Flashback - Diane Carey [49]
"It must've been a malfunction," she decided. "The phasers ignited the residual sirillium. We're just lucky we'd collected most of it before they fired, or we'd be real crisp right now. Paris, are you conscious?"
"Yeah . . . yeah, conscious. Sure hurts . . ."
"You've got broken ribs. I'll get the first-aid kit in a minute. First I've got to stabilize the containment system, or it's all over. We've got coolant leaks, and we have to keep that sirillium refrigerated. If it goes above two degrees centigrade, it could expand and blow out of the tanks, and be ignited by the other explosions out there. Can you get up? Tom?"
He tried to sit up, but his battered ribs drove pain through his body, and he collapsed again.
B'Elanna shoved a hand under his neck and pushed him upward into a sitting position.
He bent forward and winced, then shifted over onto his knees. "I can't breathe ..."
"There's a coolant breach," she told him. "I'm hoping the damage control system can lock it down automatically. Till then I guess we'll have to breathe fumes and try to keep from turning green."
"Too late . . . have you looked in a mirror lately?"
"Take the helm, will you? We've got to get control back or we'll be kicked to bits."
"You want me to restart the engines?"
"What difference does it make?" she said. "The sirillium traces out there are already ignited."
"Oh . . . sure." On his hands and knees, his sandy curls dusted with chips of debris, Paris winced his way back toward the helm and crawled into the seat. When he got there, he could barely hold his head up and had to lean against the bulkhead as he picked at the controls with his good hand.
"Restarting impulse drive," he said on a cough.
He punched the ignition, and the shuttle's impulse drive burped and surged, knocking the shuttle forward into a surge, which then knocked it sideways and turned it upside down. The artificial gravity system whined, squawked, and fought to keep sense in the cabin, but not before throwing B'Elanna backward into the opposite bulkhead.
Dazed, she closed her eyes and shook her head, but that only made things worse. Now her sp ine and shoulders ached on top of her sore knees from being thrown down the first time. She clawed her way back across the tilted deck to the containment controls and kept adjusting and balancing.
The impulse engines kept puffing. B'Elanna heard
them even before Paris shouted back, "I can't get the engines to settle down enough to give me any steering control!"
"Keep trying!" She stumbled forward to the main control panel and tapped the comm console. "Voyager! Can you read us? Voyager, come in!"
"Chakotay to shuttlecraft! Can you read us? Lieutenant Carey, boost the gain from the ship to the shuttle."
"Sir, that could agitate the ignited sirillium traces even more."
"Take the chance."
"Aye, sir."
"-craft-Tor-"
Chakotay leaned over the console and shouted, "Torres! We read you! What's your status?"
"Atmosphere leakage . . . coolant disruptions, some injury, and containment tanks . . . in flux- "
"Carey, give it another boost."
"Aye, sir ... boosting."
"Voyager, can you read?"
"Yes, we read you. Can you hear me now, B'Elanna?"
"I can hear you. Why the fireworks?"
"We had an incident. It's under control. Let's concentrate on getting you back. Are you all right?"
"I'm in one piece."
"What about Paris?"
"He's in about four pieces, but trying to work. We're restarting engines, but not having much luck
with thrust control, and we're getting some impulse cavitation because of the turbulence. Seems like space itself is blowing up around us out here."
Angry with himself for making a perfectly sensible set of choices and somehow having them all turn out deadly, Chakotay instantly thought about sickbay and what was happening down there. Why had Kes gone crazy? Klingons? Val-something? Kes was telepathic in some weird definition of the trait, and it had to have something to do with that meld.
If the meld was