Equinox - Diane Carey [9]
Paris turned toward the other unfortunates but paused to gather his innards. Chakotay paused with him, waiting, having a slightly easier time because he'd listened to his intuitive side and steeled himself for disaster. If the ship looked this bad, what must the crew look like?
Apparently, though, Paris had entertained higher hopes for a reunion with Starfleet brothers and sisters. Those were now crashing.
"You all right?" Chakotay asked him quietly.
Paris drew a ragged breath and pressed his lips against unconcealed nausea. "I thought we'd be able to..." He stopped himself, tempered down his reaction, and shook his head. "Maybe you better give me a little push."
"Only if you carry me." Rewarding him with a funereal grin, Chakotay took his elbow and accommodated with a nudge. Back to work, even if it was bad work.
"Commander!" Torres, kneeling at the warp drive's central core.
Chakotay moved to the core, then stopped to stare. What was that? Several exotic pieces of equipment had been added to the core itself-conduit, injector ports ... almost old-fashioned, like someone had been building a core from scratch in a basement lab. Why would they refit their core?
"I can't make heads or tails of this injector manifold," B'Elanna Torres told him, frowning into her analytics. "And the dilithium matrix looks like it's been completely redesigned."
"We'll try to find one of their engineers to help us," Chakotay offered, a bigger promise than he could make good on, if the body to his left was any clue. "In the meantime, see if you can bypass the core."
She was already involved in dissecting, but managed to toss a late, "Aye, sir," his way after he'd already left.
Moving on through the lower hall, Chakotay kept his eyes swiveling over the twisted beams and plates and the cables spilled like intestines, his mind racing about what malevolence could have done so very much damage.
Come on, Tom," he murmured as he stepped by Paris, who had found another unhappy body.
"This must've been some fight," Paris rasped, failing to find a more creative comment.
"Anything from outside that could've caused this would also have destroyed the hull," Chakotay mused. "Something invaded the ship and did this from inside."
"And I'll tell you what-look at these markings. Recognize this?"
Shining his wrist light to the point Paris indicated, Chakotay endured a moment of true denial.
"Phaser demarcations," Paris said aloud. "They were shooting full phasers in here. No holds barred. But I can't find markings of any alien weapons' discharges. Just Federation phasers."
"There's plenty of heat and radiation burns, though," Chakotay said. "Something caused it, and not phasers."
"Could be energy wash from the damage."
"It's targeted. Look at the corpses. High concentrations of bums and melting right near where they've each fallen."
Paris swung his light to the places Chakotay indicated. "That's a relief... at least the crew didn't go space crazy and shoot each other."
"We know that didn't happen. No phaser does ... that... to a body."
"Guess I'm not thinking. Sorry again."
Offering only that funereal smile to encourage a very discouraged crewmate, Chakotay knew there was no real comfort to give and Paris didn't really expect any from him. He started to move again when Paris
flinched so hard that he crashed sideways into a jumble of wreckage. Chakotay stepped toward him, but his concern was instantly wrenched away from Paris to a faint whimper deep in the pile.
He aimed his phaser there even before his wrist beacon made it. A flare panel, with its ports blown out, lay at an angle against an induction manifold readout panel. Several other strakes and twisted beams were pulled up into the same shape. Barricade.
The light sifted across the scorched metal and plasti-form shapes that once had been part of a ship's inner fluidity, yet now were