Be Careful What You Wish For Page 4

  Seven's next question popped into B'Elanna's head at the same moment her colleague started to speak it. "Considering our dwindling energy reserves and the real likelihood that we will be in the process of colonizing a new planet, aren't you concerned that the proper medical facilities won't be available to you at the time of your delivery?"

  This hadn't really occurred to B'Elanna before this conversation. "Shut up, Seven," she snapped back, effectively ending their deal. "Let's get the hell out of this tube."

  "Senior staff to Astrometrics," they heard Chakotay's voice over their combadges. Great, B'Elanna thought, it's going to take me forever to crawl out of here. Seven seemed to have had the same concern.

  "Lieutenant, I believe we might make faster progress if I were to carry your engineering kit." Ugh! Being dependent on anyone didn't sit well with the engineer, but depending on Seven was almost too much to bear. Yet, she had a point.

  "Thanks," was all B'Elanna could muster. Her embarrassment only grew as she found she also needed to take Seven's hand to make the transfer from the tube to the maintenance shaft's ladder. With Borg assistance, the women reached the briefing only moments after their colleagues.

  Harry was already at work behind the Astrometrics main console when the women walked through the door. They could sense an anxious energy in the room, and it was obvious that those already gathered had been eager for Seven, in particular, to arrive. Chakotay was pacing a hole in the floor and Captain Janeway's voice had that high-pitched yet gravely squeak to it that they both recognized as a sign of her agitation. "Seven, B'Elanna, we're receiving the new datastream from Starfleet, and there's an encoded message bearing Lieutenant Barclay's secure encryption code. The heading on the file has the designation we were told to expect if a viable rescue plan had been found." She tried to contain her nervous energy. "Harry's verified the validity of the code. It looks like this could be the one we've been waiting for."

  Tom and B'Elanna shot looks at each other. With less of a blind motivation than their friends to get home at any cost, they tended to be skeptical of these 'gifts from the gods' that occasionally appeared on Voyager offering a painless and fast way back. They had been proven right time and again, including the last time they got such a transmission from Barclay, in the form of a holographic doppelganger who had almost gotten them all killed. After that near-tragedy, Starfleet had tightened security on the Pathfinder project and had created the new encryption protocols, but that didn't stop the couple from doubting that this could be the miracle path home. If the codes had been verified, though...

  Seven had already begun assisting Harry, accelerating the decryption. Never content to standby and wait, B'Elanna moved to the secondary access console and began data integrity checks of the portions Harry had already decoded. She found no indication of tampering. Indeed, as she watched the technical specifications of the plan scroll past her eyes, her engineer's mind told her that this might actually work.

  Five minutes later the download, decryption, and verification of the datastream were complete. As Voyager's senior staff looked up at the projection screen, it was Reg Barclay's now-familiar face they saw. "Captain Janeway, we have been evaluating the data you provided us on Borg transwarp conduits, and Starfleet's best scientists have been working to see if there is a way we can solve some of the problems you have encountered in opening a stable conduit without a Borg transwarp coil. We think we've found a way." Glances shot around the room at warp speed.

  "The Pathfinder staff has been working closely with the engineering team that designed the Intrepid class ships, and we think Voyager can be safely adapted to open a narrow-beam singularity, very similar to the transwarp concept. The specifications are enclosed. I have been asked by my superiors to mention that this plan requires some significant adaptations of Voyagers systems."

  Reg paused. He was a reticent man, and his expression showed a thinly-veiled apology as he continued. "These modifications will require you to scavenge components from several of the ship's key systems. Once you adapt these systems, it's unlikely that the ship will be able to exceed warp four again. Of course, that's not a problem if the conduit opens as we expect. However, if you are able to open and enter the conduit, any instability in your warp engines or deflector array might cause the singularity to collapse. Prospects for Voyager's surviving such an event would not be good."

  "Captain," Barclay continued, his nervous voice turning soft, "we understand this would be a major gamble for you and your crew. But we believe it can succeed. If you elect to make the attempt, we have estimated the modifications should take your engineers approximately twenty-five days. That would allow you to notify us of your decision, and send along any..." he stammered, "...final...personal messages in the next datastream before you open the conduit. We would then make all necessary preparations to receive you on this end. We look forward to hearing your reply. Barclay out." They stood together silently for a moment before the Captain finally spoke.

  "Well, I don't supposed we should have expected something easy," she mused. "But somehow I didn't think it would be so 'all or nothing.'" She paced a few steps before turning back to face her crew.

  "B'Elanna, work with Seven and Harry to make a complete analysis of this plan and its risks," the captain instructed. "What's the earliest you could make your recommendations?"

  The three officers looked quickly at each other. "I think we would need about six hours to review the material and evaluate our current status," B'Elanna answered for them.

