What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [18]
La Forge folded his arms. “So what is the problem?”
Sonya picked it up. “We’re still not a hundred percent sure the warp drive will work right. We’ve only got enough antimatter for a short warp-one jump, and a lot of these components are old and worn out. They haven’t been used or maintained in eighty years, and they’re not as adaptive as our tech is now.”
“The worry,” Wesley said, “is that we’re going to overload the control systems, at which point the impulse and warp drive will both shut down.”
La Forge sighed. “Great.”
“Sir,” Wesley said with a pained look at Sonya, “I know you signed off on this because if it didn’t work we’d still have impulse power. So if you want to—”
“Wes, we can’t give up now. We’ve already hooked everything up.” He sighed. “All right, the captain’ll be down in an hour for a status report. I want to quintuple-check everything. Wes, you look over the crystals and the reaction chamber. Sonya, you do the injectors. I’ll handle the control circuits. Let’s move it, people.”
Sonya went to check the injectors. She ran every diagnostic she could think of, then realized that the standard diagnostics she was used to didn’t take everything into account—like, she thought with a dark smile, the lack of a Shange shunt. She found herself rewriting the diagnostics, which was wise, as she found four programming flaws and one bad hookup she would have missed otherwise.
As she knelt behind the warp core realigning the injector after fixing the bad hookup, she heard Riker’s voice booming out over engineering. “The simulation begins in one hour.”
“You’ll have warp drive, Captain,” La Forge said, “though it may not be what you expected.”
That’s the understatement of the decade, Sonya thought.
“I think that deserves some kind of explanation.”
“We’ll have warp one for—”
Wesley cut in. “Just under two seconds.”
Sonya thought that was generous. One-point-four was her best guess, but Wesley seemed to think he minimized the excess flow of the antimatter.
“That’s not long enough for an escape,” Riker said thoughtfully, “but used as a surprise, it may give a strategic advantage.”
“Sir,” La Forge said, “all of this is theoretical.”
“And if your theory fails to pay off?”
Here it comes, Sonya thought as she fit the injector back in.
“Have you ever driven a Grenthamen waterhopper?”
“Sure.”
“Ever pop the clutch?”
Sonya barked out a laugh and almost dropped her tools. One of the things she loved about La Forge was his way of explaining things. Given half a chance, Sonya would babble for half an hour in jargon before even getting to the interesting part. With two questions, La Forge had conveyed the appropriate information to Riker without getting overly technical.
“You’re saying we’re gonna stall the Hathaway?”
With remarkable calm, Wesley put in, “And the Enterprise will waltz right over and pulverize us.”
Sonya walked out from behind the warp core with a nod to La Forge. Riker smiled at her. “Ensign Gomez.”
“Captain Riker.”
“It’s going well, I hope.”
“I think so. And…and I’ve learned a lot, sir. These old ships have a lot of fascinating technology. It’s impressive, really, they have no Shange shunts, duotronic circuitry, dilithium crystals that break down, no EPS conduits, no isolinear chips, and I’m babbling again, aren’t I?” That last was added when Riker broke into what could only be described as an indulgent smile.
“That’s all right, Ensign. As long as you keep the hot chocolate out of the engine room, we should be fine. Carry on.”
Sonya let out a long breath through her teeth.
An hour later, Sonya sat in engineering, working up a new diagnostic program while keeping an eye on the engines. The war-game scenario had gone rather badly. Lieutenant Worf had hacked into the Enterprise security computer and tricked them into thinking a Romulan warbird was attacking. In the confusion, the Hathaway got several dozen simulated hits on the Enterprise. Then, just when La Forge had run into engineering to tell Sonya to help him and Wesley implement the warp jump, a Ferengi