What's Past_ Many Splendors (Book 6) - Keith R.A. DeCandido [35]
While Kieran did that, Sonya tapped her combadge again. “Gomez to engineering.” Her combadge gave a low trill indicating that it wasn’t functioning. Walking over to the bulkhead, she touched the computer screen, but it didn’t respond. “Great, comm’s down, and power’s down.” She looked at Kieran. “I don’t suppose you’re hiding a tricorder in your pants?”
“If I said I was just glad to see you, would you hit me?”
“I’d certainly consider it.”
“Then I’ll just say, no, I don’t.”
Sonya glanced down the corridor away from the emergency bulkhead they’d just dropped. “Come on, we need to get to engineering, see if Chao-Anh needs help.”
Kieran nodded and followed her, only to find that another emergency bulkhead had been dropped. Looking up and down the bulkhead, as if it would provide answers, Kieran finally said, “You know, I don’t think I want to know why that thing was dropped. I just hope it wasn’t because of something on this side of it.”
“Yeah.” Sonya looked up. “Maybe we can use the crawlways.”
“For what, exactly?”
“To get to engineering.”
“Sonnie, we don’t know how bad the radiation is up there. And we don’t know—”
“We don’t know anything,” Sonya snapped. The she sighed. “Sorry, but we can’t just stand here and hope somebody rescues us. The ship is obviously in big trouble, and we have to help. We’re closer to engineering than the bridge anyhow, so let’s get down there and see if there’s anything we can do.”
After considering the point, Kieran nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. I just hate crawling around in there, y’know?”
Sonya couldn’t help but smile. “Mr. Gravity Boots can’t handle confinement?”
“I’m a creature of the air. That’s why I like to stay in the nice, big, spacious engine room.”
Sonya and Kieran crawled for the better part of an hour, and only made about ten meters’ worth of real progress. They were constantly doubling back, going around, and avoiding various obstacles in their path, most of which were due to yet another catastrophic malfunction. While it was possible for a ship like the Enterprise to have one or two malfunctions like this, it was almost impossible for so many systems to completely fall apart at once.
“We must have hit a quantum filament,” Sonya said when they took a brief rest at one junction, sitting across from each other in what passed for a wide space in the crawlways.
“That’s crazy. The bridge would’ve seen it coming.”
“Only if they were looking for it, and why would they be? You know how wide those things aren’t,” she said with a grin.
“Nah, I’m thinking Romulan attack. Or maybe a new Borg weapon.”
Sonya shook her head. “The damage was too catastrophic, too across-the-board. Weapons fire wouldn’t do that—or if it did, it’d be enough to crack the ship in half, and we’d have felt it if that happened.”
“I don’t know, Sonnie—”
“Kieran, remember when we first met?”
Cutting himself off, Kieran blinked. “Yeah, but I don’t see—”
“You told me that it was a design flaw, I said it was a tribblecom. Who was right?”
“Oh, that first meeting.”
It was Sonya’s turn to blink. “What other first meeting was there?”
“Okay, I was thinking of the day you came on board and I passed you and Denny in the corridor on the way to a staff meeting.”
“We didn’t really meet, though,” Sonya said with a smile.
“We exchanged words. I said I was running late for a staff meeting.”
Sonya honestly didn’t remember the conversation that clearly—that day was a haze of nervousness and anticipation and her inability to give The Speech to Geordi—but decided not to let him know that.
He’s going to be disappointed enough when I tell him what I have to tell him.
Slapping his knees, Kieran made as if to rise. “Shall we boogie?”
“Kieran, I’m leaving the Enterprise.”
“What?”
“I’m leaving the Enterprise. There’s a position on the Oberth open—a one-year mission dealing with new ways to harness antimatter, under Captain Schönhertz. I’m taking it.”
Sitting all the way back