  "Good," the captain replied. I'll see you all in the briefing room at 1600 hours.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  The remainder of the alpha shift seemed to crawl by, as the bridge crew waited for the engineering team to make its recommendations. With Voyager currently heading pretty much in a straight line to nowhere, Tom spent a long while at the conn thinking about the decision the captain was going to have to make. He had just been preparing himself for a life as a colonist, when they were once again teased by the prospect of making it home to Earth. Just as he had during the last "false alarm," when Reg's hologram assured them they'd be home in days, Tom reviewed in his mind the contingency plans he had devised to deal with the various welcomes they might receive upon their arrival.

  Scenario A: They're welcomed home as conquering heroes. His standing in Starfleet is restored, B'Elanna's given Academy credits for her practical experience as Voyager's chief engineer, they take an exciting-but-stable joint posting on some nice ship, and they and their daughter live happily ever after. This was Harry's prediction. Tom, having never been able to sustain a run of good luck in his life as long as he had on Voyager, thought the odds of this to be 50/50 at best.

  Scenario B: They arrive in Federation space, at which time the Maquis are immediately arrested as terrorists. Tom is sent back to the Federation Penal Colony in Auckland to finish out his sentence, and is stripped of his operator's license, effectively ending his career as a pilot. If this gloomy outcome proved true, Tom could come up with only one positive thought: maybe he and B'Elanna could share a cell.

  Scenario C: They're welcomed home warmly, but cautiously. B'Elanna and the other Maquis are pardoned for their crimes, and Tom's sentence is commuted, but there won't be a Starfleet career in either of their futures. The big question in this scenario was how they would spend the rest of their lives. Tom secretly thought this was the most likely outcome, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. He knew only two things: he'd want to be able to keep flying and he needed to be with B'Elanna and the baby. Pretty much everything else was negotiable.

  He was also unsettled at the thought of seeing his family again. He was such a different person from the young man they had last known. Even his mother and sisters, whom he had forced out of his life so as to spare them the shame of his crimes, had known him most recently as a misfit who hadn't lived up to his great potential. He had refused their visits while he was in Auckland, and he knew that had hurt them. Now that they were able to c
ommunicate by letter each month, he had tried to tell them how much he had grown up during his time in the Delta Quadrant. But his official record from Voyager--which he knew his father had access to--could be open to interpretation: his being busted back to ensign for a year after trying to save the Monean ocean, his subsequent thirty days in the brig for disobeying orders, even his having married a Maquis. From so far away, it was possible that Tom still looked like a rebel who couldn't play by the rules. He knew Captain Janeway didn't see him that way, but, from Earth, out of context...he had his doubts if it seemed he had learned any lessons at all.

  Then there was his father. Tom had really believed that no amount of time or talking could put that relationship right. He couldn't remember the last time he felt like anything but a disappointment to Admiral Paris, and their time apart before Voyager was lost had been filled with anger, bitterness, and pain for them both. They had been out of each other's lives long before Tom landed in New Zealand. He would never forget their last conversation, in the foyer of his parents' home in San Francisco, as Tom returned from Starfleet headquarters after the hearing that stripped him of his commission.

  In all of their difficult times while Tom was growing up, he had never heard his father so livid. He had known Owen didn't think very much of his abilities (a difficult thing for the Admiral to bear, Tom imagined, since he only accepted the 'best and the brightest'), but their's had always been a 'cold war.' Tom would disappoint his father, feel horrible, give a tepid apology, then beat himself up; his father would lecture him about his lack of focus and sloppy study habits, then freeze him out for the next week. After Tom had confessed to his lie about the accident on Caldik Prime, however, there was nothing cold about their fight.

  The crash, his father had told him, showed that even Tom's piloting--the one thing the Admiral grudgingly acknowledged his son excelled at--left something to be desired. And Tom's cover-up of his role in the deaths of his friends was more than just dishonorable, it was stupid. Idiotic. A disgrace. The combination of Tom's guilt, humiliation, and years of being made to feel like a disappointment to the Paris lineage had come to a boiling point. They had screamed things at each other that day--evil words that would be difficult to take back. Owen threw his son out of the house and told him to stay away. A year later, drunk and desperate for someone to pay his drinking debts, Tom was recruited by Chakotay into the Maquis. Six months after that he was captured and jailed. Another year later, and he was 70,000 light years away from home and presumed dead.

  He would never forget that afternoon in San Francisco. But he would also remember another day, just a few years ago, and the surreal feeling of sitting on Voyager's bridge, hearing his father's voice for the first time in years, telling Tom's captain and everyone else who could hear that he was proud of his son and missed him. The memory still gave him chills.

  Since the regular data exchanges over the MIDAS array had begun, he had written exactly two letters to that California home he had been summarily thrown out of, but he had addressed them to both of his parents. The first told them about his marriage to B'Elanna. They second let them know about their coming granddaughter. Usually, he spent his allotted space in the datastream trading messages with his sisters. Their letters had been full of love, support, and questions about his life. He enjoyed their correspondence so much, he had really come to look forward to the monthly 'mail call'.

