Marooned - Christie Golden [13]
His voice trailed off. He looked at B'Elanna, confused. Her eyes were suddenly distant, unfocused, and he knew that was a sign that her mind was working at warp speed.
"Fell through the rabbit hole," she echoed softly. She rapidly keyed in some information and gazed at the schematic. "There's something out of the ordinary going on here, Harry. Not a wormhole, no, but something else, something that we haven't thought of yet." She turned to him, grinning. "Alice in Wonder land, huh? Tell me more." At Harry's look of utter confusion, she added, "This is what we call brainstorming, Starfleet. Get our minds out of the rut of the typical. C'mon, what else?"
"Torres, you have totally lost me."
"Nothing new there." She softened the words with a friendly wink. "So, what else?"
Kim took another swig of the bitter concoction that passed for coffee and thought. Surrendering to the situation, he began to simply spout images as they came to him.
"Queen of Hearts. Caterpillars on mushrooms, the Mad Hatter. Dormouse. Urn, Through the Looking Glass. Off with their heads... urn, tea party-"
"Wait. L )oking glass. That's a mirror, right?" Kim nodded. "Okay, let's run with that. Reflection, funhouse mirror, distortion-oh, my god, Harry, that's it!"
He started to ask what, and then he knew. All hints of sleepiness evaporated as he suddenly realized he knew. "They're somehow reflecting their true path, putting us on a false trail!" he cried.
He was crowding Torres at the computer console, anxious to test their newfound theory that had come to them via Lewis Carroll. But Torres had the edge and was already tapping in information. Harry gnawed at his lower lip. The fraction of a second that it took for the computer to input the new information seemed to last an eternity. This was more than an intellectual exercise. Being able to track these alien ships quickly might mean the difference between life and death for Kes.
Tiny, almost undetectable traces of warp particles appeared, but not leading off from where the ships had apparently come to a dead end. This trail-for indeed there was only one, along which all three of the alien vessels had traveled-led in a fourth direction, in a line as straight as the others had been winding, indicating a single purpose and a clearly defined destination. Had Kim and Tomes not searched specifically in that location, they would never have found it.
"Tricky devils," breathed Torres. "But we've got you now." Her eyes sparkled with triumph.
"Not a cloaking device-some kind of displacer technology. They're able to give the impression that they're in one place when actually they're somewhere entirely different," said Kim. "If our equipment hadn't been as advanced as it is, we'd never have found them."
"We'd never even have thought to look for this if you hadn't remembered your Alice in Wonderland story," said Torres.
"Next time we're stumped, I'll make sure I consult Winnie the Pooh."
Tomes looked puzzled but Kim was too busy laughing-much harder than his joke called for-to respond. It was good to laugh, though; good to know they were finally doing something that would bring them closer to Kes. These last few hours had been filled with nothing but growing resentment and frustration at their helplessness. No longer.
"It makes perfect sense," he said. "B'Elanna, I think we may be dealing with-what did Aren call them-pirates."
"The Ja'in," said Torres. "You're right. It makes sense that a group of pirates would focus their knowl edge to develop this kind of technology. I mean, think about it. What do they want most, other than finding targets to attack? The ability to shake pursuit."
"And until we came along," Kim finished excitedly, "they probably got away with it every time."
"It's going to take some doing to reconfigure the sensors to compensate for this-this displacer tech nology. Otherwise we'll be guessing every time they take