Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [85]
“The Nensi phenomenon,” Wes told him. “A ball of matter and energy thought to have its origin in a special category of supernova. Very rare, but very destructive—and almost impossible to distinguish from a rogue comet except at close range.”
“Exactly. Of course, back then we had no idea as to its origin—and neither did Nensi—considering it was the first time anyone had ever encountered the bloody thing. In any case, it all but stripped the Stargazer of her ability to defend herself. Shields went down. Sensors went down. Weapons went down. And we started to record an overload in the starboard warp field generator. Shutting down the warp drive stabilized the situation, but there was still a lot of energy cycling through the nacelle. We were afraid that the generator would just blow up—and whether it would take the rest of the ship with it was anybody’s guess. Remember, we had no shields with which to protect ourselves.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t just separate into two parts as the Enterprise can. But we had to disassociate ourselves from the starboard nacelle, and as quickly as possible. We batted the problem around until we were ready to chew one another’s heads off. Any moment, we knew, we might be obliterated in midsentence. Finally, your father came up with a solution. Someone had to get outside the ship and sever the nacelle from the rest of the Stargazer.”
Wesley had gone over this part in his head a thousand times. Going outside, cutting away the nacelle with phaser rifles, had been the only way. The Stargazer wasn’t set up to fire on itself, even if ship’s phasers had been working at the time. And to approach the project through the power transfer tunnels was unthinkable—they were too full of energy seepage from the warp field generators.
“Naturally,” Simenon said, “your father volunteered—it was his plan. Others came forward also—Ben Zoma, Morgen, Asmund, Vigo. Even Greyhorse. The captain didn’t like the risk involved. Hated it, to tell the truth. But in the end, he chose a team of two: your father and Pug Joseph. Both of them had had experience in hull repairs. Both of them knew how to negotiate the ship’s skin. And since the transporters had been damaged along with nearly everything else, that was pretty important—to be able to get to the nacelles and back again.
“They set out from the airlock nearest their destination—a tiny one, used only in drydock to check the torpedo-launch mechanism. For us, it served a different purpose. The worst part was our inability to track your father and Pug on our sensors. We could talk to them through their helmet communicators, but that was about it. And once they got going, there wasn’t a great deal of conversation—as little as possible, in fact. Just a remark now and then to let us know everything was all right.”
The Gnalish snorted. “Anyway, they reached the nacelle assembly pretty quickly. But it took forever to cut through it. The Stargazer’s transfer tunnels weren’t as wide as what you’ve got here on the Enterprise—but they weren’t pipe cleaners either. And as you know, phaser rifles can’t sustain a beam indefinitely. They’ve got to be given time to cool down. So while we waited on the bridge, strung tight as Vulcan harpstrings, your father and Pug hacked away until their limbs were trembling with the strain.
“The tricky part was when they got into the transfer tunnel. With all the energy in there already, the phaser beam could have stirred it up even more—or had no effect at all. Most likely, we knew, it was going to be something in between—which is why Pug and your father had been cautioned to approach that juncture carefully.
“For a long time after they began that stage of the work, we heard nothing from them. The captain was as worried as the rest of us. He was about to call for a progress report, when your father’s voice was heard over the intercom: ‘We’re in,’ he said. ‘And