Death of a Neutron Star - Eric Kotani [68]
She climbed back to her feet and pounded her fist on the panel. "Damn." She tapped her comm badge. "All engineering staff report on the double. Drop everything you are doing and get here."
She glanced around at the others staring at her. Then she turned and yanked off the cover of the panel, digging into the burnt and fused wires. No point in waiting for help. Every second "was going to count if this was going to be fixed.
And they didn't have too many seconds left.
A moment after she had been standing on the bridge of Voyager, the transport beam reassembled Janeway's molecules on the bridge of the Invincible, beside the captain's stained chair.
She glanced around through the smoke-filled room, crowded with equipment. The floor was covered in garbage and equipment, seemingly discarded at random over a period of time.
She took a shallow breath and then coughed. "What a smell."
"Qavok are known for their unsanitary living conditions," Tyla said.
Janeway laughed, then coughed again. It was going to take ten showers to get this smell out of her hair and off her skin.
"Controls." She pointed at one set of panels.
Tyla nodded and moved over and sat down in the large chair. She studied the panel for only a moment, then gently played her hand across the board, firing a port-side thruster just enough to right the course and keep the orbit stable.
Seven finished studying the inside of the ship with a recorder. "The Qavok would be ignored by the Borg," she said. "Nothing to offer the Collective."
Janeway laughed, somehow without breathing.
Seven stood behind Tyla and studied the panel, then leaned forward and keyed some numbers into the controls beside Tyla. "The coordinates. We must arrive in precisely three minutes and seventeen seconds from this mark. Not one millisecond early or late."
"Understood," Tyla said.
Janeway watched as the young Lekk pilot slowly moved the Qavok warship around and nudged it in the right direction with only a few bumps.
"Nice," Janeway said. "Keep us on track."
"Janeway to Voyager. We're set here and moving. Should have brought air tanks, but otherwise we're fine. Follow us down at a safe distance."
Chakotay's voice came back clear and strong. "Voyager here. Understood, except we have a slight problem. B'Elanna hasn't gotten warp drive back on-line yet and Tom's a little hesitant to go too low with only thrusters and impulse. Afraid we might not be able to pull safely out of the gravity well."
"Understood," Janeway said. "Just pace us and stay close enough to keep a transporter lock on us in case this goes bad."
"Will do," Chakotay said. "Out."
Janeway moved down and stood over Tyla's right shoulder. Seven looked up at her with a raised eyebrow. "Warp drive is out?"
"Yes," Janeway said. "I know, I know."
Without warp, they were in the process of speeding up their own deaths by exactly two point three nine milliseconds.
CHAKOTAY MOVED OVER AND STOOD NEXT TO ENSIGN Kim, just in case he needed any help with the transporter. There was no way he was going to lose Kathryn, Seven, and Tyla at this point.
"Everything is functioning, Commander," Kim said. "Transporter lock is solid on all three."
"Good," he said. But he didn't move away. He just felt better being where the action was.
On the big screen the Qavok warship flashed across as an ungainly blemish against the backdrop of the beautiful, swirling binary. Unlike the Xorm ship, there was nothing good-looking at all about a Qavok warship.
"Three minutes for beam-out from Invincible," Kim said.
"Another countdown," Tom said. "We're going for a countdown record today."
"Seems that way, doesn't it?" Chakotay said.
Voyager jolted slightly and Tom shook his