Equinox - Diane Carey [37]
When he rematerialized on board Equinox, sure enough the sensation of uncertainty flowed completely away and that old possessiveness replaced it, as if he were suddenly filled with purpose. This was their ship,
the ship they had fought for and which had fought for them, holding up beyond anyone's gues s that she could. Even her designers had set limits and said she couldn't be stressed beyond them. Those limits had been broken the first year. She'd gotten them through. Now she was hanging here, being good, waiting for someone to take her reins again.
Minimal power pulsed, but in more places than before. Repairs had been going on continually. Most of the Voyager crew was gone now, no longer trying to save, repair, or clean up the Equinox. Lessing and Gilmore changed places on the transporter pad with the last of the other ship's crew as they left with cases of supplies. Salvage ...
Without speaking another word, Lessing led the way to the bridge, Maria following. That was all right. She was uncertain. Lessing tried not to think about this. The captain was waiting.
On the bridge, Rudy and Max were already there, looking at a monitor that displayed the schematic of the force-field generator. Others in the crew lingered around Lessing nodded to them. It was good to see them again, without the peppering of somebody else's crew.
"Are we alone?" Rudy asked, looking up at his crew.
"Only Equinox crew on board now," Max confirmed, checking the bioscans from encrypted combadges all over the ship. "We've managed to clear out the others without their realizing it. Most of the Voyager crew assigned here thinks some of their own are still here.
Oh ... wait a minute. Somebody just beamed, down in engineering."
"Never mind that for now," Rudy said. "It's probably just a salvage team or that Borg girl finishing her capacitor transfers. Just make sure we're comm-insulated."
"We are," Maria assured. "What happens to Voyager?"
Rudy Ransom gazed at his last engineer with insecure sympathy. She hadn't said, "What happens to them when we leave, when we abandon them, when we betray them, when we split up the only Federation unity in the Delta Quadrant?" He knew all those things were running in her mind, and in all their minds. They'd found friends, discovered they couldn't trust those friends as much as they wanted to, and now would have to be bad friends themselves. Such was life here. They would handle it, as always. He could never do this if he didn't believe that.
"They've got weapons," Max answered so the captain didn't have to. "Shields, a full crew ... they'll survive."
Rudy avoided grinning in approval at him, but he was proud. What that word survive had come to mean to them-a virtue and a victory all in one word.
"Maybe we should abandon ship," Lessing said with hesitation. "Try to forget everything that's happened here..."
"A shower and a hot meal," Ransom bristled. "That's all it took to make some of us forget what's at stake here." He turned to face them, noting Lessing's clear
shame. "We're proceeding as planned. Any further objections?"
He knew Lessing hadn't been making an objection, exactly, only posing a last-ditch chance to think about this, but Ransom was done thinking. He'd been done for hours.
"I need every one of you to give me your best," the captain challenged. "As you always have."
They were already all with him. He could tell. Even Gilmore, in her typical cloak of doubts, sadly and warmly nodded.
"This won't be easy," Burke said, consulting a wall monitor's display. "The generator's located on deck eleven, next to the warp plasma manifold. We can't get a clean lock without boosting the signal." He looked to his right. "Maria, we need you to set aside your claustrophobia and crawl through the access port to set up the Transport Enhancers."
If there was anything to overcome, she was already handling it. "Understood."
"We'll have to take the internal