by Dayton Ward
The Pakled captain needed to think about it for a minute. “Eighty-five. Maybe.” He massaged his wounded brow. “Many of us are hurt.”
“I understand.” Picard considered his options. “Mister La Forge, can you talk the Pakled engineer through the procedure?”
“I can try,” he said dubiously. He remembered coaching the clueless Pakleds on the workings of their own freighter years ago. “They’re not exactly easy to explain things to.”
“Please make every effort, Mister La Forge.” Picard made it clear that failure was not an option.
“Yes, sir.” Geordi turned the communications panel over to Worf. He figured it might be easier to converse with Snollicoob away from the commotion of the bridge. It was also possible that the Pakled engineer might speak more freely away from the presence of his own captain. Geordi headed for the turbolift. “Patch him through to engineering,” he instructed Worf. “I’ll talk to him there.”
“Good luck, Mister La Forge,” Picard called out to him.
Thanks, he thought. I’m probably going to need it.
The angled display screen atop Geordi’s desk in engineering was smaller than the main viewer on the bridge, but Snollicoob looked just as distressed. Fearful brown eyes gazed up at Geordi, who had cleared his office of extraneous personnel in order to give Snollicoob his full attention. A reinforced window of transparent aluminum offered a view of the Enterprise’s own matter/antimatter reaction assembly. The familiar thrum of the engine room penetrated the walls of the office. After so many years in charge of the engines, Geordi could sometimes detect subtle irregularities in the intermix just by ear. He wondered what the Pakled’s engine sounded like now.
“Are you smart?” Snollicoob asked him. “Can you help me?”
La Forge rolled his eyes behind his VISOR. It would be easier talking to little Molly O’Brien, and she was just two years old!
I can’t believe I’m doing this, he thought. Probably just a scam anyway.
“Why don’t you start by sending me your data,” he suggested.
“Uh-huh,” Snollicoob agreed. Like La Forge, the Pakled had relocated to the engineering section of his own vessel. Geordi heard much hubbub and commotion in the background. Tools banged against metal pipes and valves. Welding lasers hissed and sizzled. Nerve-jangling buzzers and alarms sounded with aggravating frequency. Worried Pakleds stomped back and forth, seemingly engaged in frantic repair operations. If it was all an act, they were putting on quite a show. Snollicoob, who apparently did not have an office of his own, hunched over a blocky tabletop console that looked like a cruder version of Geordi’s own master systems display. He fiddled with some knobs. “I am sending it now.”
To La Forge’s slight surprise, the requested data appeared promptly on the screen alongside Snollicoob’s image. By now, Geordi had the Enterprise’s computers working overtime to compensate for the subspace interference. He swiftly inspected the readings.
Damn!
It was even worse than he had imagined. As nearly as he could tell, a quantum resonance had caused a polarity shift in the antimatter containment field, while the reaction chamber itself was building toward a full-scale meltdown. It was only a matter of time before the increasing temperature overwhelmed the weakened shields, at which point Rorpot would be reduced to atoms. Assuming that the data hadn’t been cooked up to fool him.
“Okay, we’ve got to lower the temperature right away,” Geordi said, getting down to business. “Flood the assembly with coolant.”
Snollicoob shook his head. “I cannot do that. The tank broke open when we hit the filament. It leaked into space.”
“Really?” La Forge found that hard to believe. Redundant baffles should have prevented a leak of that magnitude, as they would have on the Enterprise. “All right. Can you activate the backup cooling systems?”
Snollicoob cocked his head. “What are backups?”
Is he serious? La Forge felt a headache coming on. “You know, backups. Secondary systems that duplicate the functions of the primary apparatus.”
“I do not understand,” Snollicoob said. “Why build two systems when all you need is one?”
He really doesn’t get it, La Forge thought. This was going to be harder than he thought. “So you have it if the first one breaks.”
A lightbulb flickered dimly above Snollicoob’s head. His eyes lit up. “That is a good idea!” Then reality sunk in and his shoulders slumped. “We have no backups,” he said sheepishly. “I am sorry.”
