“You two go to sickbay,” she ordered, gesturing to the members of the security team. “The rest of you secure the bridge. Tuvok, you’re with me.” Her hand closed around Ensign Navarro’s arm as he went past—he was looking more alert than the others. “Report back to me as soon as you can. I’ll be in the computer monitor room.”
The ensign tried to stand a little straighter. “Aye-aye, ma’am!”
Janeway let it go. His enthusiasm was heartening.
“You believe the computer is malfunctioning?” Tuvok asked.
“It’s more than a simple ODN failure if we can’t access the bridge.
We’ll have to directly access the main computer core to find out what’s happening.”
The crackle of forcefield energy could be heard down the corridor. Tuvok already had his tricorder opened to ready position.
Rounding the corner, Janeway came to an abrupt halt. The frame of the door had been cut away, removing at least two meters on either side.
The pieces were stacked neatly against one wall.
Tuvok scanned the razor-sharp edges of the bulkhead, then swung his tricorder into the monitor room. The rear wall shimmered with a blue forcefield.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Janeway said numbly. She took one more wondering step forward. “It’s gone. They’ve ripped out our computer processor….”
Tuvok went right up to the forcefield, holding out the tricorder.
A gaping hole in the floor and the wall overlooked the three-level drop down the center of the cylindrical memory core.
The optical data cables that once led from the core junction node to the processor were lying in a pool of blue nutrient fluid.
Janeway saw the reason why—the bionutrient shunts leading to the banks of neural gel packs has been severed by the forcefield.
Most of the leaking gel was dripping down the interior of the core.
“The integrity of the subspace field was lost when the junction nodes to the processor were severed.” Tuvok snapped his tricorder shut.
“The forcefield is experiencing minor power fluctuations. A secondary forcefield must be established before the subspace field can be stabilized.”
Janeway nodded, waving him off, her eyes fastened on the dark hole in the center of the computer core. One of the most important rules of command she had learned in Starfleet Academy was how to maintain an impartial attitude in the face of a difficult situation. Janeway usually found that taking things personally interfered with decision making. Yet, faced with this wrenching hole, with her vessel disabled in one stroke from the removal of five square meters of computer processor….
Yes, I take this personally.
Before she would work herself into a really satisfying, righteous fury, Torres arrived. As she skidded to a stop, her hair swung into her face and her arms shot out for balance. Her mouth opened and closed without a word, until she finally managed to blurt out, “Where is it?!”
Janeway was in no mood to endure anyone else’s temper tantrum if she couldn’t have one of her own. “I hope this means we still have our warp core?”
“They wouldn’t dare!” The engineer gave her a quick look, before glaring at the hole in the deck. Even her hands were clenched.
Janeway wondered if the young woman knew how Klingon she looked when she was in a rage. “That won’t accomplish anything,” she said curtly.
“I need to know what the damage is in here.”
“I know what the damage is,” Torres retorted. “Somebody stole our computer! That’s some neat trick, cutting the processor right out from under the memory core.”
“I don’t care how it was done, Lieutenant, I want the ODN back on-line.”
As usual, when directly confronted with a problem, Torres immediately went to work. “The auxiliary computer and dedicated subprocessors should be able to run primary operations once we reestablish the subspace integrity within these modules. But without the main processor… I doubt we’ll have warp capability.”
Tuvok stepped between them, setting down a portable forcefield unit.
“You should not be standing here, Captain. The power failures could be allowing leakage of subspace radiation.”
Janeway didn’t move. “It’s a dangerous universe, Tuvok.”
Another forcefield glimmered on, this one tinged green as if indicating caution by its acid tone.
“Get that subspace field back in place, Torres, then report to the bridge.” Janeway gestured helplessly to the hole. “And have someone clean up this… fluid, so we can see what we’ve got left in here.”
“Aye, Captain.” Torres smartly turned and ran down the corridor.
She started to issue orders through her comm badge, but broke off with a frustrated curse when she remembered it wasn’t working.
Tuvok made some final adjustments to the forcefield, then slowly stood at full attention. Janeway knew he wouldn’t bring up his failure again—he would wait for her to chose the correct moment to discuss it.
