Equinox - Diane Carey [53]
"The rest of you, take any post you can run," Ransom ordered, distributing his crew. "Lessing, unlock all the crew quarters and get everyone else to posts, then take the helm. Let's man our ship, boys."
"Aye, aye, Rudy!"
"Damn!" Burke acted as if he'd burned his fingers on the tactical board.
Ransom cranked around. "What is it?"
The ship shook violently, stress points actually cracking. Automatic sealant hissed furiously between the inner and outer strakes of the bulkheads.
"B'Elanna's erected a security matrix. I can't get a lock on the field generator!"
'Try overriding the command codes," Ransom told him. "Consider yourself authorized."
"I know what to do," Burke said with a crow of vie-
tory. "It's a triquadric algorithm. A trick I learned from an old friend."
"Just do it, don't explain it."
"The shields are falling," Michaelson called from the science monitors. "Roughly eighty seconds left."
Like all of them, he was dulled to the frantic nature of these events.
Ransom considered that an advantage. Janeway's crew would still be shaken, frightened, freaked. His wasn't.
"Janeway's hailing us, Rudy," Lessing informed with ironic cheer.
"Put her through, what the hell."
In a loud blast of alarms, klaxons, and shouts, Janeway's tight features appeared on the main screen Ransom dropped deeper into his command chair to square off with her.
No greeting, no nothing.
"If you don't stop what you're doing, we'll both be destroyed!"
"What's my alternative? Thirty years in your brig?"
Another shake bolted through the ships bonded by a single set of shields.
"I'll open fire if I have to," Janeway threatened predictably.
"We've been through worse." Ransom knuckled his chair controls, cutting off the comm system.
There was no point arguing further, no good way to defend himself. She couldn't understand, he knew that. She was doing what she thought she had to do, and so was he. That argument could never resolve itself.
Scholars and admirals had already spent decades trying to hammer out that particular piece of ore. He and Janeway would not today form it into anything useful.
"She's firing on us!" Lessing shouted.
Ransom turned sharply. "Max!"
"Stand by!" Burke stayed admirably calm and tapped his controls one at a time, not like playing a piano with all fingers. He had to get it right the first try. "Okay, BLT. Remember this trick?"
He tapped a final button.
"Where is it?" Ransom asked, swiveling.
"Up there," Burke answered, pointing to a graphic monitor on the upper bridge. It scrolled to show a schematic of the Voyager's astrometrics lab. As they watched, the graphic of the field generator flashed and blinked out.
'Transport complete." Burke's voice was loaded with quiet satisfaction. "We've got it."
To Lessing, Ransom ordered, "Get us out of here."
"I can't! Warp drive is down!"
"Bridge to Maria, report!"
"One of their crew tried to dismantle the antimatter injectors! Repairs are underway!"
"What about the field generator?" he asked Max.
"I'm integrating it now. The generator's in place ... I'm bringing the grid on-line!"
To Ransom, his crew sounded excited, but somehow controlled. Purpose could do that. They now had their purpose back, crisp and focused.
This was good. They needed this. They had been accepted but not understood on Voyager. This was better.
Their own ship, their own shipmates, and souls that had come to terms with what they had to do to survive.
The alien tone invaded his ears, familiar now and supercharged with challenge. They were breaking through.
Ransom picked up his phaser and glanced around to be sure the others were armed.
To Burke, he made the critical call of the moment "It's now or never!"
The tone grew louder, louder still.
"Hold your fire!" Ransom ordered as a spatial fissure opened like some grotesque