Despite his growing frustration, La Forge was starting to feel sorry for the hapless engineer. It wasn’t his fault his people relied on technology they barely understood. “Never mind,” Geordi said. “We’ll try something else.” He searched his brain for an effective stopgap measure; unfortunately, five years had left his memory of the Pakleds’ layout pretty fuzzy. He could use Data’s computerized recall right now. “How about you send me a schematic of your engine?”
“Uh-huh!” Snollicoob hurried to oblige. Within seconds, a detailed diagram of Rorpot’s engineering section appeared on La Forge’s screen. He was impressed by the level of the detail, which actually approached Federation standards.
That’s more like it, he thought. Maybe the Pakleds were better with blueprints and numbers than with words. They aren’t stupid, he reminded himself, or they would never have made it out into the galaxy in the first place. They just have undeveloped language skills.
Fine. He didn’t need Snollicoob to write a sonnet, just to get his overheating engine under control.
“You get the pictures?” the Pakled asked.
“Yes,” La Forge said. “Thanks. They’re just what I needed.”
Snollicoob grinned, pleased to be of service. “You are welcome.”
A rapid analysis revealed that Rorpot’s single warp engine was of basic Cardassian design, albeit a few generations out of date. La Forge wondered briefly how the Pakleds had gotten their hands on the technology; he couldn’t imagine the Cardassians falling for the same “samaritan snare” the Enterprise had been suckered into years ago. The Cardassians were not exactly known for their benevolent nature, as Ro Laren had always been quick to remind people. They’d be more likely to seize a stalled freighter than render assistance.
There’s got to be a story there.
At the moment, however, it didn’t matter how the Pakleds had attained warp capacity. He just had to keep it from incinerating them. If that was even possible.
“Mister La Forge!” Snollicoob blurted. The Pakled stared at his own monitors in alarm. “The bubble is halfway gone!”
“I can see that.” According to the readouts, the containment field was down to forty-nine percent and falling. The Enterprise’s own safety margin was fifteen percent; anything below that, and a warp core explosion was inevitable. La Forge had to assume that Rorpot’s primitive engine was even more unstable. “Stay calm. We can handle this.”
Maybe they could dampen the matter/antimatter reaction to buy some time? “Increase the flow of deuterium to the reaction chamber,” he suggested. If they smothered the antihydrogen with an excess of gaseous matter, severely skewing the annihilation ratio, they might be able to slow the chain reaction long enough for the Enterprise to arrive in time to evacuate the freighter. Conscious of the Pakled’s limitations, he attempted to explain his plan as simply as possible. “Give the engine too much of one fuel, so that it chokes.”
“Good idea!” Snollicoob beamed. “You are smart!”
“So they tell me.”
La Forge crossed his fingers as the other engineer went to work. He wasn’t going to relax until he knew this desperate improvisation was going to work. His spirits sank as Snollicoob’s hopeful expression collapsed only slightly faster than the containment field itself. This doesn’t look good.
“It is not working. The valves are stuck.” Snollicoob twisted his controls so hard one of the knobs broke off. He gaped at the broken component in chagrin. “I cannot make the flow
go faster!”
Great, La Forge thought sarcastically. He guessed that the injector nozzles were fused or pinched. The Enterprise was equipped with redundant cross-fed injectors, but at this point, he knew better than to expect that the Pakleds had built in the same precautions. This is why we have the Prime Directive, he thought irritably, biting down on his tongue to keep from saying something rude. Some species just aren’t ready for warp drives. . . .
He found himself wishing he was on board Rorpot in person, so he could deal directly with the malfunctions, then caught himself. What am I thinking? He went back to advising Snollicoob long-distance. “You’re going to have to open those valves manually. With a wrench if you have to!”
“We are trying!” Snollicoob insisted. A ladder crashed loudly in the background. Banging noises almost drowned out the engineer’s words. A bright flash briefly bleached out the Pakled’s features. “They will not open! They are stuck!”
A sudden jolt tossed him to one side. The screen blanked out abruptly.
