The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [85]
La Forge put the VISOR on over wide, blind eyes and flinched.
“You’re not all right,” said Crusher. Her hand went to her combadge to order transport to sickbay, but the engineer pushed it away.
“If I don’t get back to work, none of us are going to be all right. I can see—” He waved concerned hands away and turned toward the captain. “Sort of. There’s lots of distortion. If the painkiller holds out…You’d better give me a spare, just in case…”
Taking the hypo she held out, La Forge flung himself toward one of the few displays that still looked marginally operational. His shaking hands fugued on the keyboards, sending up a pattern of shifting lights. As they steadied, so did the rhythms of the ship.
“Got the starboard nacelle on auxiliary power,” La Forge reported. “Enough to compensate. Ambient radiation’s within acceptable limits. For now.”
Picard nodded at the chief medical officer’s questions about radiation safety protocols on the bridge, his attention focused on his engineer.
“Engines are just drinking the power. Consumption levels are off the scale, Captain. You can feel the drain. Once it’s gone, I estimate warp core breach in 20.6 minutes.”
“Eject it,” Picard ordered.
If Khazara were pursuing them, they would be a sitting target, then, swiftly afterward, protons and debris. If Enterprise’s crew abandoned ship, Khazara would take them prisoner. Including the three Romulans for whose sake Enterprise had been jeopardized in the first place. Assuming any survival pods survived the warp core breach, which was not an assumption that was safe to make.
La Forge shook his head. “Negative, sir. The fail safes are frozen. We’re working on them, but…” He shook his head again, then winced as if his VISOR hurt him. “Sorry, sir.”
There wasn’t enough time. That was the problem with engineering. There was too much time until you had an emergency, and then you had no time at all.
Picard straightened. “Mister Worf,” he ordered. “You will accompany our guests to a shuttlecraft and escort them to Draken IV, assuming you are not met en route by Admiral Ross or Legate Ruanek. Presumably, they are aware of our predicament. They’ve probably sent at least one ship out already. Once you establish communications, tell them to keep out of range.”
“Respectfully, Captain, we refuse,” M’ret said. “We will not leave you. We will fight to stay. And you have a greater priority than forcing us to leave.”
“This disruption of ship’s systems does not make sense,” said Picard, instantly turning back to his main priority. “Enterprise took a direct disruptor hit. At the time, Lieutenant Worf reported that it had almost no impact. It was intended to serve as camouflage for the transporter beam that brought over our…stubborn guests. And, as Commander Riker pointed out, there are no ships in the area from which we can assume a second strike.”
“There may be something else,” Deanna Troi spoke unexpectedly. “Initially, N’vek refused to tamper with the cloak. I had to threaten to reveal what he’d done in bringing me aboard to Commander Toreth before he would agree to talk to a sympathizer in engineering. If I had seen the engineer, I would have known for certain…”
“Whether his sympathies extended as far as preserving Enterprise?” Picard guessed.
Troi nodded. “He must have been hedging his bets. Avoiding betrayal while retaining a weapon that would ensure regaining the commander’s favor.”
“A highly prudent strategy,” M’ret commented. “The man saw our plans on the verge of exposure. He wasn’t an active member of the movement, only a sympathizer, and sympathy is cheap. So he resorted to damage control—in this case, a way of getting the cargo—us—off Khazara, destroying Enterprise, a ship that the empire can hardly be said to favor, and protect both his ship and his commander, who is a woman of unquestioned integrity. I would call that highly logical.”
“We can debate logic later, Vice-Proconsul,” said Picard.
If we live hung unsaid in the controlled clamor that was the engineering deck confronted with an emergency