QS: Apologies for the delay. Apologies for the result.
Cells
"Ghuy'cha'."
Muttered Klingon curses fill the bridge, thoroughly reassuring the non-Klingon inhabitants. Frankly, they're surprised it's taken so long to start.
"What do they think they're doing, just refusing to wake her? They can't do this. These pieces of baktag won't get away with it."
"Miss Torres." Calm, steady inflections from the center of the bridge offer diametric opposition to her venom. "While I appreciate your vigor in this matter, I too am displeased with current-"
"Displeased?" B'Elanna snarls from her underused station on the bridge's right side. "They're incubating them like drones over there. And we're just sitting here, doing nothing."
"We are hardly doing nothing," Lieutenant-Commander Tuvok counters from the command chair, where his fingers have not tired of running hypothetical drills for hours. "We are conserving power, pretending to capitulate while analyzing Bregori technology for weakness in order to form intelligent opposition. You yourself have been striving without pause to infiltrate their shielding."
It's all she's done in the last eighteen hours, at least. From the bombshell of Lieutenant Paris's latest report on the outrageous conduct of the Bregori authorities on, she hasn't moved from her chair.
"Well it sure feels like a whole lot of nothing from here. Unh!" Unified flinches are observable as her strong hands slap the console in front of her before her fingers curl into unyielding metal, almost as if to dig into the casing and rip it off the useless circuitry within. "Their damned shielding is the most complex web of misdirection I've ever seen. Every time I think I've tunneled into their systems, I get bounced back out. If we had this kind of shielding not even the Borg would stand a chance against us."
Her frustration is understood by all. No longer orbiting the planet where the command team and Paris are located, Voyager hovers over a nearby deserted moon, flanked in higher orbits by an escort of four Bregori ships. These are the same ships that so kindly escorted them away from the central planet after Tuvok made one too many demands to have the bridge crew returned. Until an appropriate method of countering the superior Bregori energy systems is devised, resistance remains highly unfavorable for Voyager, and the major tasks required of most of the hostage Voyager crewmembers have been intellectual in nature. No one has gotten anything like exercise since this whole incident began, and the constant stress hormones pumping through them have set most of them on some kind of edge or another.
Torres is only famous for showing it.
"Can I help?" Harry Kim asks, not for the first time, from OPS. "Maybe if we try simultaneously from different carrier waves we can fool the-"
"I've already tried that. Their constant security sweeps tangle our feeds on each other and bounce them back intertwined."
"It would explain the radiation their shields give off if every EM wave is bounced off it the same way," Harry observes. It would also explain why it's such an elusive system to analyze. "Maybe there's a way to mimic the frequency of their source, and trick the system into-"
"It won't work," Torres snaps, missing his blink of disappointment. "I don't even know what kind of power these bIHnuch aliens are using and our scans are scattering like Romulan cockroaches whenever I try to pinpoint the origin of the field at a quantum level." Light brown hands smack again on the casing with vim. "I'm telling you, this is like nothing I've ever seen. It's incredible." The particular blend of rage and admiration falls oddly on the eardrums of her companions. "If I could just…"
The organic components of the bridge fall silent as her hands move over buttons like a musician desperately working a reluctant symphony from an inadequate instrument.
"If you could just…?" Harry prompts, meeting eyes with Ayala at Tactical as they all hang on Torres's broken trains of thought.
B'Elanna's head cocks as she re-realizes she's not alone. "I mean… if I could get inside the compound, get a look around, maybe I could at least figure out what kind of power source they're using for all this high-energy deflection. But they won't even take our audio hails now, much less allow visual communication."
"Perhaps I can be of assistance."
B'Elanna has missed the opening of the bridge doors to the turbolift, but the others heard them and aren't as surprised at the newly-arrived voice intruding into the hot air of the bridge.
"Seven," Tuvok stands to greet her as the dark lighting of grey mode shadows his face. "Are you recovered?"
Seven nods succinctly. "My cortical node is sufficiently adjusted." It has, apparently, been acting up again ever since they've come into proximity with Bregori technology. "The doctor has endorsed my return to active duty. From the sound of it, my services are needed."
Kim's cringing eyes dart apprehensively to Torres, who snorts in self-derision.
"I hate to admit it but you're right. I could use you. I've been at it for almost eighteen hours and I'm hitting nothing but brick walls here. I need to get a look inside."
Seven's metal brow slides upward. "The alien compound is comprised of crudely interwoven masonry blocks?"
Snickers sound from both sides of the bridge. Torres and Tuvok don't share in them.
"It was a figure of speech, Seven," Torres snaps, softening only when her gaze accidentally lands on the impassive Vulcan in charge. "But to be honest, even if it weren't I wouldn't know it. I can't get past their shielding far enough for a decent scan of their systems, much less to locate Tom, Chakotay and the captain to try to extract them."
"You do have one connection to the inside of the compound that you have not considered," Seven declares.
B'Elanna sits back from her console for the first time in hours, arms folding across her weary chest, thick Klingon brow arched in annoyed expectation. "I'm listening." And studiously ignoring the way Ayala, Wildman, Baytart, and Kim's heads are swiveling from one speaker to another as if they're watching some prized parrises squares match, in addition.
"Is Lieutenant Paris still in contact with Voyager?"
Torres nods. "Yes. We've been permitted to maintain audio contact with him. He's the only reason we even have any idea what's going on over there at all."
No one mentions the slip of her hard tone at Paris's introduction to the conversation; no one is that stupid or that cruel.
"How often is he permitted to report back to Voyager?"
"I…" That throws her. Torres blinks. "There hasn't really been any limit that I can see. He's checked in…what?" She looks to Baytart, Ayala, Tuvok for input. "Six times now?"
"Nine," Tuvok supplies, observing the exchange with infinite patience, as usual.
Seven turns her back to the bridge, accessing a free console. Standard Starfleet frequencies begin appearing on the large screens she manipulates, joined by mathematical formulas that make Ayala and Baytart, who strains to glimpse the general idea from the helm, flinch. "You are establishing this audio link via his standard Starfleet-issued commbadge, is this correct?" the former Borg queries.
"Yeah. So?" B'Elanna has circled away from her alcove to the open console station behind the command chairs now, to where Seven has begun calculations that only a former drone could perform so rapidly. As Torres stares a moment longer, she believes she begins to understand. "Oh. Well. That's brilliant."
Her grudging respect turns the mood of the bridge several shades lighter immediately.
"That won't solve the problem of how to get past all their superior power sources," B'Elanna notes.
"But it may enable us to discern the nature of its superiority, and then-"
"Devise a strategy for neutralizing it. Good. That's a good start, Seven. But if we amplify the carrier wave that much, I can't believe they're not going to notice. We'll have to find a way to de-compensate the natural amplification of the subatomic response."
"May I ask what it is that the two of you are planning?" Tuvok interjects for the rest of them at last, after moments of likewise cryptic comments from Torres and continued calculations by the former Borg.
The two women pause in their activity, glancing back at the rest of the bridge crew in unison. B'Elanna smiles fiercely. Seven just looks smug.
