Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [64]
Their situation had changed. For the first time since they had begun lifting cargoes from Federation vessels, there was a chance they might have to defend themselves.
Not that the pirate had any doubt as to the outcome of an all-out encounter—especially when he had an ace wearing a Starfleet uniform up his sleeve.
Lieutenant Ulelo peered past the half-hidden form of Marion Sears, his repair-team partner, into the depths of a state-of-the-art subspace field generator.
Sears reached back, open palm extended. “Hyperspanner,” she said, her voice muffled by its confinement.
“Hyperspanner,” Ulelo repeated, and selected one from the assortment of handheld tools laid out in front of him. Then he laid it in his partner’s palm.
“Thanks,” said Sears, and pulled the hyperspanner into the shadowy nether regions of the field generator.
Ulelo had never had an opportunity like this on the Copernicus—a chance to inspect a key component in the deflector system at close range. And even if he’d had such an opportunity, it wouldn’t have been nearly as valuable. Field generators on Oberth-class ships were a full level of sophistication below the Stargazer’s.
Sears made an unintelligible noise.
“Did you say something?” Ulelo asked her.
“No,” said the engineer. “I just banged my head is all.”
Ulelo didn’t comment further. He just went on scrutinizing what he could see of the field generator, trying to file away everything he could about it.
According to the specs he had pulled up shortly after his arrival on the ship, the Stargazer boasted eight of the devices in all. Two were located on deck 10, two more on deck 26, and one in each of the ship’s four warp nacelles.
Each field generator consisted of a dozen graviton polarity sources feeding a pair of 500-millicochrane subspace field distortion amplifiers. At least, that’s the information Ulelo had gleaned from the pertinent computer file.
When the magnetic vortices had battered the shields down to nothing, the engineering section was left with two tasks. The first was to repair and replace whatever power linkages had been damaged. The second was to reinitialize the field generators.
Ulelo, who had received precious little training as an engineer, had been assigned to the generator initialization team. So had a number of other non-engineers—crewmen from sections as disparate as security and weapons and even sickbay—which was why this compartment was crawling with more uniformed personnel than it had seen since the Stargazer was commissioned.
But then, this was where the captain had decided everyone was needed—here and in the other generator compartments or in the science section. Because they couldn’t complete their mission if they couldn’t find a way to navigate in the gases that surrounded them, and they didn’t dare move until they got their shields up.
Of course, Ulelo had a mission of his own—one that was completely different from Captain Picard’s. And with that mission in mind, he dutifully resumed his studies.
Jean-Luc Picard had never been a pacer.
Certainly, he had been plagued by moments of impatience like anyone else. But he had almost always managed to find a way to channel his nervous energy into something useful.
Or, if not useful, at least diverting.
But now, with the fate of his ship and crew resting squarely on his inexperienced shoulders, he was forced to rely on others to be useful—and diversions held no appeal for him.
And without realizing it, he had begun pacing from one end of his ready room to the other.
The captain had just caught himself and resolved to discontinue the activity when he heard the sound of chimes outside his door. “Come,” he said, wondering who might be calling on him.
It turned out to be Lieutenant Valderrama.
“Sit,” he said. “Please.” He deposited himself in the chair behind his desk, glad for the interruption.
Valderrama sat down as well. Then she smiled and said, “I think I may have come up with the