Equinox - Diane Carey [51]
"Sickbay here."
"Did you find anything?"
Irritated to a breaking point, she grew instantly impatient when he hesitated with what should've been a yes or no answer.
"Could you... be more specific?" he asked.
Could a computer lose its memory?
Blistering from her encounter with Chakotay and now this new surge of assault, Janeway leaned closer. "Neural patterns, cortical scans-anything that could help us program the universal translator!"
What a swollen boil it was to state the bloody obvious under these conditions.
What was taking him so long!
"Negative," he finally reported. "I couldn't access the Equinox data files. They were encrypted."
"Keep studying the information we have," she said. "See what you can come up with."
She stopped short of demanding answers he didn't have yet.
"Acknowledged," The Doctor responded, almost musically.
Why did he sound so satisfied? He had no reason to sound as if he liked his job right now.
"We're going to have to try something drastic," Janeway said, half to herself.
At tactical, Chakotay looked down at her as if his prediction were already coming true. Generously, though, he didn't point that out in front of the crew. "Ready when you are, Captain," he said. "What do you have in mind?"
"I don't know yet, but I can't do it dragging another ship like this. Prepare to cut loose the Equinox. Get Seven off as soon as possible."
"Whether she's finished or not?"
"No... let's let her finish if possible-why don't you see how much more time she needs?"
"Aye, aye. Chakotay to Seven of Nine. What's your status?"
"I've dismantled the antimatter injectors. But I'll need several minutes to neutralize the dilithium matrix."
"We don't have much time."
"Understood."
As the comm clicked off, echoing that rotten word "several" again, Janeway looked up at Chakotay as another heavy assault shuddered through the ship. "Is she alone over there?"
"Yes," he said, his feet spread apart for balance as he worked. "She's the last Would you like me to send a support team to help her?"
"No, I just wanted to know if there was anyone else to evacuate. This might have to be fast."
"She's the last of our crew," he clarified. "Most of the Equinox crew is still over there. They were leading the salvage teams when we arrested Ransom. We just confined them to their quarters."
As much as it made sense, Janeway disparaged the idea. "We'll have to get them over here pronto. Bridge to Tuvok, I need that grid!"
"Aye, Captain, nearly ready."
"Keep the line open. I want to hear what's going on."
"Aye, aye. Activate the grid."
As Janeway listened, and watched the auxiliary monitoring console across the bridge, she heard a surge of energy that gave her a moment's hope. An instant later, though, the energy peaked, whined, and fell off audibly to a buckling ramble.
"What happened?" Tuvok's voice.
"/ don't understand." This was Torres, a little distant as her voice came through Tuvok's open combadge channel. "This should be working... I'm running a system-wide diagnostic-"
As if they had time for that. Janeway silently smoldered. Shouting at them wouldn't speed things up. She turned, and looked at Chakotay, letting the worry show in her eyes which before had been nothing but cold rocks to him.
"We've got to hold on," she said. 'Take all the power you need. Shut systems down anywhere you can."
His eyes widened with doubt. "I'll push the envelope."
The ship shuddered again, a violent punching sensation that came up through the deck under the captain's feet and drilled through her legs and up her spine.
"Hold on," she murmured.
"Captain!" Harry Kim shouted. "I'm reading phaser fire on deck nine! Crew quarters!"
"Security, seal off deck nine!" Ghastly awareness rushed through Janeway's guts. Ransom. Doing what Chakotay implied he might-anything Janeway herself might do in this situation. But how?
On the upper deck, Chakotay called over the thrum of attack. "Shields are weakening!