Unworthy - Kirsten Beyer [28]
And to Conlon’s satisfaction and credit, it had gone off without a hitch. Her team was already celebrating. She couldn’t blame them. Most of them had been pulling twenty-hour days since the first test flight and all that effort had finally paid off.
Conlon wasn’t ready to join in yet, though. Years spent toiling in the odd confluence of space, technology, and sentient beings kept her enthusiasm on a short leash until the day’s work was complete. The celebration would have to wait until she had completed her post-flight evaluation of every last millimeter of her engines.
Every diagnostic so far had shown minor expected stresses. As she filed them away, a low growl from her stomach reminded her that she should eat something. She couldn’t honestly remember when she’d last eaten.
Lunch yesterday, maybe?
As Conlon started planning the menu for her congratulatory dinner, Lieutenant Neol appeared to burst her rapidly expanding bubble of happiness.
“You might want to take a look at this, Lieutenant,” the portly Bolian sighed, placing a padd in front of her.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like whatever this is?”
“Because you’re not,” Neol deadpanned before returning to his station.
Conlon took a moment to drop her head and roll it gingerly left and right, eliciting a few loud and satisfying pops before addressing the bad news. After a quick glance she moved briskly from her small private office in engineering’s upper level, a luxury no matter the size, and quickly slid down the utility ladder that led to the heart of her engine room.
Her new hybrid warp-slipstream core now stood where a standard warp core used to be. The upper portion remained a standard warp drive and was filled with pulsing blue plasma. The base of the core, a clear wide tube that flashed intense amber light and within which rested the benamite crystals powering the slipstream drive, was the cause of concern. Conlon quickly logged into the main control panel and ordered a level two diagnostic of the benamite crystals. The results confirmed her worst fears.
“Conlon to Captain Eden,” she called, activating her combadge.
“ Go ahead,” Eden’s warm and rich voice replied.
“Do you have a minute to report to engineering?”
“Not really. I’m on my way to the final command crew briefing with Admiral Batiste. Can it wait?”
Nancy debated for only half a second.
“I’m sorry, Captain, but I’d like you to see this before the fleet separates.”
“Understood. I’ll be there right away. Eden out.”
Conlon closed her end of the comm before allowing a sigh of frustration to slip past her lips. This had been a good day. What she had just learned led her to believe that the fleet’s mission might either be much shorter or a whole lot longer than any of them had planned.
Eden wasn’t comfortable in engineering. As any Academy grad, she had a working knowledge of her ship’s systems, but that knowledge was not deep. Eden liked to think of herself as a big-picture person. She was an avid researcher and analyst, a purposeful leader, an able diplomat, and a steady commanding officer. But whenever conversations turned technical, as they often did in this part of the ship, the captain usually felt like she was reporting for an exam that she had crammed for rather than mastered the subject.
One of the things Eden liked about her chief engineer was that Nancy never seemed to tire of answering her questions.
She found Conlon in her office, staring in dismay out the window that separated her private sanctuary from the hustle and bustle going on below.
“What do you have, Nancy?” she asked, diving in.
Conlon rose to greet her and got right to the point, handing her a padd to examine.
“Thirty percent of Voyager’s benamite supply is currently