CHAPTER TWO
"Captain's Log, Stardate 52128.1.
"After several days at high warp, we have finally reached the object, although my crew seems to be at a disagreement as to its identity. I will add more information to this as we learn more."
Captain Kathryn Janeway moved her hand down to the armrest controls on Voyager's captain's chair and pressed the button that would stop recording her log. They had arrived in the system, as unremarkable as a thousand others they had passed by on their journey through the Delta Quadrant, to find a massive ship-she couldn't think of the object as anything but-drifting, derelict, on a course that would take it within ten thousand kilometers of the fourth planet in several months' time.
She held up a PADD and looked over the parameters for the fourth planet. It was marginally a class M world, with about 15 percent oxygen concentration. Low, but breathable. No traces of intelligence, only native flora and fauna that at least appeared harmless to Voyager's cursory scan. So, she concluded, nothing of real interest.
Janeway looked back to the ship on the viewscreen. It was massive, not to the extent of a Borg Cube but still impressive in its bulk. At the center was a large cylinder, nearly a kilometer in overall length and roughly three hundred meters in diameter. An open framework had been built around its midsection, and attached to that framework were six squat, clamshell-headed structures that were individually approximately six hundred meters long.
She sighed and leaned back. When they had first noticed it, she had immediately suspected it might be something to do with the Borg. However, despite their presence so close nearby, it had not strayed from its course. In fact, it had shown no signs of being active at all. It had no warp core signatures, no impulse drive signatures, nothing even close to what the Borg used despite its rough-finished construction and clusters of pipes and conduits that jutted out from the surface of both the cylinder and the surrounding structures at random.
"Seven, have you been able to find out anything further with your scans?" she casually inquired, not expecting anything to have changed. They had, after all, been watching it for the better part of a day.
"Nothing..." The former Borg drone's voice trailed off suddenly. Janeway turned around to look at her and noticed that her normally calm face had taken on a perplexed expression. "Unusual," she stated. "There are over ten thousand life signs in the central core."
At the conn, Paris let out a slow whistle.
"Why didn't we notice that earlier?" Janeway asked.
Almost as if she was ignoring the question, Seven continued to tap away quietly at the controls. "I am reading high concentrations of neutronium in the hull alloys," she finally stated. "This makes their hulls very effective at blocking Federation sensors."
Janeway nodded. "I guess that explains the lack of shields, then. Their hulls are hardened against radiation. What about those ten thousand? What can you tell us?"
She was again quiet for some time as she worked the controls. "Seventy three point six seven two nine percent correspond to standard humanoid species. The remainder do not correspond to anything in the Federation databases, or species identified by the Borg."
"I'd think that would cover most of the galaxy," Commander Chakotay remarked from the seat next to Janeway.
"Almost," Janeway agreed, "but even the Borg haven't cataloged the galaxy yet. If they had, we'd be in even bigger trouble than we are now." She stood up, stretched, and turned to face Seven. "What else can you tell about them? They haven't responded to standard hails yet..."
There was more quiet tapping from the sensors console. "They are in some form of hibernation," Seven concluded. "All life signs show dramatically slowed metabolic rates. Heartbeats are very faint, almost nonexistent."
Realization dawned on Janeway. "It's a sleeper ship," she said, her voice barely carrying above her breath. "Like the one that Khan Noonien Singh commandeered... but where did they come from?"
"I believe I have an answer for that, Captain," Seven said, unaware that she was responding to a semi-rhetorical question. "There is an unstable system based around a type-4 quantum singularity, twenty-three light-years away along their trajectory. At their current velocity, it would have taken them approximately thirty years to cover the distance."
Janeway paced back and forth across the bridge several times, lost in thought. "Well, if they have been in hibernation, that explains the lack of response to hails. Presumably they do not have any automated equipment or did not consider it necessary. Or perhaps their ship is out of fuel and that's why it's shut down like this. I wonder how they planned on stopping?"
Seven opened her mouth but Janeway waved a hand to cut her off. "No, don't answer that. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation. What I want to know is how can we contact them?"