“Snollicoob!” La Forge’s heart skipped a beat. He tried to restore communications with Rorpot, only to discover that the transmission had been cut off at the other end. Grisly scenarios flashed through his brain. What had happened to Rorpot? Had the warp core exploded prematurely?
C’mon, Snollicoob. Don’t do this to me.
A burst of static heralded the resumption of the signal. La Forge let out a sigh of relief as he answered the hail. Snollicoob’s mournful face reappeared on the screen. The Pakled’s hair was badly mussed. Fresh black soot smudged his features. His eyebrows were singed. Shouts and alarms sounded all around him.
“Hello, Mister La Forge. I am sorry for the interruption.”
“Forget it.” Geordi was surprised at just how relieved he was to see that his Pakled counterpart was still among the living. He thought he had lost him for good. “What happened to you?”
“We bumped into another filament,” he explained. “It shook us up.”
“I can tell,” La Forge said. At least Rorpot was not traveling at warp speed anymore. The only good thing about the freighter’s being stalled in deep space was that it could no longer collide into the quantum filaments at high velocity. “How are you doing?”
“It is bad,” Snollicoob reported. “The hull is buckling. There are fires everywhere. The galley is gone.” He shook his head dourly. “I do not like quantum filaments.”
“You and me both.” La Forge sympathized with what the Pakleds were going through. He and Beverly Crusher had been trapped in a burning cargo hold after the Enterprise’s own runin with the deadly interstellar hazard. They were both lucky to have survived the conflagration. “Trust me, I’ve been there.”
“You have?” Snollicoob was surprised to hear it. “But you are still alive?”
“You bet,” La Forge encouraged him. “And you’re going to get through this, too.”
The Pakled looked unconvinced. “I don’t know. It is bad here.”
A quick glance at the reactor readings lent some validity to Snollicoob’s gloomy prognosis. Containment field integrity was down to thirty-four percent. Geordi wasn’t sure how far they were from a total collapse, but he figured they were running out of time. There was only one sensible course of action.
“You need to eject the warp core.”
Expelling the overheating reaction assembly might spare Rorpot from the catastrophic explosion. Granted, there was still a danger that the core might detonate too near the freighter, but that was a chance they would have to take. Better that the core explode right outside the ship than inside its hull.
Snollicoob hesitated. “But we will lose our engine. The captain will not like that.”
“You don’t have any choice,” La Forge informed him. “It’s extreme, I know, but you have to do it. Now.”
“Uh-huh.” Snollicoob gulped. “You are smart. I trust you.”
The nervous Pakled took a deep breath, then keyed the emergency codes into his console. La Forge hoped Snollicoob wouldn’t get into too much trouble for doing this without his captain’s say-so, but they didn’t have time to conduct a lengthy debate on the pros and cons of the procedure. At least, if this worked, the captain and the crew would still be alive.
Snollicoob flipped a switch.
Nothing happened.
“Uh-oh,” the engineer said.
“What is it?” La Forge asked, afraid he already knew the answer. Let me guess. It’s not working.
“I cannot eject the core,” Snollicoob confirmed. “The hull doors will not open.”
La Forge wanted to hit something. “Doesn’t anything work right on that ship of yours?”
“I do not know,” Snollicoob confessed. He wrung his hands. Greasy tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “We are broken.”
“All right. Let’s keep our cool.” La Forge didn’t have to be an empath to see that Snollicoob was on the verge of panic. He emulated Counselor Troi’s comforting tone. “We just have to get those doors apart. Can you force them open from inside?”
Snollicoob pulled himself together. He wiped the tears from his eyes. “I do not think so.” He consulted his gauges. “The ejection chute is too hot. It is not safe. We would burn up.”
La Forge saw what he meant. A leak in the EPS conduits had flooded the interior of the ejection chute with superenergized gases. The blazing plasma would fry any Pakled technicians before they had a chance to pry open the exterior hull plates.
“Okay then,” he concluded. “You’re going to have to do it from outside.”
“Outside the ship?” Snollicoob’s eyes widened in fear. “That will be dangerous.”
