Broken Bow - Diane Carey [24]
“They can stay on duty. We’re not dismissing them. We’re just horning in.”
Archer put down his suffering chicken leg. “Come on. I’ve had it with sitting around being socially unacceptable. Let’s do some serious shaking down.”
Ten minutes later they were on the bridge, with the primary crew mustered. Malcolm Reed was already on the bridge for some reason. Hoshi showed up a little groggy—she’d been asleep—and Mayweather appeared only a moment after her.
The on-deck bridge crew was uneasy with the appearance of the primary watch, but seemed reassured when all they had to do was stand aside for a few minutes. Any irritation was quickly swallowed in the anticipation of going to warp four point five so many hours early. They could massage their egos later—at higher warp—and enjoy it a lot more.
“Let’s all check our readouts,” Archer ordered as he took the command chair. “Sing out if you see any irregularities. How have the ratios been?”
“Steady as a stone, sir,” Mayweather reported, checking his tie-in to the engineering deck. If anything went wrong down there, he’d be the first to see it on his console, with T’Pol a fast second.
At the science station, she said nothing. Archer could tell, even so, that she disapproved of this early risk.
Well, it wasn’t too early for her to have a dose of what made humans tick, other than fresh meat. Archer paused a few moments and listened to the ship. The bleeps and whirrs, the soft hum of warp drive, the twinkle of systems constantly diagnosing themselves. He wanted to memorize those sounds as they were now, doing the right things, feeling the right amounts of energy flow, so he could tell when they didn’t sound right.
“Everything seems okay to me,” he said, and looked at Mayweather. “Why don’t you try four-three?”
Mayweather’s shoulders tightened as he worked his helm controls. The sound of the ship made a slight change in pitch—the engines, increasing everything on an incremental level, across the board.
No calls from Tucker ... so far, so good.
“Warp four point three, sir,” Mayweather reported.
They waited and listened. Would something happen?
Or had it just happened, and this was it? This was the sound of success.
“Not much of a change,” Reed observed.
“I don’t know,” Hoshi spoke up. “Does anybody feel that?”
Archer looked at her. “Feel what?”
“Those vibrations ... like little tremors.”
T’Pol cast her a cool glance. “You’re imagining it.”
Archer thought about what they had said. His science officer neither saw nor felt anything, but his motion-sensor super-ear did.
Of course she did, right? There were bound to be tiny increases in everything. They had just gone from really fast to really-really fast. They had just shortened their trip by several hours, even on the galactic scale. That was a lot of change.
Sure she felt something.
Mayweather was looking at him.
Archer nodded. “Bring us to four-four, Ensign.”
This time the ship shuddered, and everybody felt it. Sounds thrummed from deep places with the new acceleration. Vibrations racked the deck under their feet.
Hoshi grabbed the sides of her seat. “There! What do you call that!”
“The warp reactor is recalibrating,” T’Pol explained coldly. “It shouldn’t happen again.”
But an alarm went off at Reed’s tactical station.
Hoshi jumped. “Now what?”
“The deflector’s resequencing,” Reed told her. “It’s perfectly normal.”
T’Pol eyed her own board, but said, “Perhaps you’d like to go to your quarters and lie down.”
Hoshi cast her a provoked glance. “Ponfo mirann,” she said. Vulcan for “butt out”?
Archer watched the women. They were, more or less, a microcosm of the whole crew and all his problems.
“I was instructed,” T’Pol responded, “to speak English during this mission. I’d appreciate your respecting that.”
Archer interrupted, “It’s easy to get a little jumpy when you’re traveling at thirty million kilometers a second. Should be old hat in a week’s time.”
Another alarm tone broke over his words, causing Hoshi to flinch again, but Archer just struck the com panel. “Archer.”
“This is