String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [59]
Janeway dipped her head, impressed with Sem’s grasp. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. How did we get here, Harry? And how do we get out?”
“The energy wave from Monorha’s surface triggered a subspace inversion. I found references in the library computer to similar phenomena near the Bajoran wormhole. Once every fifty years…”
“No history lesson, Harry,” Janeway warned.
“Right. Sorry, Captain. The energy wave tore a hole in ‘normal’ space. As soon as that happened, within point one zero zero one seconds, the system restabilized, but in that blink of an eye, Voyager was swept into the pocket. Normal space and subspace found equilibrium and we were left in between.”
The captain shook her head in wonder. “I’ve never heard of anything like this, Harry. How is it possible?”
“Anywhere else in the universe, Captain, and I don’t think it would be. I’ve been able to work my way through some of the sensor logs from our trip to Monorha. The fabric of local space is riddled with weak areas, spots where inversions could occur.”
“We didn’t spot them before?”
Kim shook his head, frowning. “I don’t have an explanation for that, Captain, or an excuse.”
“Except,” Chakotay offered, “no one has ever seen anything like this before.”
Lowering his head, Kim refused to take the proffered excuse.
Janeway didn’t press the point, but neither did she support Chakotay’s justification. Nothing she could say at this point would alleviate his self-recrimination. “All right then,” she continued. “If I’m getting this right, we’re in a pocket of subspace that’s very similar to the subspace bubble we create around ourselves to go to warp speed. Correct?”
“Correct,” Harry said.
“So what will happen if we engage the warp engines?”
“We’d substitute our bubble for the fold.”
“But there’s a reason why we shouldn’t do that, isn’t there?”
Tuvok spoke up. “Correct, Captain. If we engage the warp engines, we will emerge from this fold, but we do not know precisely where. It may be in the Monorhan system or halfway across the Delta Quadrant.”
Janeway felt herself nodding, comprehension settling into her bones. “Because we didn’t have the navigational computer recording our coordinates as we entered the fold.” She pondered their situation for a moment, then asked, “Can we map this fold, get some sense of its size and topography?”
“There are no landmarks in the fold, no stars or other bodies,” Tuvok explained, “so we have begun to drop markers. Unfortunately, the radiation begins to affect them almost immediately.”
“Then we need to rig small, powerful shield generators for them. That’s our top priority. We’ll need to know as much about the fold as possible.”
Tuvok nodded. “That would be logical, Captain. I will begin work at once.”
Turning back to Harry, Janeway asked, “If we need to go to warp, could we do it? Could we find a way to give the navigational computers the information we need to emerge where we want? And whatever it was that affected us in the Monorhan system, is it in here, too?”
“I don’t know. I need more time…”
“We don’t have much time, Ensign,” Janeway snapped, slapping the table with the palm of her hand. “Fourteen hours maximum. Then the shields go down and the core blows.”
Harry’s head snapped back like he had been slapped. “Yes, Captain,” he said. “Understood.”
“We need to know if we can get out of here,” she said. “I don’t want to leave B’Elanna and Seven behind. I’ll stay here just as long as you tell me I can, but not one second longer. Is everyone clear about their jobs?”
Everyone, even the Monorhans, nodded, all of them grim-faced.
“Then get to work.”
Chapter 10
“This is what we’ve been looking for?” B’Elanna asked in a whisper.
“It is the spot from where the readings emanated,” Seven replied also in hushed tones.
They were lying flat on their bellies, their heads level with the swell of a hillside, both B’Elanna and Seven facing into the east, where they could see the rim of the sun rising. Below them was a low, long building perhaps a hundred meters on the short side and two hundred