Over the next few days, we quickly fall into a routine. I continue to sleep in Mora's room. Every morning Chakotay comes by and takes me to breakfast – which doesn't improve – until Mora comes off duty. Because Mora's work shifts seem to coincide with those of Doctor Azai, I never visit her in sickbay. Instead, I go after breakfast or at the end of the day. My medical knowledge is limited and there doesn´t seem to be much that can be done at the moment, except wait, so I never stay long. I tell Chakotay it´s too difficult to see my father this way and that I'd rather keep busy. Both of which is true, but it also gives me more time to think of an escape plan. After breakfast and the occasional visit to sickbay, I assist Chakotay with his maintenance duties. It doesn't take me long to figure out the rudimentary workings of the ship. Past basics, the ship is so old and patched up that it's sometimes almost impossible to figure out. At those times, I'm thankful for Chakotay's presence. He's a mediocre engineer – by Starfleet standards – but he does know most of the ship's systems. I'm not sure if it's deliberate or accidental, but we work almost exclusively on innocuous systems, like shields or life support. No communications or sensors, nothing to let me connect with the outside world. Still, even if we're not specifically working on systems that could be useful to my plans, they are located in the same areas. All in all, by paying careful attention and a bit of experimentation disguised as mistakes, I manage to work out most of the communications system anyway, though it takes me almost three days. I think I know how to get an encrypted message out, disguised as random radiation. However, I need some unobserved time to set it up, just five minutes ought to do it, but Chakotay has barely taken his eyes off our work all morning. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or if he's still playing chaperon. I decide to risk another experiment. When Chakotay turns away to put away the damaged relay we've just removed, I make a few quick adjustments to my hypospanner. The next time I activate it, I feel the static tickle against my fingers as it short-circuits. Because I know what's coming, I manage to drop the hypospanner before I get hurt. As it drops to the deck, I exclaim in pain and draw my hand protectively to my chest, the way I did when it was sprained, and hope I look convincing. Chakotay certainly looks concerned when he carefully grasps my hand to inspect the damage.
'It doesn't look too bad, but you should visit sickbay to be safe,' Chakotay concludes after a quick examination.
'I'm fine,' I insist, truthfully, as I pull back my hand and shake it out to defuse the last few tingles. 'We should finish this first.' I pick up the hypospanner and pretend to go back to work. 'Damn it!' I exclaim a moment later, 'This thing is fried!' I throw the hypospanner back down with my best approximation of disgust. 'You wouldn't happen to have brought another one, did you?' I ask, even though I know we have only one. Chakotay shakes his head in confirmation. I'm about to sigh and ask him if he'd mind getting a new one because my hand doesn't feel quite up to making the long crawl back yet, but Chakotay is already niggling at the panel. I can't see exactly what he's doing, but a moment later he turns back to me triumphantly.
'Done!' I gape at him. We shouldn't have been able to fix this without a hypospanner.
'How did you do that?' I sputter.
Chakotay merely smirks. 'Old Maquis trick. Shall we?' So much for my little plan. Slightly disgruntled, I follow Chakotay out of the crawlspace. And, at his insistence, go to sickbay to have my hand checked out.
Two days later, I get a new chance. Once again Chakotay and I are working together, repairing a less-than-critical part of the secondary propulsion nodes, when the ship suddenly rocks. Another shock follows quickly. Chakotay and I glance at each other and I'm sure we both realise what is happening: weapons fire. We're under attack.
Chakotay immediately slams the panel we've been working on shut – thereby protecting us both from a possible power discharge if there should be an overload in the propulsion system – and begins to crawl back to the hatch. 'Follow me!' he shouts at me over his shoulder. I hesitate for a moment, wondering if this is my chance, but he must have noticed that I'm not following because he glances over his shoulder, shouting 'move!' I follow his lead.
We reach the hatch quickly and climb out into the corridor. My feet have only just touched the floor when Chakotay grabs me by my shoulders and stares at me with an intensity I haven't seen since his vow to protect me.
'I have to get to my post,' he says, 'do you know how to get to sickbay from here? It's the safest place.' I almost laugh at his seriousness. Then I realise his anxiety is warranted: we're on an old, decrepit ship in the middle of nowhere and someone is firing at us. Considering the state of this ship, the odds are good that the other party outguns us. Without the red alert warnings and orderly chaos that are ubiquitous on a Starfleet vessel in this situation, I underestimated the danger. It brings home once again that I'm out of my element. I swallow. And Chakotay is going to leave me behind.
I mentally slap myself. I'm a Starfleet officer, I don't need him to protect me! Haven't I been hoping for a chance like this, to roam the ship unaccompanied?
I clear my throat. 'Yes, I know how to get to sickbay.'
I still sound a bit raspy and he probably heard it too, because he's looking at me with worried eyes. I pull myself together and give him a shove. 'Go, I'll be fine!' He gives me another worried look, but apparently I was convincing enough because he starts to run away. Soon he vanishes around a corner and I look around me. Now that I'm alone, unobserved, what should I do?
The first step is to send a message to Starfleet, but from where? And, I suddenly realise, what if it's a Starfleet vessel attacking us? I could be rescued right now! And Chakotay and Mora could be arrested… I push that thought aside. It's not my concern if they have to face justice. First order of business: find out who's attacking us. There's a way to access the sensors not far from here, where we worked on life support yesterday. If I'm not mistaken it also has access to the communications system. I take off running.
I'm right, there's a station here to access both sensors and communication. However it's more difficult than I thought to get access to sensors. I can't get through to the sensor analyses, only the raw sensor data. Luckily, that's probably enough for me to determine if it's a Starfleet vessel or not. I start with the hull telemetry. It's fairly easy to see that the hull of the ship that's attacking us is not made according to standard Starfleet configurations, it's missing a few standard trace elements. Of course, this ship could be a-typical or the sensors too decrepid to pick up their minute quantities, so next I pull up the bioreadings of the first dozen lifesigns I can find. Their biochemical make-up, though humanoid, is definitely not human. Of course not all Starfleet personnel is human, but the majority is. And these people, though not human, do share the same basic markers, so they are the same species. The odds of randomly finding twelve aliens of the same species aboard a Starfleet vessel can't be good, so together with the different hull I'm confident this isn't a Starfleet ship. It's probably Cardassian. A cold shiver runs down my spine. I don't want to go back to that Cardassian prison colony. I shove that thought aside.
Since I can't expect help from this ship, I must figure out where we are so I can send a message to the nearest Starfleet base. I still only have access to the raw sensor data, but divining your approximate position based on sensor data was part of my survival course. I just have to find enough galactic constants. My hands fly over the old input console and the familiar work chases away the last hints of anxiety. This is what I was trained to do. Even though the situation is a far cry from what I ever expected, I find that if I can reduce it to standard patterns it's easy to get caught up in the work. According to my calculations, we're somewhere in the demilitarized zone between Federation and Cardassian space, which would be most logical. I know the coordinates for the nearest starbase and use those as the destination for my message. My plan to encrypt the message so it resembles radiation works perfectly, as far as I can tell. As I make the final adjustments, I hear a buzzing start in the panel next to me, which could be the beginnings of an overload. Just a few more seconds…. I just need a few more seconds to send my message.
Yes! Is the last thought I have before the panel explodes.