extensively over the past year,” Captain Janeway said. “With some of the Borg modifications.”
“Right,” Carey said. “The only problem with that is we don’t have a baseline. We don’t know how long the system will continue to function because we’ve never pushed it to failure.”
“Give me an estimate,” the captain said as she shrugged back into her uniform jacket. A loose strand of hair fell over her eyes and she blew it away with a puff of air from the corner of her mouth.
Carey hated this kind of moment. In the end, he knew, this was why B’Elanna Torres had been made chief engineer instead of him. Working with Torres for four years, he had learned more about line engineering than he had in the previous fifteen, and one of the most important things he had learned is that a chief has to occasionally pull answers out of thin air. He shook his head and felt his eyes go out of focus. “If we were dealing with standard Starfleet systems, I’d say eight hours. Maybe ten. This is a Torres/Seven special, though. I’d give it fourteen hours.”
“And then?”
“Then either the primaries or the secondaries blow out and the core system cascades down into failure.”
The captain smiled grimly. “Come on, Joe. Give it to me straight….”
Carey grinned in response. “That’s the only way I know how, Captain.”
Janeway nodded. “All right. Stay here. Babysit it. Read it stories if you have to, but keep the shields up. I’ll go figure out some way to get us out of here…wherever here is.”
As she strode from engineering, Carey heard Commander Chakotay summon the captain on her combadge. “Janeway here. I’m on my way, Chakotay, but we have to keep this short….” To Carey’s eyes, she looked as fresh and focused as she had when she’d strode into his inner sanctum two hours earlier. He checked his chronometer and calculated that the captain had been on duty for over twenty-four hours. And here I am feeling like I’m ready to collapse onto the deck. Pulling himself up straight in his boots, Carey went in search of techs to watch over the core system. And a cup of coffee. It was going to be a long night.
* * *
Last to arrive in the conference room, Janeway was surprised to find most of the seats occupied by Monorhans. Not only were Captain Ziv and his entire hara there, but also the two newcomers, Sem and Morsa. The rih-hara-tan rose and introduced herself briefly, but she seemed to sense the tension in the captain’s demeanor and kept her comments short and simple. “Wishing to understand as much as we can, Captain, we asked Mr. Neelix if we could listen to your discussion. We will remain silent unless one of us has to offer a comment that has a direct bearing on our situation.” When Sem said, “We will remain silent,” Janeway knew, she meant, “I will remain silent.” None of the others would speak unless their leader spoke first.
Harry Kim, Tuvok, the Doctor, and Chakotay were in the usual spots, the latter looking battered and weak from his misadventure on the shuttle deck. Janeway nodded to her first officer as she slipped into her customary spot, though she did not seat herself. If she sat, she knew, she would begin to feel precisely how tired she was. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get started. We’re working against the clock, so keep your statements brief. Harry, you first. What can you tell us about where we are?”
“We’re in a subspace fold, Captain.”
Janeway held up her finger for Harry to halt, then looked at Sem. “Do you understand what he means?”
Sem nodded. “Before you arrived, Ensign Kim delivered a brief lecture on the nature of subspace. I cannot say I understood it all, but the concept is clear: We are trapped in a layer that exists under what we consider ‘normal’ space.”
Janeway dipped her head, impressed with Sem’s grasp. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. How did we get here, Harry? And how do we get out?”
“The energy wave from Monorha’s surface triggered a subspace inversion. I found references in the library computer to similar phenomena near the Bajoran wormhole. Once every fifty years…”
“No history lesson, Harry,” Janeway warned.
“Right. Sorry, Captain. The energy wave tore a hole in ‘normal’ space. As soon as that happened, within point one zero zero one seconds, the system restabilized, but in that blink of an eye, Voyager was swept into the pocket. Normal space and subspace found equilibrium and we were left in between.”
The captain shook her head in wonder. “I’ve never heard of anything like this, Harry. How is it possible?”
“Anywhere else in the universe, Captain, and I don’t think it would be. I’ve been able to work my way through some of the sensor logs from o
ur trip to Monorha. The fabric of local space is riddled with weak areas, spots where inversions could occur.”
“We didn’t spot them before?”
