The Sky's The Limit Part 15

"Negative, Will. Another radiation burst like that could wipe Data's positronic circuits. Data, how are you feeling? Concisely, Data," Picard added quickly.

"Unimpaired, sir. Thus far."

"Mister La Forge." Only the way Picard drew out the engineer's name indicated his impatience. "Come in, Mister La Forge."

"We've got casualties. Two dead. Mister La Forge is down, sir," came a female voice, between bursts of static. "A discharge took out two men. Geordi went to the controls, said he hadn't seen energy spikes that bad since Galorndon Core. Another one hit, and he put both hands on his VISOR, ripped it off, and collapsed."

"Sickbay," Picard continued. "Beverly..."

"Initiating precautionary radiation protocols shipwide. En route to engineering, Captain. On foot," came a voice DeSeve recognized. His fears for Doctor Crusher's safety seemed far in the past. They were all in danger now.

Data appeared in the ready room. "With respect, Captain..." Android he might be, but he knew when to fall silent. Quickly, he joined Worf in pa.s.sing out radiation sprays. M'ret's aides interposed themselves between the android and their leader.

"Sirs, these sprays are not species-specific," Data said. "I can a.s.sure you they will do no..."

"We have had Romulans on board before," Worf added. "One survived. Are you afraid?" The sneer in his voice would have kindled a small nova, much less Romulans' volatile tempers.

"Enough," M'ret snapped. Grasping a hypospray, he set it against his arm, then raised an eyebrow at his aides. They too injected themselves, then pressed their backs against the viewports, taking themselves out of the action. At least DeSeve no longer saw their bones through their flesh.

"Engineering," Picard called again. "I am coming down there, and I will expect a full report. Beverly, we've got to get Geordi functioning again."

Not to mention the ship.

"Data, are you still all right?"

"At the moment, I remain operational, sir. But the entire ship is being subjected to increasing levels of radiation," Data observed.

"Back to the bridge with you," Picard said. "If you feel anything..."

"If my systems deteriorate sufficiently to render me unreliable, I will report myself unfit for duty, Captain."

"You'll shut yourself down! You're one of the best resources we have."

"Aye, sir," Data's imperturbable voice replied. Eerie shadows flickered over the gold of his face and hands as he nodded.

"Number One, you have the bridge. The rest of you, with me."

"With respect, Captain," said Commander Riker as the group strode onto the bridge. The first officer was clearly reluctant to risk his captain in the presence of three Romulans and a traitor.

"Commander, if they've come this far, they probably want to live too. Objection noted, Number One. You can note it in your log."

Picard hurled himself into the turbolift, followed by the Romulans, the traitor, his security chief, and the ship's counselor. The lift took off at speed.

"Suggestions?" Picard spoke into his combadge.

Voices barraged him from all over the ship. Picard seemed untroubled by the ship's vibrations as he listened to his crew, processing different voices over the comm with ease.

"Think," M'ret hissed at him urgently. His hand grasped DeSeve's arm and pressed with almost enough strength to break it. Almost. DeSeve had long practice at not flinching. "If they can't use the android, you're the only one here who knows enough about both systems to be of any help!"

"What are you talking about?" Worf demanded.

"Your captain called for ideas. Do you have any?" M'ret replied as if he were questioning an antagonist on the Senate's floor. That too was a form of blood sport.

DeSeve had heard Romulans furious, amused, and even-shortly before their execution-afraid. He had never heard desperation from one of them before.

They probably want to live, too, Picard had said.

M'ret had discarded his honor on Romulus to perform a mission in which loss of life was the smallest risk he faced. The imprisonment he had been threatened with, even death itself, would have been far easier. He had to want to live not just to succeed, but also to justify his loss.

M'ret was not alone in wanting to live. In wanting to repair his name.

They both knew the empire. They both wanted the impossible.

DeSeve struggled not to add s.p.a.cesickness to treason and let the greater strength of the Romulans, used to help him for once, brace him until the turbolift shuddered to a halt.

This close to the warp drive, DeSeve felt it beat like an imperiled heart when the turbolift, shaking and speeding by turns, finally released them into engineering. He lurched out onto the deck and steadied himself against a blank console.

Blue light spasmed across the vast bay from the engines, splashing the high bulkheads in uneven patterns. Deck, consoles, rails, and bulkheads vibrated, subsided, then shook. Lights high above flared red while the computer's voice reported constant rises in ambient radiation.

Engineering was not a safe place to be and was about to become less safe.

But even the sight of the great tower of the jeopardized warp drive struck DeSeve as an oddly welcome change from a warbird's engineering deck. Every Romulan engineering deck DeSeve had served on had been cramped, confined, and tense. Armed guards prowled, gazing over engineers' shoulders as they tended the mysterious sealed violence of the captive singularity that made the warbird fly.