It was times like this she appreciated his rock-solid dependability.
“Is anything else missing?” Janeway asked.
“A tricorder scan reveals this is the only area that has been damaged.”
Tuvok turned to gaze at the ragged hole along with the captain.
“Apparently, only the computer processor was removed.”
“Only the processor,” Janeway repeated. “Only the most important operational element on this ship.”
Kes blinked open her eyes. “What happened?” she asked, but when she realized she could hardly move, she refrained from asking the other dozens of questions that immediately came to mind.
Something was wrong, and she had to be quiet so the doctor could fix it. He leaned over her, reaching out with one hand, a concerned expression on his face.
Suddenly his body seemed to phase, disappearing in static lines, before popping back into position, exactly the same as when she’d first seen him. He was coming toward her and leaning into her line of sight.
Then his image seemed to flatten, breaking apart, leaping backward several meters.
Kes pushed herself up. “Doctor?”
Zimmerman seemed unaware of her presence, as he repeatedly performed the same motions, trapped in a few seconds of time.
Kes reached for her comm badge. “Captain, this is Kes—” The muted tone told her that it wasn’t working. She tried a few more times without success, as the doctor repeated the same sequence of actions over and over again.
She got up to go get someone who could fix his systems, but for some reason she couldn’t leave him like that. He would hate the distortion, its machine-like repetition and his loss of control.
She drew in her breath, aware she was making a big decision. But she liked making big decisions. “Computer, end program.”
The image of the doctor disappeared.
Clutching her fist to her chest, she counted three heartbeats before ordering, “Begin program.”
There was a momentary delay—maybe no one else would have noticed it, but she was familiar with every nuance of the doctor’s existence. The telling pause penetrated down to her bones, and she knew something was wrong….
Then Zimmerman appeared, his hands clasped in front of him.
“What is the nature of the emergency?” he immediately asked, glancing toward the red flashing lights.
Kes was delighted it had worked. “I don’t know what’s happening.
I was knocked unconscious, and you were caught in some sort of… loop.” She followed the doctor to the computer terminal.
“The communication lines are down.”
“The entire optical data network is nonfunctioning. Sickbay is currently operating under emergency power.” Zimmerman picked up his tricorder. “You say you were unconscious? How do you feel now?”
She held still as he scanned her. “My head aches some.”
He scowled at his readings. “Apparently you were scanned shortly after you were rendered unconscious. An antidote has been created to clear the degenerative toxins from your system.”
Kes wondered why he sounded puzzled. “You must have done that.”
“That is the problem,” the doctor said shortly. “I don’t remember performing the scan or entering the data into the medical database.
The last thing I remember…”
“We were doing the crew reports,” Kes prompted.
The doctor was motionless, apparently accessing. “My short-term-memory banks have been wiped. I don’t remember the last thing I did.”
“Maybe the neural toxin affected you, too.”
“Impossible—isopropaline wouldn’t impact my holographic systems.”
“Something’s interfering with the computer,” Kes pointed out.
“Even the chronometer isn’t working.”
“Yes, yes,” the doctor brushed off, as if his condition was of no concern. Examining the comparative readings, he said to himself, “Neural gas, rapid dispersal… degenerative. I need to know the time that has lapsed to measure the dosage of the antidote.”
Kes checked a chronometer. “One hour and thirty-two minutes,” she said.
“Excuse me?” the doctor asked, looking up. “What was that?”
“That’s how long we were unconscious.”
“Impossible,” the doctor said, giving her a penetrating look.
Kes wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but she didn’t have time to ask as the first injured crewman stumbled through the sickbay door. She ran to help him, as the doctor ordered the medical replicator to process the antidote.
Kes overheard the doctor struggling with the replicator, making several attempts before the correct compound was processed.
Then, in spite of her protests, the doctor injected her first, before treating the ensign. While she helped the young woman sit down, the doctor entered his findings on a padd. “Take this up to the bridge, along with enough antidote to inoculate the crew members you encounter.
Then return here with a report on our status.”
Kes hesitated, as two more people arrived, but the doctor turned away.