  Okay, so maybe there was room for him to start over with his family. Someday, if they ever made it home.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  Unlike their colonization reconnaissance mission, there was no way the senior staff could keep the news about Starfleet's message a secret. B'Elanna had needed to include her engineering crew in figuring out the repair timeline and component analysis, and Carey and Sue Nicoletti helped the senior officers run probability scenarios on the Pathfinder scientists' experimental plan. Thanks to the infamous engineering rumor mill, word of their possible rescue had spread to every deck well before the briefing began at 1600 hours.

  "Report, B'Elanna," Janeway instructed as she took her seat.

  Her chief engineer walked to the wall panel and displayed a graphical simulation as she spoke. "Starfleet has come up with a way for us to create a narrow column singularity that--according to their simulations--can be targeted to open and close as we direct. The concept is not all that different from the transwarp conduits the Borg use, except that we'll use a controlled antimatter explosion to open the rift, then use the deflector array to expand and 'steer' it."

  "An anti-matter explosion?" Tom interjected. "That could tear the ship apart!"

  "That's the ingenuity of this plan," Harry replied. "Starfleet has found a way to focus the energy of the blast into the fabric of space using a highly-charged tachyon burst from our deflectors at the precise moment of the detonation. That's what opens the wormhole. We just fly Voyager into the mouth of the singularity and wedge the rift open in two hundred meter increments in front of the ship. The angle of the deflector burst determines the direction we head."

  "You make it sound simple," Chakotay interjected. "What's going to keep the ship from breaking apart under those extreme stresses?"

  Seven spoke up, "We significantly enlarge and enhance our shield emitters, boosting their power with a secondary warp core built from components salvaged from Voyager's shuttles."

  B'Elanna added, "We essentially build a new power grid just for the shields. The enhanced emitters project a narrow-focused structural integrity field just inside the deflector wedge."

  Janeway was concerned, "You keep referring to this 'narrow-focus'-- how narrow are we talking?"

  The three engineers exchanged glances. "Pretty narrow, Captain," Torres answered. "We'll have about ninety meters clearance around the entire ship, excluding the wedge itself." Even Tuvok's eyes seemed to widen at the news of the tight squeeze.

  "Let me get this straight," the captain sighed. "We'll have to create an untested, controlled antimatter explosion, pry open the tear it will create in the fabric of space to form a theoretical wormhole, then use our untested shields to keep us from being crushed as we travel through it. If we manage to succeed, we'll have to steer the deflector pulse, the structural integrity wedge and the ship though a spacial rift with only ninety meters clearance separating us from the singularity?"

  B'Elanna shrugged as she answered. "That's pretty much it, yes."

  Janeway was standing now, pacing toward the windows. "It's so obvious, I can't imagine why we didn't think of it before," she said under her breath. Her sarcasm was a reflection of her disappointment. This was going to be very risky, at best. "Seven, this plan adapts Borg science in a way we've never tried. What's your reaction?"

  "I believe it reflects unconventional thinking," Seven said in a measured tone. "But I think it has the possibility to succeed."

  Janeway turned to her resident expert on Voyager's systems. "B'Elanna?"

  Her engineer was clearly making a dozen calculations in her mind as she spoke. "We would need to be traveling above warp 2 to open the conduit, so we would have to repair the new microfissures in the warp nacelles before we could attempt it. If we gutted the shuttles, and used some of our energy reserves to replicate the things we can't salvage from other places, I think I could reinforce Voyager enough to hold things together for a while." She looked at Seven briefly, but without malice before she went on. "Though the last time we tried something similar without a Borg transwarp coil, we ended up ejecting the core." B'Elanna remembered having described that day as the worst of her life. At least, in most respects it had been. "I'll still need to spend some time reviewing their plan for stabilizing the tachyon field before I could feel comfortable recommending this."

  Janeway agreed, "Of course." She turned back to her staff, "So, will it work?"

  Seven spoke first, "We ran the data through the main computer. Our probability studies show a sixty-two percent chance of success." Not great odds, Tom thought, as an experienced gambler.
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  "There's more, Captain," B'Elanna continued. "Even if we are successful in opening the singularity, any number of things could go wrong. The wormhole could destabilize, crushing the ship. It will be challenging to steer the deflector accurately. We could over- or under-shoot our target rather substantially. And, if we graze the singularity...the forces would likely tear the ship apart."

  Harry, of course, saw things a little more optimistically. "To be fair, Captain, in the simulations run by Pathfinder's team, they figured out how to anticipate and avoid most of the major systems issues in enough time to correct them. I think, with some practice on the holodeck, we could get our success rate even higher."

  Oh, Harry, B'Elanna thought to herself. So desperate to get home, he would take almost any risk. She knew he wasn't the only one on the crew who felt that way. As a matter of fact, Harry's chief competition for the 'we've got to make it home at any cost' prize now had this decision in her hands. The captain didn't seem thrilled with the burden. Her tactical officer was about to make it more difficult.