Picard raced past DeSeve to where Doctor Crusher leaned over Lieutenant Commander La Forge. The chief engineer sat, hands over his face, hunched over on a spare container. His dark skin was almost ashen, especially where his fingertips pressed against his temples.

"Starboard nacelle shut down!" came a call. "We got it!"

The flickering lights and shrill deranged vibrations subsided, but only somewhat.

"Well done," Picard said. "Mister La Forge...Geordi..." He laid a hand on the engineer's shoulder while silently consulting the physician. She nodded once.

Picard shut his eyes in relief, then made himself look at the covered bodies on the deck and the surviving crew who fought to bring Enterprise back under control.

La Forge sighed. "Wish I'd been able to get the other one before I blacked out. Any chance you can shut down portside before the warp core blows?" he called to the engineering crew. One woman broke away from the struggle and leaned over the rail.

"Negative, sir. Conduits are fused. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Back to work!" La Forge called.

He pushed himself to his feet. "No, let me up," he told Doctor Crusher as she tried to restrain him. "The VISOR connections took a hit when the warp core malfunctioned. I should be all right now."

As all right as any of them could be, DeSeve thought.

La Forge put the VISOR on over wide, blind eyes and flinched.

"You're not all right," said Crusher. Her hand went to her combadge to order transport to sickbay, but the engineer pushed it away.

"If I don't get back to work, none of us are going to be all right. I can see-" He waved concerned hands away and turned toward the captain. "Sort of. There's lots of distortion. If the painkiller holds out...You'd better give me a spare, just in case..."

Taking the hypo she held out, La Forge flung himself toward one of the few displays that still looked marginally operational. His shaking hands fugued on the keyboards, sending up a pattern of shifting lights. As they steadied, so did the rhythms of the ship.

"Got the starboard nacelle on auxiliary power," La Forge reported. "Enough to compensate. Ambient radiation's within acceptable limits. For now."

Picard nodded at the chief medical officer's questions about radiation safety protocols on the bridge, his attention focused on his engineer.

"Engines are just drinking the power. Consumption levels are off the scale, Captain. You can feel the drain. Once it's gone, I estimate warp core breach in 20.6 minutes."

"Eject it," Picard ordered.

If Khazara were pursuing them, they would be a sitting target, then, swiftly afterward, protons and debris. If Enterprise's crew abandoned ship, Khazara would take them prisoner. Including the three Romulans for whose sake Enterprise had been jeopardized in the first place. a.s.suming any survival pods survived the warp core breach, which was not an a.s.sumption that was safe to make.

La Forge shook his head. "Negative, sir. The fail safes are frozen. We're working on them, but..." He shook his head again, then winced as if his VISOR hurt him. "Sorry, sir."

There wasn't enough time. That was the problem with engineering. There was too much time until you had an emergency, and then you had no time at all.

Picard straightened. "Mister Worf," he ordered. "You will accompany our guests to a shuttlecraft and escort them to Draken IV, a.s.suming you are not met en route by Admiral Ross or Legate Ruanek. Presumably, they are aware of our predicament. They've probably sent at least one ship out already. Once you establish communications, tell them to keep out of range."

"Respectfully, Captain, we refuse," M'ret said. "We will not leave you. We will fight to stay. And you have a greater priority than forcing us to leave."

"This disruption of ship's systems does not make sense," said Picard, instantly turning back to his main priority. "Enterprise took a direct disruptor hit. At the time, Lieutenant Worf reported that it had almost no impact. It was intended to serve as camouflage for the transporter beam that brought over our...stubborn guests. And, as Commander Riker pointed out, there are no ships in the area from which we can a.s.sume a second strike."

"There may be something else," Deanna Troi spoke unexpectedly. "Initially, N'vek refused to tamper with the cloak. I had to threaten to reveal what he'd done in bringing me aboard to Commander Toreth before he would agree to talk to a sympathizer in engineering. If I had seen the engineer, I would have known for certain..."

"Whether his sympathies extended as far as preserving Enterprise?" Picard guessed.

Troi nodded. "He must have been hedging his bets. Avoiding betrayal while retaining a weapon that would ensure regaining the commander's favor."

"A highly prudent strategy," M'ret commented. "The man saw our plans on the verge of exposure. He wasn't an active member of the movement, only a sympathizer, and sympathy is cheap. So he resorted to damage control-in this case, a way of getting the cargo-us-off Khazara, destroying Enterprise, a ship that the empire can hardly be said to favor, and protect both his ship and his commander, who is a woman of unquestioned integrity. I would call that highly logical."

"We can debate logic later, Vice-Proconsul," said Picard.

If we live hung unsaid in the controlled clamor that was the engineering deck confronted with an emergency that could destroy the ship.

