String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [7]
“Thank you, Seven,” Janeway said. The rustle of fabric told Tom that the captain was sitting back in her chair and leaning toward the first officer. “What do you think, Chakotay?” Rapidly opening and closing turbolift doors meant that the beta shift’s crew was on deck and waiting for permission to move to their stations. Tom felt their uneasiness as they awaited the outcome of the senior officers’ discussion.
“I’m inclined to up the status from ‘interesting’ to ‘peculiar,’ ” Chakotay said softly. “Your decision should be based on how comfortable you are with something like these energy readings at your back. We could drop out of warp, take a quick look, then get out fast if something…”
Alarm klaxons blared. Emergency lights flickered on. Tom’s world narrowed down to his station. Practically every indicator on his console had flipped from cheerful green to angry red. What the hell…?
“Our warp field is collapsing, Captain,” Tuvok called, then turned off the klaxon.
“Engine room!” Janeway shouted. “B’Elanna! What just happened?”
“No idea, Captain. I’ll let you know as soon as I have one,” the chief engineer called. “Torres out.”
In his mind’s eye, the last coal of the charcoal brazier in his imagination flickered and died. Maybe, Tom pondered, maybe I’ll be able to trade the mushrooms for some avocados. B’Elanna loves avocados….
Cutting the comm to the bridge, B’Elanna turned back to the controlled chaos of the engine room and watched as her technicians diagnosed the latest disaster. For a brief moment, she permitted herself to think about the thing she laughingly called her “personal life,” then sighed. Tom and his mushrooms: he had been planning to seduce her tonight and she had been planning to let him. Oh, well.
“What have we got, Joe?” B’Elanna called as she headed for the warp core. Joe Carey, the assistant chief engineer and her right-hand man, fell into step beside her. Once, four years ago, B’Elanna had beat out Joe for the job of chief despite the fact that he was an Academy graduate, a good officer, and a damned fine man with a wrench. Joe’s problem had been—still was—that he relied too much on precedent. Back in those days, if the solution to a problem wasn’t in the all-purpose, ever-ready Starfleet Big Book of Engineering Exercises, he had been at a loss. Indeed, until they arrived here in the fun quarter of the galaxy called the Delta Quadrant, Joe hadn’t believed there could be such a thing as a problem the book hadn’t addressed.
Of course, if that were true, they wouldn’t be where they were, which was sixty thousand light-years from the edge of what had once been laughingly called Known Space. B’Elanna was chief engineer because she knew that out here there was no book but the one you wrote yourself.
Fortunately, in addition to all his other qualities, Joe was a realist and, trained as an officer, understood the chain of command. When Janeway had made B’Elanna the top dog, Joe quickly fell into line. While he had never said to B’Elanna, “You were the right choice,” there had been more than one disaster that never would have been averted if not for B’Elanna’s quick wits and unconventional solutions. Still, despite all this, there were days when B’Elanna wished she felt like she and Carey worked together rather than that he worked for her. She was always “Lieutenant,” and not “B’Elanna,” or, even more preferably, “Chief.”
Handing her a padd, Carey had to bark to be heard over the thrum of the core. “All the initial diagnostics have come back normal, Lieutenant,” he said. “The problem isn’t with the engines.”
B’Elanna scanned the readings on the padd. “If we’re putting out this many megajoules, why does the warp bubble want to collapse?”
“I don’t know,” Joe said, enunciating each word carefully. “But I’m happy to be able to say this isn’t an engineering problem.”
“I doubt if the captain will see it that way.”
Joe grinned sardonically. “Which is your problem, Lieutenant.”
B’Elanna chose to ignore the mild jab. “If you