"Captain, with all due respect," Chakotay remarked from his seat, "I think the more important question is, should we try to make contact?"
Janeway paused momentarily to consider the question. "Yes, we should," she began. "Computer, magnify." As the computer zoomed in on the alien vessel, she pointed at the screen. "Do you see the battle damage? Whatever was back in that system, they took at least as much of a beating as we have during the last several months. I think there's a good chance that we can find some common ground with them, and possibly help each other on our own ways."
Chakotay's gaze followed where her arm was pointing at the screen. "That's some impressive damage," he remarked after several moments had passed. "Whoever caused that must have packed quite a punch... perhaps even the Borg. How can we be sure that their pursuers aren't right behind, waiting to ambush us?"
"The damage characteristics are not consistent with Borg weapons," Seven chimed in from the station behind them. "It appears to have been caused by a combination of coherent beam weapons and focused nuclear initiations. Furthermore, there are no warp or transwarp signatures within a twenty light-year radius of this system."
Janeway turned her head slightly. "Thank you, Seven," she said before focusing back on Chakotay. "There, you see? In fact, it sounds like the weapons were downright primitive. And with all we've been through, I'm sure that we would be more than up to handling a bunch of pre-warp spacefarers with only lasers and nuclear weapons, should they even decide to show up."
Chakotay sighed; it was obvious the Captain was unwilling to budge. "Very well, I'll trust your judgment. How should we proceed?"
"Standard First Contact procedure will suffice," Janeway replied. "Lt. Commander Tuvok, please prepare an away team. We need to see if anyone's still awake over there."
"Of course, Captain. I assume you and Lieutenant Seven will be joining us?" the Vulcan replied.
"Naturally," Janeway replied.
A short time later, Janeway stepped out of the turbolift into the transporter room. Only an ensign was present, attending the control station, and as he stood to attention he pointed her toward the ready room. Apparently a heated discussion was taking place inside, judging from the raised voices she heard on the other side of the door.
"What seems to be the issue?" she asked as she walked in.
"Ah, there you are," B'Elanna Torres, Voyager's chief engineer, sighed in relief. "We're trying to figure out how to get in. Seven doesn't think our transporters will punch through that hull of theirs, and we can't seem to find any weak points, or access hatches, in the cylinder that we can beam through."
"We could go EVA," one of the five ensigns on the team – Alexander Munro, if she remembered correctly – said. "There has to be some sort of external release, or we could just cut our way in."
Janeway shook her head. "No, no cutting. That might look too aggressive."
"Then what?" he asked. "We go and knock politely, and hope they wake up?"
She glared at him before Torres spoke up. "How about the damaged areas?" the half-Klingon engineer asked. "We could beam into one of those sections and enter through the internal doors. That way, we shouldn't trigger any automatic defenses or anything of the sort."
"That sounds like it could work," Janeway agreed. "Tuvok? Can you find a good entry point?"
"Already locked on," he replied. "Everyone, suit up and meet me back at the transporter pad."
It took Janeway longer than she expected to put on the cumbersome EVA suit. The next several minutes were spent checking each other's suits to make sure that none were leaking, and finally they stepped up to the pads.
"Energize," Tuvok ordered, and Voyager's transporter room dissolved into blackness. Janeway reached up and flicked her helmet lights on, casting two cones of light over a complete disaster area. As she surveyed the area, floating in the microgravity, the other team members turned their own lights on.
Whatever the room they were in had been, it was completely ruined. Aside from one end being open to space, the metal surrounding the tear had been melted and distorted inwards. Blackened shapes that could have been pieces of cargo or equipment were scattered around, some half-fused into the walls and others drifting loosely.
"Does anyone see a door?" she asked after looking for several minutes in vain.
"Over here," Ensign Kim's voice rang out through the comm. "But it's behind some debris that I can't get through."
A half-hour's worth of work with a cutting torch later, they had managed to clear the debris – several girders and deck plates had collapsed in front of the bulkhead.