The last thing she heard was his irritated voice. “I’d appreciate it if you hurried. I’d like to know what’s going on, since as usual, I’m stuck down here.”
Paris turned as the captain climbed up the Jeffries tube with Tuvok behind her. “Report!” Janeway called out.
Paris didn’t want to admit how much he appreciated the sound of her warm, gravelly voice. He noticed Kim had no scruples about hiding his relief—the ensign was elbow-deep in the nutrient gel packs of the main bridge subprocessor, but he looked as if he could have jumped up and hugged Janeway. Paris turned away with a smile, which faded somewhat when he was confronted by the blank gray viewscreen.
Janeway strode into the center of the bridge as if ready to put an end to all this nonsense. “Where’s Chakotay?”
“I guess I’m in charge,” Paris finally answered, when nobody else did.
“The security team just left with Chakotay, taking him to sickbay.”
“He didn’t regain consciousness along with the rest of us,” Kim added.
Tuvok was trying to access the Tactical control panel. “Tactical station is off-line.”
“I can’t access the ODN to get the systems back on-line,” Kim said, as if he was personally responsible. Paris almost felt sorry for the kid, except that the Ops officer was responsible for keeping the ship’s systems integrated and functioning properly.
“The main processor was removed from the computer core.” Janeway held up her hand to stop Kim’s questions, while Paris felt a surge of admiration for her cool delivery. His own eyes were beginning to glaze as a cascade of implications piled on top of one another—no warp, no navigation, no sensors….
But the captain spoke as if she’d always been prepared for this possibility. “Torres is reestablishing the subspace field of the main core, which should bring the auxiliary computer and the optical data network back on-line. You’ll have to reinitiate the programs from this subprocessor.”
Kim swallowed, then apparently remembered he was supposed to respond.
“Aye, Captain.”
Janeway was hardly listening. “I wonder what’s keeping Torres.”
Her fingers tapped her comm badge, an abortive gesture, as if she knew it wouldn’t work but she couldn’t suppress the automatic motion that f went along with the desire to speak to someone.
“Is there any way you can route communications through the bridge subprocessor?”
“I’m not sure,” Kim answered. “I’ll have to see once we get power to the transceivers.”
The captain’s fist hit the arm of her chair as she sat down, a tiny sign of frustration that Paris found oddly reassuring. None of them were infallible, not even Tuvok, who insisted on acting so stiff and proper that Paris sometimes couldn’t resist poking at that icy front.
He sometimes forgot that they were all stumbling around in this alien quadrant, practically blind… which reminded him of the time he was lost in the wine cellars of the Trident Chin, an endless maze of tunnels and vats under the merchant complex. He had only gone down there to get a little nip on the sly, but it had taken him the entire night to contact someone to come find him”I know something that might work,” Paris offered.
Janeway’s eyes bored into his. “Well, out with it, Lieutenant.”
“A tricorder has both a transceiver and a signal/encryption processor.
If we leave our tricorders open to the same frequency, we can talk to each other without having to go through the ship’s ODN.”
Tuvok lifted one brow, and Paris could have sworn he was irritated that he hadn’t thought of it. “The method would be highly inefficient, similar to ancient Earth devices which broadcast open signals, yet it would provide intraship communications.”
“Then do it,” the captain ordered. “Assign a different frequency to each department.”
“Of course, Captain.”
Paris could almost take pleasure in one-upping the security chief, except for the situation they were in. Not that he disliked the dark Vulcan, but he’d been smarting ever since Tuvok’s reminder that he didn’t deserve to be a part of this crew. After all, how could he ever forget that? He was reminded every day, week after week in hundreds of subtle ways, that he had to earn the right to be among these people—both Starfleet and Maquis. Sometimes he felt as if he were still serving out his sentence.
Maybe that was why he’d been acting so flippant the past few days, setting up a booking operation and giving odds on holodeck rations that the captain wouldn’t find wormhole information sitting next to these cursed rocks. He did it as much to shock Harry Kim as anything else, even after Kes embarrassed him by placing a bet of two hours of her time on the captain’s success.