II.
"What the hell just happened?"
Engineering is pitch black – or at least B'Elanna assumes it is. Otherwise something has happened to her vision, but, while there is plenty of pain shooting through various parts of her body (broken wrist? And maybe a rib as well...) from her collision with the nearest bulkhead and console, her head seems clear.
Added to that, she is floating. So either she is in the most unlikely version of Gre'thor imaginable or the artificial gravity is out as well.
Damn, she hates zero g...
"Seven? Mendez?" she calls out. "Let's get a head count, people."
One by one, her team reports in, some voices weaker and more obviously disorientated than others, but everyone is accounted for. Except, of course, for the member not in engineering. Best not to think about that right now.
Closing her eyes against the disorientation of being able to see absolutely nothing, B'Elanna tries to regain her bearings – something that would be significantly easier at floor level – and judge where the nearest emergency locker with wrist-lights might be. She hears movement nearby and then a click. "Seven?" she guesses.
"One moment," Seven responds, and then there is a sudden and too bright flash . "You are injured," the ex-drone observes as she pushes off a bulkhead to propel herself gracefully across the space between them, expertly bracing against the top of a nearby console to halt her momentum and handing B'Elanna one of the wrist-lights she has just collected.
"I'll live," B'Elanna replies shortly and, somewhat awkwardly with only one working hand, activates her own light. Playing it around the room, she sees her staff hanging onto various railings and bulkheads above the consoles at which they had been at work. At the heart of engineering sits the ominously darkened mass of the warp core.
What the hell happened?
One thing at a time... Nearby Mendez appears to be shaken but uninjured – and relatively comfortable with moving in zero-g. "Ensign, let's get wrist-lights distributed to everyone. Take a medical tricorder as well and check for any major injuries."
"Yes, ma'am," Mendez responds and pushes off a railing to retrieve the rest of the equipment from the locker.
B'Elanna turns back to Seven, ignoring the marked nausea that even that slight movement causes. "We need to get the emergency power online."
"I concur. However, it is unlikely that we will be able to re-engage the impulse drive without the warp core."
B'Elanna nods. "We'll need to get into the service chutes and activate the EPS power reserves manually." Unbidden, calculations as to how long those power reserves are likely to last once in use begin to formulate in her mind.
Seven, meanwhile, gives a significant look to B'Elanna's clearly disjointed left wrist. "I believe that I am currently better able to navigate the necessary access tubes."
Klingon physiology is uniquely suited to blocking out pain, but, once reminded of the injury, her wrist begins to throb menacingly. "Fine," B'Elanna returns with no little annoyance. "Take Tabor with you if he is uninjured. I don't want anyone working alone while the comm system is down."
Seven nods and pushes back off the console on her way to Tabor.
B'Elanna looks down at her wrist. The fingers of her left hand are beginning to swell. Gritting her teeth, she twists the gold band off her ring finger and moves it to her right hand. Swallowing hard, she propels herself over to the locker and searches the now free-floating contents for something to use to immobilize the wrist and, once gravity returns, to use as a sling. For the moment, she elects to ignore the stabbing pain in her side altogether.
"Lieutenant?" She turns as Mendez moves back from his rounds with Carey floating along behind him. "We've found wrist-lights for everyone. Lieutenant Nicoletti and Ensign Mulcahey both have mild concussions. All other injuries are minor." Mendez glances at her makeshift brace but evidently knows her well enough to refrain from comment.
Carey also gives her wrist a quick look before adding, "Swinn and Mulcahey are working on collecting and securing emergency floodlights."
"Good," B'Elanna responds with real relief at the relatively short casualty list. "Once Seven and Tabor get the power reserves up, we'll need to get both internal and external sensors online and figure out what's going on. We also need to get subspace communications up as soon as possible. Since we are supposedly in friendly space," ...supposedly..., "we should work on getting out a call for help."
"Subspace communications will be easiest to access from the bridge," Carey reminds her, unspoken understanding in his tone. The fourth and fifth fingers of her left hand rub together, probing the absence where her ring should be.
"Okay," she nods. "Sensors, life support – including artificial gravity – and internal comms so that we can contact the bridge. Those are our priorities. Reserves should be up within a few minutes: let's get teams organized for each of those systems." Carey nods and is about to follow up on the order when she adds, perhaps unnecessarily, "And remind everyone to keep power use as minimal as possible. We don't know how long we are going to need to run on the EPS reserves."