"Damn it, why won't you open!" Lieutenant Torres exclaimed in frustration from in front of the apparent door control panel before she slammed her fist into the wall, then cried out in pain. Her temper had become legendary among the engineering crew, and Janeway had heard rumors of jokes about her short fuse. For some reason, though, when she had asked nobody could remember there being any jokes.
"I'm reading atmosphere beyond the bulkhead," Seven observed as she fiddled with her tricorder. "Perhaps that's why."
Something clicked with B'Elanna and she reached for her commbadge. "Transporter room, this is Lieutenant Torres. We need an emergency containment forcefield generator and an atmosphere kit beamed over here."
"Just a moment," the reply came over the comm. "Let me check with Engineering and we'll set up the point to point transport." Several long moments later, the equipment appeared in a shimmer of light in the middle of the area. B'Elanna wasted no time in grabbing the forcefield generator and clamping it to the wall.
As she was setting it up, Munro and Tuvok drifted past with the atmosphere kit. "Where do you want it?" Tuvok asked.
"Right there is fine," Torres replied, not even looking up from the generator. "OK, look. I don't know how bad the hull breach is, so I'm not even going to try sealing it. What I am going to do is set up a small bubble right outside this door and fill it with normal pressure atmosphere. Hopefully that should let whatever locking mechanisms the door has disengage. I just need everyone to come..." she paused to look down at the equipment, "within three meters of the door."
As Janeway and the others moved in closer, she continued working. "Ready?" she finally asked.
"As ready as we'll ever be," Harry Kim mumbled under his breath.
Twenty minutes of forcefield-contained atmosphere later, the situation had hardly changed.
"What's wrong with this thing?" B'Elanna exclaimed in frustration, holding up her tricorder. "The atmosphere's stabilized, and I'm reading power here... but it's not opening."
Harry coughed conspicuously. "You know, I'm no warp physicist, but maybe you have to push a button..."
Although her silvered helmet visor made it hard to see, the glare that B'Elanna shot back at Harry could have melted several tritanium armor plates. Without saying a word, she turned back to the door and studied the control panel for several seconds before pressing the largest button on the panel.
The blast door groaned open, revealing a pitch dark corridor beyond.
B'Elanna turned and pointed her finger at Harry ominously. "Not. A. Word."
As Harry tried (and failed) to suppress a snicker, Seven studied her tricorder. "The atmosphere inside is within normal levels. No traces of known chemical or biological toxins. I believe it will be safe for us to remove our suits now." She put the tricorder back on her belt and began to unclasp her helmet.
"Good," Torres remarked. "I hate wearing these things." She started by removing her gloves, then took off the helmet.
As Harry lifted his own helmet off, his nose wrinkled as the air hit his face. "It's pretty damn cold in here... stale, too. I wonder how long this ship's been drifting for?"
"Based on the carbon scoring near where we entered, this ship has been adrift for 36 years, plus or minus eleven months," Seven replied a moment later.
Harry looked back at her in surprise. "How'd you figure that one out so fast?"
She held up her tricorder. "It still has high concentrations of a highly radioactive carbon isotope with a half-life of only 60 years."
He shook his head and continued to work at the seals on his suit.
"Wait. How are we going to move if there's no gravity further ahead?" Ensign Munro asked. "We don't have magnetic boots..."
The away team members regarded each other in awkward silence. "Point," B'Elanna said as she zipped her suit back up and attached her helmet and gloves to hooks on her belt.
Tuvok chose that moment to conspicuously clear his throat. "Right. Everyone, check your phasers and turn the lights on. We don't know what might be up ahead."
Harry nodded and pulled out his compression rifle, double-checking the power pack before he switched the flashlight on. The blue-white beam of light cut through the darkness in the corridor, but it was apparently so long that he could still see nothing ahead except blackness. He grimaced briefly; the pitch dark was certainly a change from the eerie green glow of a Borg cube, but it was just as unnerving. It kind of reminded him of a number of Hollywood holodeck horror programs he'd run back on Earth. He didn't remember the exact name of one, but the aliens in it had really burned themselves into his memory. He laughed quietly. As bad as the Borg and Species 8472 were, they had nothing on humanity's own imagination. The part that really scared him was that as large as the galaxy was, there was also a pretty good chance that something like those freaks existed. He just hoped they wouldn't find them on this ship.
He nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt something touch his shoulder.
"Whoa there," B'Elanna exclaimed as she pulled back. "You're jumpy all of a sudden."
"Sorry," Harry replied. "This whole situation just reminded me of a holodeck program I once used back on Earth."
"Which one?" she asked.
"I forgot the name of it... it was about this derelict ship and some aliens that ate everyone on board and then tried to eat you."
B'Elanna shuddered. "Yeah, I think I ran that one once. One of the damn things attached itself to my face. Gave me nightmares for a week."
"Everyone ready?" Tuvok asked, interrupting their conversation. "Let's move."
Quietly, the away team glided forward, the only noise in the corridor produced by the small nitrogen thrusters on their packs. The walls along the corridor remained just as unremarkable save for what appeared to be the occasional access door, giving Harry no reference for distance. By his rough count, they'd passed about three access doors when the corridor came to an abrupt end. Three curved doors covered the end of the walkway, and there were two normal doors on either side.
B'Elanna slid forward and tried the control panel, but the indicators remained dark. "Looks like the power's out. Seven, which way do we need to go?"
Seven lifted up her tricorder to check the display. "We are now approximately in the middle of the ship, on one of the upper decks. We need to go down twenty decks and then find a way through the pylons to the central core."
"Then this must be the turbolift shaft," B'Elanna guessed. "Crap. We're going to have to force the doors and float down the shaft." She slung her compression rifle over her shoulder before pulling a crowbar from her pack. She then jammed it into the gap at the left side of the door, but it wouldn't budge.
Harry pointed at the unfamiliar script printed on the right-hand side of the door. "You sure you have the right side?"
B'Elanna turned around to regard him coolly. "Now you're the expert? Here, you get it open."
He shrugged and moved forward to take the crowbar out, but instead of pulling it out, he pulled himself into the wall with a dull thud. Grimacing, he pushed himself back and braced his feet against the door, then tried to start working the crowbar back and forth. It refused to budge.
"What did you do to this thing?" he finally asked after several more minutes of trying different approaches. "It's completely stuck."
"Let me see." She braced herself and worked it out after only a couple tries, then handed the crowbar over to him. "There. That wasn't so hard, now, was it?"
Harry looked at her in silence for several seconds before wiping the sweat he'd worked up off his brow. "Yeah. Right," he said sarcastically, in between breaths. "You know, if this ship doesn't have artificial gravity, why isn't there anything to hold on to on the walls?"
"They could have gecko-like hands and feet," Munro said with a shrug. "Then they wouldn't need handholds."
"All right, you two. Stop wasting air and get that door open. You did volunteer, after all." B'Elanna snapped out.
"I'm not wasting air," Munro protested. "I'm sure the ship has recirculators."
"Did it ever occur to you that with the crew sleeping, they don't need much air and probably turned off the life support out here to save power?" the engineer replied. "Now why don't you give Harry a hand, I think he needs one."
"I'll be fine," Harry grunted. He'd finally managed to get the crowbar into the right side of the door, but it had only opened by a couple of centimeters. "These doors sure look a lot lighter than they really are..."
Despite Harry's protests, Munro and B'Elanna joined in and after several minutes of pushing, they succeeded in getting the door open wide enough to pass through. She then hammered a scrap of metal into the door track to prevent it from closing after them as a precaution.
The team spent the next few minutes navigating through the turbolift shaft. To their surprise, it actually connected to the framework that held the outer modules to the central core.
Their next challenge was the turbolift car parked at the end of the shaft. The car, fortunately, had an emergency exit in the ceiling that was easily pried open.
"There's some sort of mechanical socket here," B'Elanna remarked from the bottom of the car. She was floating upside-down relative to the car, inspecting the control area. "It could be an override key... Munro, could you pass me a screwdriver?"
