Unworthy - Kirsten Beyer [83]
Eden turned to Paris. “Commander, override the doors to that turbolift and get to engineering. I need to know what’s happening down there.”
“Yes, Captain,” Paris replied and Kim immediately moved to assist him in accessing the manual override.
“Captain, I have partial helm controls restored,” B’Kar announced.
“Shut down the slipstream drive,” Eden ordered again. “I can’t do that,” B’Kar replied, “but I can confirm that we are moving out of orbit at one quarter impulse and are on a trajectory to exit the system.”
“Are we going to do that before the slipstream drive reaches full power?” Eden demanded of Gwyn.
She studied the display closely before answering, “It’s going to be close.”
“Captain, Hawking and Galen are breaking orbit with us, matching course and speed,” B’Kar advised.
“Can we talk to them yet?”
“No.”
“Of course not,” Eden said, shaking her head.
“This isn’t happening,” Conlon said.
“No, this shouldn’t be happening,” B’Elanna added. They both watched helplessly while the slipstream drive continued to power up as if it had a mind of its own.
“When did you bring the slipstream drive back online?” B’Elanna asked.
“Yesterday,” Conlon replied. “I was able to quarantine the errant protocols that were disrupting the interface between the drive and deflector. They’re not responsible for this.”
Together they studied the engineering code as it ran across the display screen, looking for something to indicate how and why it had suddenly come online.
“Look at the central processor,” Conlon instructed B’Elanna. “It’s running through every nonessential program in its files and finding so many failures it won’t accept our overrides on the primaries.”
“A virus?” B’Elanna asked.
“But why isn’t it affecting propulsion?”
“Maybe it hasn’t gotten there yet.”
“This is intentional, B’Elanna.”
“Possibly,” B’Elanna said, “but first things first. We don’t want to risk going to slipstream velocity right now.”
“How do we stop it?”
“If it were me?”
“Yeah.”
“Break it,” B’Elanna suggested grimly.
It was an extreme option, but Conlon had to agree that it might also be their only option. “Break it how badly?”
“Just enough to make it impossible to open a slipstream corridor.”
Conlon turned to look at the brightly churning amber glow of the slipstream core. “So we evacuate engineering and throw a wrench at it?” What the hell, it’s worked before, she thought ruefully.
“No,” B’Elanna said, her eyes suddenly filled with light. “Not the drive, just the deflector dish.”
Nancy felt her eyes catch B’Elanna’s fire. “Vorik could do it.”
“The comm is still down,” B’Elanna reminded her.
“Just Voyager ’s.”
“We have another comm system handy?”
“Yeah,” Nancy replied with a smile.
Captain Itak watched as Voyager moved gracefully toward open space. His ship’s sensors had detected multiple power fluctuations in the flagship. He was unperturbed by the lack of response to their repeated hails. He trusted that Captain Eden had the situation under control. For the time being Itak had agreed with Commander Glenn that they move into position to flank Voyager should the situation devolve into anything more troublesome. The Indign seemed to be taking no notice of the fleet’s activities.
“Captain,” Vorik’s voice called softly from the bridge’s engineering station.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I am receiving a transmission from Voyager. ”
“On-screen.”
“It has no audio or visual component. It is text only.”
“What does it say?”
“It is requesting that we fire upon Voyager’s deflector array with minimal phasers.”
“To what end?”
“It does not say,” Vorik replied evenly, “though the target and phase intensity are precisely spelled out.”
“Is the message from Captain Eden?”
“No. And it is not being routed through the central communications array.”
“That array is still malfunctioning,” Bloom advised them from ops.
“What is the source of the transmission?”
“It is coming from B’Elanna Torres’s ship.”
“But there is no command code authorization present?