Equinox - Diane Carey [42]
Unlike the utilitarian tidiness of Voyager's labs, this area was cluttered and mangled, its deck almost hidden under wreckage.
Once his ocular program adjusted, he began to move through the wreckage, surveying the lab, his goal the multiphasic chamber only ten steps away. Instantly he saw the chamber and its unexpected contents. Inside the stasis compartment was a twisted, petrified mass, obviously organic, but crystallized. Its football-shaped skull was eyeless, its mouth gaping, frozen.
No one had reported this. As the ship's only doctor, he would have been the one to be consulted.
"I've found the multiphasic chamber," he reported as he opened his tricorder to analyze the corpse. "There's some land of organic mass inside. It appears to be a member of the alien species, but its cell structures have vitrified."
Moving the tricorder, he shifted analysis from organic to mechanical.
"This is more than just a stasis chamber," he reported. "It's some kind of matter-conversion technology. Stand by ... there's a control port here. Hmmm..."
From Voyager, Tuvok was monitoring and recording the analysis. "Doctor?"
Strange. The Vulcan sounded impatient. Vulcans shouldn't get impatient. That was against their programming.
"The chamber," The Doctor continued, "contains a polaron grid and a submolecular sequencer. It looks like it was designed to convert the alien cell structures into some kind of crystalline compound."
Then Seven's voice, "That function was not specified in their schematics."
"1 have a feeling there's a lot here they didn't 'specify.' " Moving to a work station, he enabled the monitor and read the alphanumeric data scrolling anxiously on the screen. "I've accessed their research log. They're encrypted ... but judging by the file headings, they've performed this procedure dozens of times."
Informed now, he crossed to a specimen stand that held a vial filled with a dark granular fluid.
"More of the alien compound," he reported, "but it's been biochemically altered. They've extracted the base proteins. Its molecular structure is most unusual..."
"Can you be more specific?" Tuvok asked.
"It appears to store a great deal of nucleogenic energy. I'm not an engineer, but I'd say they were trying to convert this material into a source of power."
Once activated, a nearby wall monitor provided an unexpected correlation for a research lab, a schematic of the exotically modified warp core. Why would that have anything to do with ...
"Doctor," Tuvok asked, "can you discern whether
the specimens were alive or dead at the time of their..."
"Their 'use'? I can't tell that yet. I understand the gravity of your question. Tuvok... you'd better notify the captain."
"I'm going to miss this ship."
Though Max Burke openly appreciated the talents of a passing female Voyager crew member striding past him and Rudy Ransom, Ransom wished his first officer would keep his eyes to himself and his mind on their problem. The ship was almost ready-their own ship.
"Once we're back on Earth," Ransom told him sternly, "there'll be plenty of pretty girls. Status?"
"Ready on all fronts," Burke reported, virtually whispering, "the transport enhancers are in place. And Noah's created the subroutine to mask Voyager's internal sensors."
"Power couplings?"
"Bypass controls have been routed to our bridge. All you need to do is say, 'Energize.' "
Ransom paused as someone else walked by and disappeared. "Janeway wants to bring the security grid online at nineteen hundred hours. We'll have to act before then. Tell the others to-"
As they rounded a T-sect, two security guards strode toward them with undisguised purpose, one with his hand on