When he gave her the screwdriver, she took it and began to fiddle with the mechanism. "It's no use," she said after a while. "It's got too many cylinders, and it looks like it has some sort of data socket inside. Hand me that crowbar again."
Harry passed the crowbar along to her, and they managed to get both the inner and outer doors opened relatively quickly.
Just like all the corridors so far, the lighting in this one was off.
Seven held her tricorder up and scanned the display. "The life signatures are now two decks below and one hundred meters forward, relative to our present position."
"All right," Janeway said, moving to the front of the group. "Let's keep moving. Hopefully we can help them."
As they started forward again, suddenly and without any warning gravity took hold, sending the entire away team unceremoniously crashing down to the deck.
"Ow!" Harry sat up and rubbed his head, where he had banged it into the deck plates. "Guess they do have artificial gravity after all."
"What's that noise?" Munro asked.
"What noise?" B'Elanna answered the question with a question as she came to her feet, noticing that the gravity was slightly stronger than the Earth standard that Starfleet used.
"That low pitched hum that just started a moment ago, after the gravity resumed."
She focused for a moment. "I hear it, but I don't have any idea. The gravity just came on, so it could be that life support is restarting."
Janeway's commbadge chose that moment to chime. "This is the captain," she answered a moment later.
"Captain, it's Chakotay. Did you find what you were looking for?"
"We're close," she replied, frowning slightly at the quesiton. "Why?"
"You didn't find the helm controls or anything?"
Her frown deepened as she tried to guess where he was going. "No, why do you ask?"
"The ship is beginning to rotate and we're picking up fusion byproducts and ions from the stern. I'd say it's preparing to perform a braking maneuver."
"Oh." She looked around at the away team for a moment before her face went ashen. "Chakotay, can you read any sort of inertial dampening on this ship?"
"Hang on." A moment later, the badge chimed again. "There's nothing that we're familiar with. I am seeing some gravity distortions, but there are no active subspace fields."
"Thanks," Janeway replied, taking her hand off the badge afterward. "Seven, which way is aft?"
She pointed at the wall behind them.
"OK. Everyone, press your backs against that wall. I hope this thing doesn't go over ten Gs, or we're all in trouble..."
Her badge chimed again. "Captain, the power readings are ramping up. We think it'll be ready to fire in about thirty seconds."
Barely fifteen seconds had passed when the familiar chiming noise came once more. "It's firing. Are you OK?"
Perplexed, Janeway took a step forward. "Thanks, Chakotay. We didn't feel a thing. Let us know if anything else happens."
"Of course, Captain," Chakotay answered. "We'll keep you informed."
"Interesting," Seven remarked as everyone looked at each other and shrugged. "They must use the same technology as their artificial gravity for their inertial dampeners."
B'Elanna took on a thoughtful look as they started walking down the corridor. "What do the Borg use?"
"Subspace, like the Federation."
She nodded. "I wonder how you'd use artificial gravity technology to counter inertia..." she said, more to herself than anyone else. "I suppose if you could produce a sort of localized pseudo-gravity field, you could create attraction in the opposite direction of acceleration... but then you'd have problems with sudden changes because you're always reacting... The deflector dish might be a good starting point, I could isolate and reverse the polarity, run the power level up, and focus it in instead of out... Have to evacuate engineering first, though, don't want to hurt anyone..."
"Should I be worried about her?" Munro asked Harry, jerking his thumb in B'Elanna's direction as she continued babbling technical jargon to herself while Seven listened. "She's not going to go start building some experimental contraption now, is she? I like to keep my internal organs safely inside me."
Harry shook his head. "Nah. Her eyes glaze over like that whenever she's thinking hard... it's an engineer thing. Start worrying when she asks for weird elements, parts, or tools you've never heard of."
As they kept walking, the corridor turned first right, then left, then sloped downward for a good few meters. Harry noticed that they had passed through several dividers that looked like open doorways, which was odd because they were almost the full width of the walkway.
