Equinox - Diane Carey [30]
"If they can learn one thing, they can learn another. They'll figure out what we do to stop them and they'll
either work faster or they'll just outguess us. It shortens our time limit. Is everyone all right?"
"Everyone here is. We don't have any reports from the rest of the ship."
"Have security check on all personnel. Order the crew to work in teams of two or more. I don't want anyone left alone."
"Aye, Captain."
"Chakotay, meet me in the briefing room. Round up everybody who's been working on this. Have them get their data ready but tell them to keep the processing power levels low. We've got to start conserving now, before things get worse. If we don't get answers soon, we 're going to start paying a price. And I don't like toll roads. Go to Red Alert."
"We've examined the schematics of your multiphasic chamber. It can be adapted."
Kathryn Janeway examined the cutaway as Seven of Nine described her analysis. She felt comfortable, but uneasy. Odd, the differentiation. She knew the comfort came from the presence of Chakotay, Tuvok, and Seven.
The unease-was that from Ransom, Burke, and Gilmore? Was she so unused to having strangers aboard, human strangers, that she couldn't relax about it?
The cutaway graphics of Voyager and Equinox showed every deck and section of the ships, highlighted with a complex grid of force fields, under attack in what seemed a random pattern but apparently was not.
Tuvok picked up when Seven finished, to explain, "We intend to create an autoinitiating security grid. The moment an alien invades either ship, a force field will surround it."
Seven tapped another control while Janeway resisted asking obvious technical questions that they'd handle anyway.
"Once we modify our field generator," Seven said, "to emit multiphasic frequencies, it will power the security grids on both ships."
"How long will it take?" Janeway brass-tacked.
Tuvok shrugged with just his eyebrows. "Approximately fourteen hours."
Engineer Gilmore from the Equinox flitted her gaze nervously between Janeway and her own captain. "We don't know when they'll break through again. We may not last that long."
Chakotay, who had apparently become friends with Gilmore, came up with an option. "We could cut that time in half if we evacuate all personnel from the Equinox. . . focus our efforts here on Voyager."
Was it just a suggestion? Or had he already posed the unsavory idea to his new friend?
Janeway watched-no, they all looked surprised, taken aback by the idea of abandoning a ship they had so long fought to keep flying. Another feeling she found hauntingly familiar.
Max Burke looked at Rudy Ransom. In fact, everybody was now looking at Ransom. Conflict began to brew softly beneath the surface of cooperation.
"I don't mean to force the issue," Ransom slowly began, "but I am prepared to return to the Equinox with my crew."
The next moment passed awkwardly. Suddenly they had a big problem on their hands.
Janeway stewed as she waited. She really shouldn't order another captain to abandon his own ship. Regulations might back her up, but there was a tacit understanding, generations old, that the captain himself would have to make that decision-and it usually involved a ship that couldn't limp another inch. Equinox wasn't to that point yet. She was still salvageable and moving under her own power.
But the time ... there wasn't time ...
Lose one ship and perhaps prevail, or keep both ships and weaken the shields irrecoverably?
She had her own ship to protect. Standing poised on the brink of sacrificing another captain's ship for her own, she hated her command.
"What's the protocol for this situation, anyway?" Ransom asked. 'Two ships, two captains ... who gets the last word?"
As a scientist rushed to command, it wasn't unusual that he didn't know. Troubling, though. Janeway held her breath at the idea of having to tell him.
"Starfleet Regulation One Hundred Ninety-one, Article Fourteen," she said, rather mournfully. " 'In a combat situation involving