What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [28]
All was well on the Starship Enterprise.
And then the Borg returned.
It started with the New Providence colony on Juret IV, which had been destroyed in a manner similar to that of the planets the Enterprise scanned in system J25 in the Delta Quadrant. A Borg expert named Elizabeth Shelby had been detached to the Enterprise to verify the likelihood that the Borg were responsible, which she did in short order.
Sonya hadn’t been able to sleep the night before. Kieran, of course, slept like a rock. He’d been on board when they’d last encountered the Borg, but for him, it was just one more mission.
For Sonya, it had been a lot more.
When she came on for gamma shift, Geordi, Wes, Data, Marguerite Sherman, and Bigay Ampalayon were all standing around the main console, along with a blonde wearing a red lieutenant commander’s uniform. Sonya assumed this to be the infamous Shelby.
“Look at Commander Borg go,” Helga Van Mayter muttered when Sonya walked past her.
“Commander Borg?” Sonya said with a smile.
“Well, she’s supposed to be the expert. Never mind that we’re the only ones who actually saw the damn things, but hey, she’s the expert. You know, she beamed down early with Data? I heard Riker chewed her aft shields after that one—especially after she cleaned him out in poker.”
“She cleaned out Riker?”
Helga nodded.
Several hours into gamma, Riker came by asking for a report. “Everybody’s up late tonight,” Helga muttered.
“Can you blame them?” Sonya asked.
“Not really. God, I hope they’re wrong.”
“Yeah.”
“Commander, I think we should call it a night.” Riker’s voice carried across engineering. Sonya looked over to see that Riker, who had been sitting on the console’s edge in front of Bigay and Marguerite, was now standing. “That’s an order. We’ll reconvene at 0500.”
Four whole hours of sleep, Sonya thought, then realized she was being unfair. Besides, Geordi and Wes were the types to keep gnawing at a problem until they’d completely chewed it, and Data never slept anyhow.
Shelby then said, “Sir, if I may be allowed to continue with Mr. Data, who does not require rest—”
“You need rest, Commander,” Riker said.
For anybody else that would’ve been it. In fact, if Shelby had really gotten the reaming Helga had described, she shouldn’t have even gone that far.
Instead, she went further: “If we have a confrontation with the Borg without improving our defense systems—”
“If we have a confrontation,” Riker said firmly, “I don’t want a crew fighting the Borg at the same time they’re fighting their own fatigue. Dismissed.”
With that, Shelby left, quickly followed by the others. Geordi gave Sonya a nod, which she returned.
Hours later, at 0415, Geordi came running into engineering. His uniform was rumpled, as if he’d slept in it, and hadn’t bothered to change into a new one. All things considered, Sonya figured that to be precisely the case.
“Geordi?” Sonya said quizzically.
“I got an idea while I was sleeping. Something I read about shield nutation modification.”
Sonya frowned. “You mean the talk T’Dar gave at the FES?”
Snapping his fingers, Geordi said, “Yes! That’s the one. If we modify the shield nutation, we might be able to hold off the Borg attack.”
Sonya thought over what the Vulcan scientist said at the Federation Engineering Symposium. “T’Dar’s hypothesis was that the emitters would have to be realigned.” She shook her head. “Geordi, that’d take days.”
“We probably don’t have days.” Geordi let out a long breath. “Okay, start on it, at least. At this point, every little bit’ll hel—”
Suddenly, without being entirely sure why, Sonya said, “The Klingons!”
Geordi gave her what might have been a penetrating gaze if his eyes were actually visible. “I’m sorry?”
Then it all came back to her, leaping forward from her subconscious, which had made her utter the phrase in the first place. “I just read a monograph last week by a Klingon engineer named Kurak—something about altering shield configuration. JAWM translated it and ran it. Computer, call up monograph from the most recent