Several more bends, turns, and one intersection later, he was surprised when the lights suddenly came on, leaving him and the rest of the away team blinking like owls. The next thing he heard was an odd rumbling noise. At the end of the hallway ahead an odd, metallic copper-colored wheel rolled in and stopped, suddenly unfolding arms and legs.
"Take cover!" Tuvok exclaimed when he realized a moment later that its odd arms, which lacked any kind of manipulators, each had two long tubes – and both were pointed straight at them. Harry was yanked aside as Munro dove for the cover of one of the bulkheads they had passed through. Moments later, there was a loud cracking sound and bright bursts of reddish light flashed past where they had been standing.
"We must have tripped the intruder defenses when we forced that last door open," B'Elanna said angrily. She took a look around the bulkhead and just as quickly jerked her head back as more fire whizzed past.
"It's protected by a forcefield," Tuvok observed after taking a shot at it, only to have it bounce off a scintillating blue bubble that appeared around the mobile turret. "Seven, can you get a reading on it when I fire?"
"It's too strong for phasers," she replied moments after he fired again. "A type 9 photon grenade might work."
"Which we don't have. We'll have to get out of here," Janeway answered, tapping her commbadge. "Janeway to the Bridge. Can you get a transporter lock on us?"
"Negative," Chakotay replied several moments later. "What's going on?"
"The ship's waking up," she answered. "Apparently we tripped some automated defenses and they've got us pinned down."
There was silence from the other end for a long moment. "We'll keep trying to get a lock," Chakotay finally said. "Can you get back to where you came in?"
Janeway looked over at Tuvok. "What do you think?"
The Vulcan shook his head. "Our suits' thrusters are not strong enough to counteract the gravity on this ship. We also will not be able to climb the turbolift shaft as there are no ladders built into the shafts."
There was a clanking sound and Harry glanced around the corner briefly. "It's walking towards us," he said.
"Seven-what about other exits? Are there any escape pods?" Janeway asked.
Seven hurriedly tapped at her tricorder. "Unknown, Captain. However, the other direction at the intersection we passed may lead back to the surface of this part of the ship."
Janeway nodded. "Then let's go that way. Seven, you lead. Tuvok, keep an eye on our backs. Move!"
They quickly got up and began running along the walls of the corridor. Harry, Alex, and the other ensigns all kept looking over their shoulders and firing at the unrelenting turret. As they came to another bulkhead, they all dove behind it again and paused to catch their breath.
Harry looked around at everyone. Somehow, when Alex had pulled him out of the way, they had wound up on one side with the other three ensigns while the Captain, Tuvok, and Seven were on the other side of the corridor. He suddenly realized that they were going to have to jump across the corridor somehow because the bend ahead was on the other side.
"I wish we could have taken these suits off," B'Elanna lamented. "It's nearly impossible to run in these things!"
"At least the suit provides some protection," one of the ensigns next to Harry remarked. Harry winced; that usually wasn't the kind of remark one wanted to make in this sort of situation.
"Go for the next bulkhead!" Tuvok ordered, and the team sprinted down the corridor again. Harry began running backwards, spraying the turret with automatic fire from his compression rifle for all it was worth, and watching nervously as the crimson shots continued to lance through the hallway. There was an explosion and a choked scream next to him, and Harry felt several stinging sensations as his side and face was hit with shrapnel. He glanced sideways at the ensign-Allen, he thought-and saw him crash to the deck in a steaming heap, his suit's propellant pack replaced with a boiling cold white crater. So that's where the shrapnel had come from; apparently the shot had hit the liquid nitrogen tank inside the pack, causing it to explode. Probably froze the poor guy's chest instantly...
"Keep going!" Tuvok shouted. "When we pass the next bulkhead, go right!"
They dove through the next bulkhead a moment later, and Harry again glanced back as he caught his breath. The turret had stopped firing for a moment, and was retracting into a wheel again. He quickly aimed and fired at it. The blast struck the copper-colored metal instead of being deflected, but didn't even leave a mark on the apparent armor.
