Flashback - Diane Carey [45]
Six-seven Klingon vessels!
"Direct hit," Rand gasped. "Port bow. Shields down to twenty percent. Losing atmosphere on decks five, six, and seven."
Suddenly a blur of voices overwrote her voice.
"Try rerouting power to the containment field!"
"Stabilizing, but I don't know how much longer I can keep her together-"
"Target the lead battle cruiser, full photon spread."
"Firing weapons . . . direct hit to their drive system. Lead battle cruiser is dropping out of warp."
"Bring us about."
"Full about, aye."
"Captain!" Valtane called. "They've knocked out our targeting scanners-"
"Switch to manual," Sulu returned as if teaching a class.
Valtane ran from his control console to a console near Tuvok and started picking at it, trying to be careful despite the kicking and shaking.
"Rupture in plasma conduit One-Bravo. It will not hold much longer." Tuvok wrestled with his own console, fully involved in the moment as it unrolled before him, with every bit the conviction Janeway had come to expect of him on her own ship. Would that alter this memory? Tuvok, the experienced security officer a hundred years old handling a starship's console, rather than Tuvok the twenty-nine-year-old ensign with only two months' experience? Would that make any difference?
This was such an inexact science-and she'd heard some of this dialogue before, but not in this order. How did things really happen eighty years ago? Was Tuvok remembering correctly? Or were these memories becoming jumbled?
Tuvok looked at his console, looked at Valtane's, worked his own with both hands, then looked at Valtane's board again.
"Mr. Valtane, there's a rupture in the plasma conduit behind your console-get away from that station."
Valtane started sweating so hard that his black hair matted. "One more second . . ."
Tuvok worked more on his own board, but kept
one eye on Valtane's, and he was right from what
Janeway could see from where she was standing,
clinging to a chair. Suddenly Valtane's board began crackling under
its molded surface.
Tuvok shouted, "Dimitri, you must-" Too late. The console exploded in a shower of
sparks.
"Almost complete," Harry Kim said. "Sirillium containment tanks are about full. We should be able to get a visual of the shuttle any second now, sir." The ensign looked up at the main viewscreen in anticipation. "I hope they're stable. With tanks full of sirillium, that shuttle's a floating bomb."
The turbolift door sounded, and Kes charged onto the bridge while Chakotay was standing over Kim's tactical board, watching the erratic movements of the shuttlecraft as it slammed back and forth like a child's body in a water chute.
He straightened. "Kes? Something wrong?"
She didn't respond, but only stared at the forward screen just as the gray dot of the shuttlecraft made its first appearance.
At first, Chakotay thought something had gone wrong with the captain or Tuvok, or both, but why would Kes come all the way up here to tell them something that could've been told over the comm system?
But she didn't look at him, didn't look at anyone, except at the main screen.
Well, if she just wanted to watch . ..
The shuttlecraft, twisting and tumbling, came toward them, gaining miles by the second, pushed along by the strong surges of energy inside the dense sirillium vein. Behind it, it dragged the parachute-shaped position scoop, five times the diameter of the shuttle itself, carving out huge tracks of sirillium and funneling it through the containment system into the tanks. Even farther behind, the shuttle left a glittering, hostile trail of agitated sirillium tracings and other active substances. Chakotay tightened his eyes in empathy for Paris and B'Elanna, being tossed about like shrapnel in high wind, dragging high explosive. They'd survive, but they'd be plenty bruised.
"There they are!" Kim blurted tightly, tense and relieved at the same time.
Chakotay