Unworthy - Kirsten Beyer [84]
“No, Captain.”
Itak considered the situation and quickly reached a decision. Given what little he could assess of Voyager’s present circumstances, it was an unconventional request; however, there was a certain logic to it.
“Move into position and fire when ready,” he replied.
“Captain, I’ve restored power to the viewscreen,” B’Kar said triumphantly.
Eden automatically lifted her head from the unresponsive ops controls where she caught sight of the Hawking moving into attack position from Voyager’s port side.
What the hell? she wondered, just as a bright blue beam erupted from its forward phaser array.
“Brace for impact!” she shouted as the beam struck, rattling the deck and everyone’s nerves, but doing no significant damage.
As she waited breathlessly for another volley, having all but concluded that Captain Itak’s systems must be malfunctioning as badly as hers, her combadge crackled to life.
“Conlon to the bridge.”
“Go ahead,” the captain replied.
“Was that the Hawking ?”
“They just opened fire on us,” Eden confirmed. In the background someone on Conlon’s end had just let out a cheer.
“Captain,” Gwyn interrupted, “the slipstream drive is powering down.”
Eden struggled for a moment to put the pieces together. “ Hawking fired on our deflector dish, and it shut down the slipstream drive,” she said, smiling in faint relief.
“Just as we requested,” Conlon confirmed.
“We, Lieutenant?”
There was a slight pause before Conlon admitted, “B’Elanna and I. I contacted Hawking using her ship’s comm system. Since it’s not linked to Voyager , it’s not experiencing the same issues we are at the moment. I’ve routed this comm signal into our combadges. I’m returning to engineering now. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
“Thank you,” Eden replied. “Bridge out.”
Eden was pleased, of course, that the immediate problem had been solved. The next order of business would be to determine whether or not the multiple failures were accidental or intentional.
A heavy thump sounded behind her. After a moment, a breathless and angry Admiral Batiste crawled out of a Jefferies tube.
“What is going on?” he demanded.
Eden moved to his side and gave him a brief explanation of the last few minutes. His eyes blazed with barely repressed fury as she completed her report.
“You know what this means, don’t you, Captain?”
Eden did, but hesitated to give voice to it while in earXshot of the rest of her bridge officers. “Yes, Admiral. Unfortunately, I do.”
Chakotay was surprised when the doors to the astrometrics lab opened automatically. Most of the others between his quarters and this deck had required manual override. He’d felt the ship shudder beneath what he assumed was weapons fire.
The lab was dark. A small circle of light coming from an auxiliary panel immediately caught his eye, as it was the room’s only illumination. Seven’s face was a crescent moon, glowing in the panel’s uneven light. She did not look up as he entered.
“Is everything okay, Seven?”
“No.”
He stepped closer to peer over her shoulder. She was studying scans of the Indign system and seemed to be focusing her attention on the fourth planet.
“Do you have any idea what the emergency is?”
“The ship is experiencing widespread systems failures. When I arrived I found that the lab’s power supply had been cut. I only just retrieved the data I require.”
“If the power is down, how did you do that?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow slightly as she glanced in his direction. The look said clearly “I am Borg,” though he suddenly realized how long it had been since she had used that particular phrase in his presence.
“I experienced something several hours ago, which I am attempting to understand. Initially I believed it was another product of my catoms and their unruly nature. Upon reflection, however, I have formulated another theory.”
“I’m listening,” he replied, wondering why her tone filled him with a sense of impending doom.
“I believe someone is using my catoms to try to communicate with me.”
“The Caeliar?” was his automatic assumption.
“No,” she replied