Kim shook his head, frowning. “I don’t have an explanation for that, Captain, or an excuse.”
“Except,” Chakotay offered, “no one has ever seen anything like this before.”
Lowering his head, Kim refused to take the proffered excuse.
Janeway didn’t press the point, but neither did she support Chakotay’s justification. Nothing she could say at this point would alleviate his self-recrimination. “All right then,” she continued. “If I’m getting this right, we’re in a pocket of subspace that’s very similar to the subspace bubble we create around ourselves to go to warp speed. Correct?”
“Correct,” Harry said.
“So what will happen if we engage the warp engines?”
“We’d substitute our bubble for the fold.”
“But there’s a reason why we shouldn’t do that, isn’t there?”
Tuvok spoke up. “Correct, Captain. If we engage the warp engines, we will emerge from this fold, but we do not know precisely where. It may be in the Monorhan system or halfway across the Delta Quadrant.”
Janeway felt herself nodding, comprehension settling into her bones. “Because we didn’t have the navigational computer recording our coordinates as we entered the fold.” She pondered their situation for a moment, then asked, “Can we map this fold, get some sense of its size and topography?”
“There are no landmarks in the fold, no stars or other bodies,” Tuvok explained, “so we have begun to drop markers. Unfortunately, the radiation begins to affect them almost immediately.”
“Then we need to rig small, powerful shield generators for them. That’s our top priority. We’ll need to know as much about the fold as possible.”
Tuvok nodded. “That would be logical, Captain. I will begin work at once.”
Turning back to Harry, Janeway asked, “If we need to go to warp, could we do it? Could we find a way to give the navigational computers the information we need to emerge where we want? And whatever it was that affected us in the Monorhan system, is it in here, too?”
“I don’t know. I need more time…”
“We don’t have much time, Ensign,” Janeway snapped, slapping the table with the palm of her hand. “Fourteen hours maximum. Then the shields go down and the core blows.”
Harry’s head snapped back like he had been slapped. “Yes, Captain,” he said. “Understood.”
“We need to know if we can get out of here,” she said. “I don’t want to leave B’Elanna and Seven behind. I’ll stay here just as long as you tell me I can, but not one second longer. Is everyone clear about their jobs?”
Everyone, even the Monorhans, nodded, all of them grim-faced.
“Then get to work.”
Chapter 10
“This is what we’ve been looking for?” B’Elanna asked in a whisper.
“It is the spot from where the readings emanated,” Seven replied also in hushed tones.
They were lying flat on their bellies, their heads level with the swell of a hillside, both B’Elanna and Seven facing into the east, where they could see the rim of the sun rising. Below them was a low, long building perhaps a hundred meters on the short side and two hundred on the long, made from corrugated steel and adobe bricks. No windows, only one door. Fifty meters out from the building stood a high fence topped with razor wire. A series of tall lamps threw watery pools of light across the courtyard. Just at the edge of every circle of light, B’Elanna saw a guard armed with a heavy rifle. She counted four on the side of the building they faced and guessed there were at least that many on the other. No roads approached the site.
“Doesn’t exactly scream ‘officially sanctioned government outpost,’ does it?”
“I would not walk up to the gate and knock to be let in.”
“Then what do we do?”
Seven pulled out her tricorder and ran a brief scan. “Utilizing our superior technological resources,” she said, “I will devise a plan that will permit us to evade detection.”
“Or,” B’Elanna said, “we could just shoot them with our phasers.”
“A waste of resources,” Seven said. “We may need the batteries later.”
Was that a joke? B’Elanna wondered, but only said, “To shoot our way out?”
“My method is more efficient.”
“But it will waste time. We need to contact Voyager as quickly as possible.”
“And what if one of your phaser shots inadvertently damages their equipment?” Seven asked. “Or someone inside hears our shots and deliberately destroys what we seek?”
Hefting her phaser, B’Elanna considered their options. She was really beginning to hate Seven’s being right all the time. “All right,” she said. “Stealth. If stealth fails, then we shoot.”
“That is how these situations tend to unfold,” Seven replied and began to creep down the side of the hill. “Especially when you are involved.”
