Synthesis - James Swallow [128]
They’ll just roll right over us and keep going, thought Vale. Even the Borg took a moment to stop and gloat.
Then an ozone scent touched her nostrils, and something was triggered in her thoughts. It was the same effect she had smelled in the air after Dennisar fired the pulse emitter, but the weapon was still long moments away from being ready to discharge again. The smell was coming from all around her. Her stomach twisted, and she was hit by a sensation of lightness, as if she had stepped out onto a low-gravity planet.
“The deck!” called Blay. “It’s gone warm. I don’t—”
And suddenly, they were in the middle of a mist of crackling yellow energy. It throbbed upward from the floor beneath their feet, rising past them to the ceiling in a wave that filled the corridor with light and noise.
Vale felt a hard dart of pain lance into her head around the place where the implant had been, and she doubled over, the rifle falling from her grip. She stumbled, and N’keytar caught her, those thin, pale fingers demonstrating a fair amount of strength for someone who looked so waiflike.
The commander heard a chorus of strangled crackling sounds and shook her head to clear it of the fog of pain. She blinked and saw the array of Sentry drones in front of her, every one of them silent and inert.
Crewman Jaq vaulted over the cover and moved to the nearest unit, planting a solid kick in its side. The machine orb rolled over to present its sensor band, but the unit was dead to the world. “Inactive,” he reported. “They’re all inactive.”
“That was a dekyon pulse,” said Dennisar. “A huge one. It must have swept this entire level.”
“They modified the function of the graviton generators in the g-plates,” said N’keytar, looking at the decking.
“The captain did that?” asked Blay.
Dizzy, Vale let herself sit heavily on the overturned bench and blew out a breath. “Yeah, guess so. He’s pretty resourceful that way.”
Slow and sluggish, the corridor lights began to blink on.
• • •
Less than ninety minutes had elapsed by the time Riker entered the cargo bay, and the starship was his again. The dekyon pulse had worked like a charm, and some two hundred and thirty-two Sentry drones had been forced into an inactive shutdown state by the energy wave. Injuries among his crew were minimal, and those were largely among members of species that were sensitive to exotic particle spectra. The Titan was returning to full operational status in fits and starts, and thanks to the swift work of Ra-Havreii and his team, engine power had been lost only for moments in the wake of the pulse. The ship pushed away, out of range of any Sentry reinforcements that could take advantage of the lowered shields.
Now they were moving in a high, slow orbit, with a phalanx of AI shipframes drifting warily around them, each side waiting for the other to make a move.
Crossing the room, he spotted Christine and Deanna talking with Lieutenant Radowski at a temporary control console set up in the middle of the chamber. Beside Dennisar and some of the chief’s security contingent, White-Blue stood, silent and inscrutable.
Torvig bounded up to him, his head bobbing. “Sir, the last of the intruder drones have been tagged. We’re ready to go.”
“Are you all right, mister?” Riker asked. The Choblik seemed none the worse for wear, having ridden out the shock of the dekyon stream with his cybernetics in the off position.
He got a slow nod in return. “It was… a little peculiar to revert voluntarily to my nonaugmented birth state, even for a short time,” said the engineer. “But in its own way, it was quite restful. Perhaps I’ll examine the effects in greater detail at a less urgent juncture.”
“I’m glad you’re okay. And thank you for helping to persuade the avatar to work with us.