"I am not an engineer," Troi added, "but let's look at it this way. What could a Romulan engineer have used that would disable Enterprise long enough for Khazara to get away? a.s.suming Commander Toreth preferred flight to destroying us, and believe me, Toreth wanted little more than to destroy us. Except, perhaps, to interrogate me, then eject me from an airlock."

Using the stealth he had developed as a survival skill throughout his years in the empire, DeSeve edged un.o.btrusively over toward the chief engineer and the screens he studied. The engineer was reviewing the failure a.n.a.lysis as if he could force solutions from it. Failure, now, that was a subject DeSeve understood with all his heart.

"Suggestions?" This time Picard's question was directed toward him as well as the Romulans.

M'ret glanced at his aides, then down at the deck, as if abashed.

"Engineering is not a study for the n.o.ble Born," DeSeve heard himself say. He flushed to find himself the center of attention, which always had been the worst place to be in the Romulan Star Empire. "They not only prefer to keep their hands clean, the Senate considers it unsafe for them to study this particular discipline."

"Twelve minutes," came the computer warning as it ticked down toward warp core breach. Radiation levels were rising, too, but not fast enough to render the ship's crew unconscious before the warp drive blew.

"The Senate fears what warring factions could do with expert knowledge of quantum singularities," M'ret agreed. "My own clan had trouble enough even with an early cloaking device."

"Where precisely did the disruptor beam hit?" DeSeve asked. Then, remembering his status, he added, "Please, sir."

La Forge pointed at a ship schematic. "The blast hit here, in this power transmission nexus, like a ganglion transmitting nerve impulses to the rest of the body." His hand went again to his VISOR. That was where he had taken his worst hit, barring some burns to his hands and face. It had left him shocky, still practically out on his feet but forcing himself to keep alert.

"Apparently, when you combine disruptor fire with Romulan transporter technology, you get an unexpected-and very dangerous-synergy. It begins small, in power couplings, then spreads...just as it's doing now..."

"And we wouldn't know this because ordinarily, shields are up, and you can't transport when shields are up."

Picard brought his fist down quietly on a console. In the flickering blue light, he looked very pale.

"Can the fail safes be operated mechanically?"

"My people have been trying, sir," Geordi said. "Someone's got...The only way I can see to work them is to get in there and do it by hand."

"There's more than that," DeSeve spoke up again. "The last ship I served on, before I was sent back...the ship was decommissioned. They were experimenting with a kind of grenade. It doesn't blow at once: it radiates. The idea is to render a ship incapable so it can be captured."

"You think Khazara's engineer might have known about them?"

DeSeve shrugged. "Stories get around. Even to me. If I heard it, so did most of the fleet."

"Toreth had no love for Tal Shiar," Troi added. "Khazara would have been exactly the sort of ship a disaffected engineer, who felt himself being watched, would try to serve on."

DeSeve edged in closer toward the screen. "Can't see...the thing is probably cloaked," he muttered.

"Oh, there's something there, all right," La Forge backed him. "I don't like that at all. Whatever it is, it's getting stronger too."

Computer's warning confirmed that. At this rate, they would need a backup injection soon, and there were only so many of those a body could take before breaking down-a.s.suming the warp core didn't blow first.

The solution hit DeSeve like disruptor fire. He straightened to face the captain as a proper officer would.

"You'd have to go up and check," he said. "I would a.s.sume the weapon is cloaked. At that close range, even if I couldn't see it, I could pick it up as the source of the emissions."

"Then I'd better be on my way," La Forge said, somewhat too casually. "That Jefferies tube is a long hike at the best of times."

Picard's face went completely expressionless as he prepared to watch one of his most trusted officers go to certain death. A Romulan officer wouldn't have thought twice, DeSeve thought. Then he saw the expression on the Vice-Proconsul's face.

But La Forge admitted to only limited experience with Romulan technology. The Romulans, whose physiology might allow them to endure hard radiation for longer, hadn't the training. And Picard would not trust them, a.s.suming the Klingon did not physically restrain him. He had already violated a direct order once.

That left only him. He was a traitor, yes, but he was a traitor who had traded Federation engineering technology for twenty years of experience in the Romulan Fleet.

The ruthless morality that had first attracted and then alienated DeSeve on Romulus suddenly fused with the ethics he had failed to learn in Starfleet. "Sir, he can barely walk, and he doesn't know what he's looking for. I do."

Somewhere during the emergency, he realized, he had lost his stammer.

Picard was listening as he always listened, not dismissing any expedient that might help his ship.

"You...," growled the Klingon. "I will not allow you to destroy this ship."

"If I wanted to, all I'd have to do is stand here and wait for the warp core to blow," DeSeve said quietly. "I know as much about these systems as anyone on board. Besides," he said, "if they blow, we all die. If it doesn't, you all have futures I'm sure you'd rather keep on working toward."

What is the best I can expect? Life imprisonment with counselors talking at me? Clemency, maybe even a pardon? A life spent with my back turned to whispers? Not a chance.