* * *
Tom wished he had thought to bring a hot pad. The heat from the bottom of the plate was singeing his palm. “Harry? C’mon, Harry. Open the door. I’m burning my hand.” Tom pressed the buzzer to his friend’s quarters again. “Harry? I know you’re in there. The computer told me.” The omelet smelled good and he was tempted, very tempted, but there had been enough mushrooms left to make only one and, well, a promise was a promise. He’d try one more time. If Harry didn’t answer, he’d have a nibble. Just to make sure it was still good. “Harry? Really. Flesh burning now. I’m going to leave if you…”
The door slipped open. Tom poked his head in and inhaled the rich smell of loamy earth. Guess we should have done a better job of insulating those mushroom-growing racks, Tom decided. The room was dark except for a single lamp next to the library computer station. “Harry? You there? I brought you some supper. Omelet, Harry. Mmmm. Mushrooms!”
“Just put it down” was the response. Tom could see Harry in the pool of light. The top of the desk was littered with a half-dozen other padds and a jumble of data cubes. “I’ll eat later.”
“If it gets cold,” Tom said, “it will take on the consistency of plastic foam. I refuse to sacrifice the only usable mushrooms in the crop because you’re having a bad day.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“How can you not be hungry? According to Neelix, you haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“Tell Neelix to mind his own business.”
“I have,” Tom said setting the plate on the low table near the desk. “But he’s constitutionally incapable.”
Without looking up from his work, Harry asked, “What are you doing here, Tom? I thought you and the doctor were inoculating everyone on the ship.”
“Right,” Tom said, opening the medpack at his hip and pulling out the hypospray. “You’ll be pleased to know you’re the last. Could it be because you ignored all the calls from sickbay? Possibly.”
“I’m working on something, Tom. The captain needs to know if the radiation in this fold is going to prevent us from going to warp.”
“Yeah, I heard. Neelix told me about the meeting. Sorry she tore into you like that.”
“It’s okay,” Harry said. “She was just trying to get me to do my job….”
“Harry, there isn’t anyone on board this ship who works harder than you do.”
“Except the captain,” Harry countered.
Tom reflected on that, then nodded in agreement. Pressing the hypo to Harry’s forearm, he injected the drug. “If you feel queasy later, it’s probably the drug, not radiation sickness. Having something in your stomach would help.”
Harry looked up at his friend in mild confusion. “All this mothering is getting on my nerves.”
Tom shrugged. “With B’Elanna off ship, I have a lot of extra mothering to burn off.”
“Were you able to pull up sensor data for the shuttle?”
Tom nodded and felt his face go numb. “Some. It didn’t look good, but we didn’t see the end. She might have been able to regain control. B’Elanna’s a good pilot.”
“Or they could’ve beamed out,” Harry said, trying to sound positive.
“Maybe. Either way, they’re probably not in great moods right now. Monorha isn’t what I’d call a convivial vacation spot.” Tom scanned the debris on the desk, but wasn’t really looking at anything. He knew the best thing he could do was stay busy, stay focused, and not let his mind wander to worst-case scenarios. “Until you science whizzes explain where we’re going, the best use of my time is to hand out injections.” He pointed the empty hypospray at Harry’s computer. “You figured this out yet?”
“No,” Harry replied tensely. “I’m still just getting my head around it. Preliminary scans say that this fold is flooded with the same radiation that permeated the Monorhan system, which doesn’t make sense.”
“Why not?” Tom asked. “If we were sucked in here when the fold cracked open, wouldn’t the radiation come in, too?”
“Sure,” Harry said. “Some, but not the amount I’m detecting.”
“So no going to warp.”
“No, we can go to warp. I’ve determined that for sure. We just won’t know where we’re going.”
Tom had heard this grim assessment from Neelix earlier. His chest grew tight as he pondered the idea of going to warp and emerging in a random corner of the universe. Not only would they be leaving Seven and B’Elanna to fend for themselves, there was absolutely no way to know where Voyager would appear. What if they ended up back at the beginning of their journey or, worse yet, smack dab in the center of Borg-controlled space? He didn’t want to think about it. “Maybe the space contained by the fold is very small and it’s concentrating the radiation.”
“I considered that. But then I checked the topographical survey Tuvok is building.” Harry turned the library computer screen so Tom could see. “See, it’s big.”