"Yes, ma'am," Carey acknowledges grimly and moves off with Mendez in his wake. At the very least, those orders will keep her team busy until Seven and Tabor have finished the power reserve activation. And B'Elanna long ago learned that, when in crisis, her people, like their chief, do best with a task in hand.
Bracing herself against the relative stability of the corner of the alcove, she stares blankly at the darkened warp core, the bulkheads disconcertingly still against her arms and back. What the hell happened?
.
Task one had been obvious: find light.
That having been accomplished, deciding upon task two is taking Tom significantly more time.
His impulse, for more than one reason, is to make for engineering with all possible speed. His crew is there (...and despite the sudden lack of gravity, those two pips on his collar became much heavier the moment Voyager tumbled out of warp, transferring command back to the bridge and its sole officer...); as a medic, he knows that engineering, where the crew members are far more likely to be standing at consoles than sitting when any accident occurs, is always particularly prone to casualties.
And, his wife is down there.
As a pilot, however, he knows he needs to first ascertain what it is that Voyager hit – and every instinct insists that it was, indeed, a collision that ripped the ship out of subspace – and ensure that another such encounter is not imminent.
For that, the best place to be is on the bridge.
Holding onto the helm station chair with one hand, he flashes his wrist-light across the blackened viewscreen, wondering, not for the first time, why the thing doesn't simply revert to transparency when power fails. Not that he would likely be able to visually detect whatever subspace phenomenon or gravimetric anomaly they just discovered the hard way, but there would be some comfort in knowing that there is at least nothing solid into which they are about to drift.
If wishes were warp cores...
Pushing off across the bridge to the ops station, he pulls himself hand over hand down to floor level and begins to remove the access panels that will allow him to get into the guts of the sensors and communications systems, all too aware as he does so of how poorly suited he is to the task. Poor Harry will no doubt have a heart attack when he sees the mess that his best friend is about to make of his station.
Knowing that the impulse drive has been shut down for the articulation frame tests, Tom is operating under the assumption that someone in engineering will be working to get the power reserves online. He begins rerouting sensors and communications to the main EPS lines, manually pulling less essential systems offline. Once power is available, they are going to want to use it sparingly.
Five minutes into his work, the conduits which he is busy rewiring come to life beneath his fingers. A couple minutes after that, gravity returns without warning. Fortunately, he is already working close to the floor; not so fortunately, the access panels which he carelessly left to float at will come clattering down with a vengeance on top of him.
Rubbing at his head and voicing a stream of invectives, he misses the first beep from op's internal communications panel. The second has him jumping to his feet – grunting a bit at the unexpected effort – and tapping the console to open the line.
The screen brightens to reveal Seven's somewhat quizzical stare. "Lieutenant Paris," she acknowledges. "Are you injured?"
"I'm fine," he responds. Then, "Is everyone all right down there?"
"Several of the crew suffered injuries but none are critical. Lieutenant Torres appears..."
"I'm fine," B'Elanna interrupts, appearing beside Seven on the small screen. Tom's relief upon seeing her is tempered as he notices the sling on her arm, but, taking his cue from Seven's raised brow, he saves the question for now. "You're okay?" she asks.
He nods. "Do we know what we hit?"
Seven's brow climbs further. "It would be inaccurate to describe..."
"A subspace distortion," B'Elanna cuts in. "We've been able to get the sensors back online and there appear to be at least a dozen similar distortions nearby. Here..."
Her attention is on the console before her for a few moments and then an image of the anomaly appears on screen beside the comm channel. Tom gives a low whistle. "They're huge."
B'Elanna nods. "But only a small portion of each is detectable with our normal sensor alignments – small enough that the navigational systems don't register them as a threat to the ship. Seven was able to tap into the sensors in astrometrics in order to get a more complete picture."
"Subspace icebergs," Tom intones.
Seven is about to respond, but B'Elanna stops her. "Tom, we need you to get external communications functioning up there so that we can call for help. Seven can walk you through it from here."
And damn it if those two pips don't suddenly feel like a major nuisance. With an internal sigh, Tom begins to frame his response before Seven's unflappable voice interrupts his thoughts: "I believe that, as Lieutenant Paris is now in command, giving a fuller situation report first would be the standard operating protocol for this vessel."