"That thing's got some serious armor on it, whatever it is," he remarked as he ducked back behind the bulkhead. "My rifle didn't even scratch it."
"Hey, there's a control panel here," B'Elanna exclaimed a moment later. She quickly began jabbing at the controls on it to no effect.
Harry looked around the corner again. The turret was fast; it had already covered half the distance to them in that short amount of time. "Forget trying to figure it out – just shoot the panel!"
Nodding, B'Elanna picked her rifle back up, took a few steps back, and fired. The panel exploded in a shower of sparks, and with a loud whirring noise a heavy blast door began sliding out of the bulkhead. Several seconds later, they were sealed off from the turret, although they could hear it clanking at the other side of the door. Harry sagged against the wall in relief.
"Let's take off our suits," Janeway said after she had caught her breath. "These damned things nearly got all of us killed back there. Speaking of which, did we lose someone?"
"Ensign Allen, Captain," Harry replied.
"Is he alive?"
Harry shook his head sadly. "He took a shot to his thruster pack. I think the liquid nitrogen froze his chest instantly. Couldn't have done him any good..."
Janeway was silent for a moment. "There probably wasn't much you could have done about it, Harry."
"I know."
After a moment of silence for the crewman, they continued on along the other corridor, stopping after several minutes when Seven held up her hand.
"There's a shaft on the other side of this door. It should lead directly to where the crew of this ship is."
"Do we want to go there?" one of the other ensigns asked. "There could be more of those turret things."
"Well, we left our suits behind, so our only other choice is to find out where the escape pods are... and it doesn't look like there are any on this ship," Harry found himself saying.
Janeway opened her mouth to say something but then they all heard that ominous rolling sound.
"Oh, come on!" B'Elanna exclaimed. "How the heck did that thing get through the blast door? It must have been a half meter thick!"
"Well, that settles it," Janeway said. "Down the shaft."
"We're going to have to force this door as well," B'Elanna said. "There's no panel, just a lock like the one in the turbolift."
They all looked at each other. The rolling noise was getting steadily louder, and they expected it to pop around the corner any minute. B'Elanna slammed the crowbar into the crack of the door, and they all yanked on it as hard as they could. Apparently this door was built lighter than the turbolift doors, because it actually popped off its track and bent outward, allowing them to pry it further up and duck inside.
By the time the turret arrived, Harry was the last one standing in the corridor. As the machine began to unfold itself, he threw himself toward the open door, somehow catching a ladder rung inside. He hauled himself down as fast as his arms could move, and just hoped that the infernal machine couldn't use ladders.
"Harry," B'Elanna called from far below him, "you just have to see this."
The shaft opened out on a vast room, which stretched out over a hundred meters in any direction that Harry could see. Across the floor, neatly arranged like pillars, were thousands of two and a half meter tall black slabs.
"This is really weird," Munro remarked. "It's almost like a graveyard."
"Except they're in hibernation," Harry reminded him. He walked forward and started circling one of the slabs. On one side, a humanoid body protruded slightly in the strange black material, its facial expression appearing neutral. "What is this stuff?"
"It's carbonite," Seven answered, standing in front of another slab. "One species the Borg encountered used it to preserve food as part of a cryogenic process. We regarded it as a useless curiosity-I never would have guessed it could also be used to preserve living beings."
"So when are the crew going to wake up?" Munro asked.
B'Elanna turned around and shrugged. "No idea. It's probably on a timer, and since the ship seems to be powering itself back up..." She trailed off as a high-pitched, warbling noise unlike anything they had ever heard began coming from the slab Seven was standing in front of.
"What happened?" she asked Seven. The entire figure, encased in the carbonite, was beginning to give off a reddish glow.
"The controls were simple," Seven explained. "The carbonite casing is dissolving right now, which will wake the person inside from hibernation."
"Okay..." B'Elanna took a few steps back as the glow grew brighter. Pinholes of bright white light formed all over, increasing in size and coming together to form larger areas. She realized a moment later that the white was actually caused by the dissolving carbonite, as skin color could now be seen through the holes in the rapidly disappearing carbonite.
