What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [19]
The daiMon in charge had given the Enterprise ten minutes to give up the Hathaway, which they had erroneously concluded to be a prize of value to the Enterprise in order for the Galaxy-class ship to be firing on it.
La Forge and Wesley had gone back to the bridge to talk to the Enterprise. La Forge had left Sonya in charge of engineering, telling her in no uncertain terms to make sure the warp drive worked, as it was now likely their only means of escape from the Kreechta.
Now she was monitoring the conversation between the two ships. Data was speaking at the moment. “Premise: The Ferengi wish to capture the Hathaway, believing it to be of value. Therefore, we must remove the ship from their field of interest.”
Kolrami, the Zakdorn observer and moderator, spoke up. “And they will soon relocate it after a two-second warp jump.”
“One-point-four,” Sonya muttered. She still didn’t think Wesley’s module had enough antimatter for two whole seconds.
“There is a way,” Picard said. “Number One, can you hear this?”
“Yes, sir,” Riker said, “we’re all here—waiting for you to pull another rabbit out of your hat.”
“Gar,” she said to Costa, “check over the inertial dampeners. With this warp drive, the last thing we want is to lose that or gravity.”
“Right—wouldn’t want to escape the Ferengi just to go splat on the bulkheads.” Gar ran off to check that.
“Mr. Data?” Picard prompted.
The android said, “On the captain’s command, we will fire four photon torpedoes directly at the Hathaway.”
They actually have torpedoes. That’s something, Sonya thought as she finished off the diagnostic program.
Data went on: “One millisecond after its detonation, the computer will trigger your warp jump.”
Sonya started running the program, and then immediately opened up a new program file on the terminal in front of her. If this is going to work, we’ll need to get this cranky old computer to do it.
La Forge said, “I think I hate this plan. Data, we’re not even sure our warp jump will work.”
“If the warp engines fail to function,” Data said, “the result could be—unfortunate.”
“Very unfortunate—we will be dead.” That was Worf, as ever the voice of bluntness.
Sonya, however, was pretty sure she could do it. She’d spent two days navigating these silly old duotronics, and she was fairly confident that she could make them tap-dance if she had to. Tying the warp drive-execution into the detection of a torpedo explosion was something she should be able to do.
“Captain Riker, I cannot order you to do this,” Picard said, which struck Sonya as remarkably generous. Were she in Picard’s place, she wasn’t sure she’d stop short of giving that order.
“What the hell.” Riker sounded rather morbid. “Nobody said life was safe.”
Sonya looked around, saw that Chao-Anh Aleakala was sitting nervously. “Chao-Anh, I need a fresh set of eyes on this.”
Looking almost relieved, Chao-Anh came over and eyeballed Sonya’s padd.
Picard’s voice sounded over the speakers. “The advantage is that it will appear from the Kreechta’s perspective as though—as though you were destroyed in the explosion.”
As she read over the program, Chao-Anh muttered, “Unless of course we are destroyed in the explosion.”
“We’ll be okay,” Sonya said. To her own surprise, she believed it.
“I hope you’re right, Sonya.” Chao-Anh, for her part, didn’t sound like she did.
Worf said, “That will deceive them only for a few minutes. Their sensors will soon locate us.”
“We’ll only need a few minutes, Mr. Worf,” Riker said, “because you’re going to prepare another surprise for them.”
That confused Sonya. She knew that Worf could get into the Enterprise computer by virtue of being the ship’s chief of security. I guess he has an equal facility for Ferengi computers. Chuckling to herself, she thought, They probably get their security protocols on the cheap anyhow.
Chao-Anh