Or, one could just phrase it like that. ...if one happens to have a death wish. Or the emotional IQ unique to a former drone.
Tom watches with what he admits is a certain amount of fascination as his wife turns a look on Seven that would induce utter terror in a good portion of the crew. The other woman merely reciprocates with a cool stare of her own. Tom waits, knowing that his silence will be taken – correctly, in this case – as acquiescence and that the same glare will soon be turned on him.
And, indeed, there it is.
Wishing with every fiber of his being that they were not doing this over an open comm line with Seven and gods know who else listening in, Tom closes his eyes for the briefest of moments before stating as calmly and reasonably as humanly possible, "B'Elanna, I need to know what's going on."
Even with the relatively low resolution of the comm screen in its power save mode, he can see her muscles coiled with tension and he knows that her uninjured hand likely has a death grip on the edge of the console. "Fine," she finally growls. "You want a situation report? The warp core was knocked offline by the massive cochrane distortions when we ran into your 'subspace iceberg'. Without the warp core, we have no way to reinitialize the impulse drive and, without the impulse drive, we're running on the EPS reserves alone."
Ignoring her tone and her anger, he asks, "How long do we have?"
"Running minimal life-support, comms and sensors, we have maybe ten hours." Her glare intensifies and he reads the unsaid, So why the hell are we still here talking about this?
Tom presses on nonetheless. "Can we evacuate to the shuttles?"
"That would be inadvisable." This time the response is Seven's. "The standard shuttles do not have the sensor technology necessary for detecting the subspace distortions; nor do they have the shield strength or structural integrity to withstand even a brief encounter with the phenomena."
The Delta Flyer likely would be a different story, Tom knows, but the Flyer was left behind on Yosia to shuttle crew members as needed.
"We could, however, transfer the reserve EPS power from the shuttles to Voyager's main grid," B'Elanna muses, her voice calmer as she considers the possibility. "I can send Tabor and Swinn down to the shuttle bays to work on that. It may buy us an extra hour or two of power."
Tom nods. "Do it. And have them collect the EVA suits from the shuttles while they're down there. We can prep them as a last resort."
"Good idea," B'Elanna concedes. "But we are still going to need help – and soon."
"Hence the external communications," Tom agrees. "I can work on those up here with Seven's help, provided no one down there is in need of more immediate medical attention."
Seven and B'Elanna exchange a look. "Actually, I think that may be one issue that we have at least a temporary solution for," B'Elanna offers. "Remember before the Doctor acquired his mobile emitter when Harry and I tried to rig holoprojectors in key areas of the ship?"
"Not entirely successfully, if I remember," Tom replies, recalling Harry's rants on the finicky nature of holotechnology at the time.
B'Elanna shrugs. "It was largely an issue of other projects taking priority, and then, once we had the emitter, it became a non-issue."
"I believe that I can finish Lieutenant Torres and Ensign Kim's work on the projectors and initialize one of the backups of the EMH program while I am 'walking you through' the communications repairs," Seven interrupts. "It will be a less refined version of the EMH program than the Doctor, but it should serve our current needs."
Tom frowns. "Won't that further drain our power?"
"Actually, no," B'Elanna responds. "We were working on those projectors before we figured out how to integrate the holosystems into the main power grid. They have an independent reserve." She shrugs again. "It's free energy: we might as well use it."
"Fair enough," Tom agrees. "Seven, why don't you brief Tabor and Swinn on pulling the reserve power from the shuttles and then we'll get started with the subspace comms."
Seven looks ready to object at the inefficiency of that plan but then appears to decide the better of it. She nods and moves away, giving Tom his minute alone with his wife.
"Sorry you stayed aboard yet?" B'Elanna quips softly once Seven is out of earshot, her anger temporarily abated.
Allowing himself the moment, Tom touches the screen gently. "Do you even really need to ask?"
I'm glad the last thing I'll see is you.
Three years ago, he had thought those words meant so much...
B'Elanna gives him that smile – the one that inevitably makes him wonder what he ever did to deserve her. "I guess not."
"I'll call in the cavalry," he assures her.
"And I'll make sure we're still waiting when they arrive," she replies, still smiling.
And, with that, they both turn back to the work of saving their ship.