Several seconds later, the carbonite casing had completely dissolved, leaving the man unsupported. As he began to fall forward, groaning slightly, B'Elanna jumped toward him and grabbed one arm as Seven grabbed the other.
Now that he was free of the carbonite, B'Elanna had the chance to take a good look at him. Oddly enough, he looked completely human-sandy blond hair of medium length, average build, no distinctive bone formations that might identify him as one of the many humanoid races of the galaxy, and even his eyes looked perfectly normal with round pupils and grayish-blue irises.
She realized a moment later that he was staring at her with probably a pretty good mirror image of the curious look she had. Oh well. Might as well introduce herself.
"Hello... I'm B'Elanna Torres, from the Federation starship Voyager."
The man blinked several times as if confused, and coughed. Then he said some gibberish that was completely unintelligible even to her universal translator.
"Uh... Seven? Did you pick up any of that?"
Seven shook her head. "It doesn't sound like any of the languages the Borg encountered."
B'Elanna turned back to the strange man. "Where are you from?" she asked.
The man coughed again. "Corellia."
Her eyebrows went up dramatically. Maybe Corellia was the name of the system that the ship had come from. "You can understand me?"
He nodded.
"What is your name?"
"Dellen Coureran," he answered, his vowels oddly accented.
B'Elanna nodded. Now they were getting somewhere. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Coureran." She paused. "We were stranded in this part of the galaxy and were trying to get home when we found your ship drifting."
The man just nodded. "Me... see," he said, sounding unsure of what he was saying.
"I see," B'Elanna corrected him.
He smiled briefly before pointing forward. "I see. Go..."
"Go?" she asked. "That way?"
When he nodded, she looked over at Seven and the rest of the away team, wondering why he wanted that. "Let's walk over there."
As it turned out, the side of the room that he wanted to walk to held what B'Elanna could only assume was a computer terminal. They helped him get into the seat in front of the terminal, and he blinked and peered at the screen, tapping commands into it. She studied the screen but couldn't make any sense of the alien glyphs, which looked slightly like a blockier version of Klingon writing.
Several minutes later, she heard mechanical whirring and clicking noises and spun around, expecting to see another one of the deadly turrets. What greeted her instead was a chrome-plated, stylized humanoid figure walking stiffly forward. In its face were a pair of wide, glowing eyes and a small square opening for a mouth, giving it an eternally surprised look. Whatever it was, it definitely didn't look threatening – but then again, things that looked harmless were often the most dangerous...
"Dellen?" she asked, unsure what was going on.
He turned around to see, and apparently recognizing the chrome figure, began speaking rapidly to it. It responded in the same odd language, and Dellen turned back to face her.
"Talk," he said.
"About what?" She honestly had no idea what he was getting at.
He shrugged. "Learn. Talk."
She looked back at the shiny figure. "Translator?"
"Trans-la-tor," he said slowly, the word coming out with the same accent. "Learn. Talk."
She looked over at Seven. "That machine's a translator," she said, finally realizing. "We should talk to each other so it can begin to understand us."
"What do you want to talk about?" Seven asked.
B'Elanna rolled her eyes. "How should I know? Stuff we'd talk about to a child, I guess. I'll start. Seven, how was your day?"
"My day went well," Seven replied. "Until the robot turret tried to kill me."
"Same here," B'Elanna muttered. "I don't know what else to talk about. I'm not exactly a schoolteacher..." Her face brightened and she turned to Dellen. "I have an idea. Is your translator capable of teaching your language?"
He nodded. "You want... translator... teach you?"
"Yes," she replied, tapping the side of her head. "We have Univeral Translators implanted that are capable of learning new languages."
Dellen turned toward the translator and gave it some rapid instructions. It shuffled forward and stiffly extended an arm. "I am E-4PO," and the next few words came out unintelligible. "I will teach you translator."
Seven and B'Elanna looked at each other. "I think this is going to take a while," B'Elanna remarked.