Miracle Workers (SCE Books 5-8) - Keith R. A. DeCandido_. [et al.] [16]
“Soloman,” he said in a subdued voice, “what did your sensor scans reveal?”
“There are . . . residual energy traces indicating the rift’s entrance, sir,” Soloman replied. “I am able to determine the boundaries of the opening.”
“If we can detect it,” Gomez said, “then maybe we can find a way to force it open.”
Rising from his seat, Soloman said, “Opening the rift may not present . . . much difficulty, Commander. A great deal of force may not . . . be required.”
“How so?” Gold asked.
“I see what he means,” Gomez cut in. “When the da Vinci’s deflector and tractor beams were locked onto us, the interspatial pocket seemed to react in the opposite direction, exerting more and more force to hold us here. But we might be able to overcome that resistance by pushing ourselves through the rift from within.”
Gold frowned, not entirely convinced. “With what? The Defiant’s maneuvering thrusters couldn’t possibly be strong enough to push us out.”
It was Pattie who provided one possible solution. “Perhaps the warp drive could be used.”
Gomez made no effort to hide the skepticism on her face as she regarded the Nasat. “The warp engines are as cold as ice, Pattie. The dilithium crystals have decayed to nothing, and even if we had one, we’d still have to find the right intermix formula. It would take at least thirty minutes to initiate a restart of the warp core. And then there’s always the possibility that the engines won’t stand the strain of restarting and will buckle completely.”
Pattie shook her head as she rose from her seat at the bridge’s communications console. “No, no. My apologies for not explaining myself. I was thinking that we could use the generators we brought with us to provide a quick start to the warp drive. The action would almost certainly drain the generators within seconds, but it should be enough to provide a short-duration warp pulse that could push us through the rift.”
“Why does that sound as crazy as I think it does?” Lense asked.
But Gomez was nodding at the Nasat’s idea. “No, it’s not crazy. I’ve seen something like it done before, when I was on the Enterprise.” She quickly relayed the story of the time that Geordi La Forge, the Enterprise’s chief engineer, and the son of the ship’s doctor had devised a scheme to jump-start the warp engines of an eighty-year-old starship. They had used a minute amount of dilithium and some antimatter that the boy had retrieved from one of his ongoing science experiments. The “warp pulse” had lasted only two seconds, but it was enough to get the old ship out of harm’s way when a Ferengi marauder showed up and attempted to hijack the vessel.
“The generators might be able to provide the necessary power for such a pulse,” she said. “But even if we can manage that, is there any antimatter down in engineering?”
“Anything in the warp core itself would have been automatically ejected from the ship once power was lost,” Pattie replied. “But there may still be some in magnetic storage bottles.”
Gold had until this point stood silently, observing with unabashed admiration as his engineering specialists talked out their makeshift plan. Watching his people in their element always gave him the feeling that there was no problem they couldn’t solve, no obstacle they couldn’t overcome.
“What do you think, Commander?” he asked Gomez. “Can we do it?”
Gomez rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “We’ll need to use at least three of the generators to trigger the warp engine restart. That will leave two to provide power for the thrusters and the bridge systems.”
“We can use the thrusters to maneuver closer to the edge of the rift,” Pattie added. “The effect of the warp field’s abrupt activation should provide enough disruption to open the rift and push us through.”
Gomez shook her head slowly. “We’ll only get one shot at this, though. If the restart