The Brave and the Bold Book Two - Keith R. A. DeCandido [33]
“Unfortunately, those emissions cannot be traced to the precise location of the artifact. A transporter lock requires a precise coordinate fix, and thus far the energy signature given off by the artifacts has not been able to provide that.”
Torres looked up suddenly. “We might be able to do something sneakier than a combadge. Tharia’s not stupid. I doubt we’d be able to sneak a combadge or a pattern enhancer or anything like that onto it. But I might be able to put together a mini-transponder.” She turned to Mastroeni. “Mind if I paw through your parts? I know I’ve got some of what I’d need in my footlocker, but I’ll need some molybdenum, some bits of ODN cable, and a solenoid transtator.”
Tuvok’s eyebrow came dangerously close to flying off his forehead. “I fail to see how a solenoid transtator would be of any use.”
Grinning widely, Torres said, “Watch and learn, Tuvok.”
I have simply got to get this woman to join our cell, Mastroeni thought as she led the pair of them to the parts locker. Anybody who can make a Vulcan—especially that particular Vulcan—look that nonplussed is someone I want to keep around.
Chapter Seven
AS SOON AS THE LIBERATOR’ S long-range sensors started picking up readings from Slaybis IV, Cal Hudson knew they were too late.
For starters, sensors were picking up the distinctive emissions of the Malkus Artifact on the planet itself, with no immediate sign of the Geronimo’ s shuttlecraft in orbit.
Then Mastroeni gave her report on what sensors were picking up on the planet: “Temperatures in the equatorial regions are below freezing, with snow and ice storms. Temperatures in the polar regions are close to fifty degrees above freezing, with severe flooding. I’m picking up hurricanes on the coasts and tornadoes inland.” She looked over at Hudson with as grave a look as he’d ever seen on her face. “It’s Nramia all over again.”
Hudson shook his head. “Prepare to come out of warp and plot a standard orbit.”
“Sure, I—” Then something caught her eye. “Uh, better make that an orbit of the third moon. I’m picking up a Starfleet ship, heading for Slaybis at warp eight.” Again she turned to Hudson, but this time the grave look was replaced by fury. “It’s the Hood! That goddamn Vulcan betrayed us!”
“We’ll deal with that in a minute,” Hudson said, more concerned with their immediate safety than the long-term—or even short-term—consequences of the Hood’ s presence in a demilitarized area. “Get us to the moon without their seeing us.”
“I know what to do,” she said through clenched teeth. It was risky, but they could wait until the last possible second to come out of warp and slide right into orbit of the moon—currently on the far side of the planet. It involved dumping a lot of velocity in a short amount of time, and was difficult for any ship to pull off—a ship with a sufficiently small mass to be able to dump velocity that fast sometimes wasn’t structurally sound enough to survive the maneuver, and a larger ship simply couldn’t decelerate that quickly. Usually space was large enough for a huge margin of error when it came to dropping speed, but a standard orbit decreased that margin considerably.
“Decelerating—now!” Mastroeni said as she performed the maneuver. Alarms went off all around Hudson. Most were warnings of problems that could be tabled, or fixed quickly—except for the one that indicated the failure of the structural-integrity field.
“Engineering,” he yelled, tapping the intercom, “McAdams, we—”
Then the alarm stopped. SIF then read at one hundred percent. The lights did dim, however.
“McAdams, what just happened?”
“This is Torres. I was able to divert power from life-support to the SIF.”
Hudson blinked. “Are you out of your mind? Life-support—”
“—is nonessential in the short term. Just the air we’ve got will last us a day or two, and we can live with low lights for a while. We’ll be able to get the SIF running on its own long before there’s any