“Dangerous is better than dead,” La Forge said bluntly.
Snollicoob looked like he wasn’t quite sure that was so.
“Uh-huh.”
Space was cold. And dark. And scary.
Snollicoob squeezed through an airlock as he exited the ship. The sliding doors had not opened all the way, forcing him to turn sideways to slip through the gap. He held his breath, hoping that his modified Tellarite spacesuit would not catch or tear on anything. The ill-fitting suit, which was one size too small for him, hampered his movements. He had looked for a better fit, but this suit had been in the best condition. In the end, he had chosen safety over comfort. In space, leaks were bad.
He stepped nervously out onto the hull. A tinted visor hid his face. A searchlight built into the top of his helmet cut through the darkness before him. A fully charged phaser was affixed to his tool belt. His heart pounded loudly. He was afraid.
The vast openness of empty space was profoundly intimidating, especially after weeks aboard the cozy confines of the freighter. Despite the protective spacesuit, he felt uncomfortably naked and exposed, like a newborn cub shoved out of the den into the threatening world outside. Vertigo sent his head spinning, and he realized that he had forgotten to exhale. He gulped down air until the light-headedness passed. The sound of his own breathing echoed inside the helmet.
“Mister La Forge, are you there?”
“Call me Geordi,” the human engineer answered via the headset in Snollicoob’s helmet. His voice was scratchy and faint, but reassuring nonetheless. Snollicoob did not want to do this alone. An optical connection linked Geordi’s VISOR to a camera in the helmet, so he could see what Snollicoob saw. “I’m not going anywhere. We engineers have to stick together, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Snollicoob answered uncertainly. He looked longingly back at the airlock entrance, tempted to turn back. “I do not like this, Geordi.”
“You ever spacewalked before?”
“No,” he admitted. He could not remember the last time the hull had been inspected from the outside. If only he could change places with Geordi . . . !
“You can do it,” the human said. “Just put one foot in front of the other.” Geordi sounded tense. “But you had better get going. I don’t want to rush you, but that containment field is not looking good.”
> Snollicoob understood. Bolstering his courage, he set out across the hull. The magnetized soles of his boots clung to the weathered metal surface; he had to strain against the attraction to lift his feet. The helmet light illuminated his patch. He flinched at the scarred appearance of the outer plating. The rust-colored tritanium was scorched and dented, as though it had been lashed by a Ferengi plasma whip. Countless score marks and fissures cried out to be patched. Vapor jetted through a pin-sized puncture below the ventral impeller. He paused briefly to plug the hole with a wad of thermoconcrete, all too aware that there were probably many more punctures elsewhere. Rorpot was going to need serious repairs—if it didn’t blow up.
Maybe it would be easier to let it explode?
“Are we almost there yet?” Geordi asked anxiously. “You need to hurry.”
“Uh-huh.” Snollicoob quickened his pace. Unfortunately, the nearest working airlock had been on Rorpot’s starboard flank, a long hike from the ejection chute doors, which were located on the underbelly of the freighter. He had to make his way along the ravaged hull, detouring around mangled fins and twisted metal clamps, to get to where he needed to go. An enormous barrel of slush deuterium, hitched to the freighter’s side, blocked his path, forcing him to take the long way around. A jagged wound in the side of the metal drum had already released its contents to the void. Rorpot’s losses were mounting, but Snollicoob was too worn out to care. Walking in the magnetized boots was exhausting. His legs were already tired by the time he reached the bottom of the ship. He wasn’t used to moving this fast, let alone in sticky boots and a clumsy suit. Breathing hard, he forced himself to keep on going.
He was going to need a vacation after this, if he survived.
Walking upside-down beneath Rorpot was disorienting. Empty space stretched endlessly above him—or was it below? Worried eyes searched the vast expanse. He couldn’t see the quantum filaments, but he knew they were still there, all around him.
What if the ship bumps into one while I am out here?
He shuddered at the thought.
“How are you doing?” Geordi nagged him. “Can you go any faster?”