Ghost of a Chance (2 page)

“We’re pulling away!” Kim shouted, just as Janeway felt it happen, felt the ship abruptly move much farther than before as their momentum shifted decidedly away from the darkened star.

“We’ve lost the warp engines,” Paris announced. Even as he spoke, entire panels on the bridge erupted in a series of bright flashes followed by curling smoke and a flicker of flames. The smell of burned circuits filled the stagnant air. The fire-suppression systems quickly detected and snuffed out the flames while the bridge crew scrambled to the extinguishers, then held them at ready until it was clear they would not be needed.

“The impulse engines have dropped back to within normal levels, and are still on-line,” Paris informed the captain, then added, “For the moment.”

“Proceed in-system at half impulse,” Janeway ordered. “Let me know if the engines get any worse.”

“Transferring power back to life-support systems,” Kim said, working swiftly. As life-support came back on-line, the computer automatically began to rid the room of the smoke and fumes. Full lighting was restored to the bridge.

Janeway sat back in her chair and asked for damage reports as Voyager finally began to settle down. Judging by the bridge, she expected the worst. As it turned out, she was not surprised.

“Almost everything is off-line,” B’Elanna reported from Engineering, confirming the bad news Tuvok had already begun relating. “The main computer detected stresses high enough to trigger an automatic warp core shutdown. Warp drive, phasers, transporters, anything that uses a lot of power, is gone for the moment. I’m using everything we’ve got to keep the main computer up and the impulse engines and life-support running. I won’t know how bad it is until we can run complete level four diagnostics.”

The captain frowned. A long strand of thick dark blond hair had been pulled free from the top of her head; it hung in her face now, as if intent on adding annoyance to catastrophe. She brushed it straight back, only to have it fall again. “At least we’re not dead in the water.”

“No, Captain,” B’Elanna said, “but go easy on the impulse engines.

After that last jolt, I don’t know what shape they’re in.”

“Helm?”

“Sluggish but responding, Captain,” Paris came back.

“Understood.” She turned slightly to her right. “Mr. Neelix, I’d like another word with you.”

The alien appeared to be quite shaken, as he stood straightening his colorful tunic, his narrow fingers shaking noticeably.

“Captain,” he said, “I must go to Medical and see that Kes is all right.”

“Of course, but first I’d like to know anything you can tell me about that brown dwarf. Anything at all.”

“Which would be nothing, Captain, as I said. It’s as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Had I only known—” “Understood.” The Talaxian was not a liar. The captain was going to have to figure this one out on her own. “Very well, you may go.”

Neelix turned and rushed through the open door of the turbolift.

Nothing happened.

“It seems you will be staying on the bridge a while longer,” Tuvok said with a dry Vulcan finality that Neelix was apparently not inclined to emulate.

For the first time in several minutes Janeway smiled. She let it fade.

“Mr. Tuvok, contact Medical, find out how Kes has fared and let Neelix know. The rest of you, get to work on restoring these systems.

Mr. Paris, set a course for the system’s largest gas giant. I don’t see any reason just to sit here and sulk.

Mr. Kim, I’ll want full sensor sweeps, the best you can give me.

Start with that brown dwarf, and then scan the entire Drenar system. I want to know everything. Transfer all available data to my ready room.

I need to figure out just what the hell is going on.”

As her officers acknowledged her commands and went to work, Janeway breathed a heavy sigh. She gazed at the viewscreen once more. The Drenar system contained a G-class star and eleven planets, and appeared quite ordinary in most respects. Clearly it had never been a binary system, the positioning of its planets was indication enough of that.

With luck, the system would provide some interesting astrophysical data, and with a little more luck, they would be under way again in a few days’ time.

But in truth, just at this moment she didn’t feel very lucky.

She left Chakotay on the bridge and headed for her ready room.

For now Janeway’s only hope, and Voyager’s, was that her crew was equal to the task of getting the starship up and running again, or at least in a condition that would set them once more on their journey home.

There would be other star systems, places where at least some aid might be found, where proper supplies could be procured—Neelix had assured her of that. But with nothing but a badly crippled ship between the crew and the harsh, endless night waiting all around them, none of those tentative safe oases mattered.

Out here there was no hope of assistance from anyone familiar, no starbases to turn to, nowhere to run. It was a truth everyone onboard tried not to think about very often, though just lately such thoughts had become impossible to avoid.

Janeway blinked the darkness from her thoughts and went back to concentrating on the data displayed before her on the ready room terminal. The brown dwarf was moving through space undisturbed, and its trajectory was easy to mark, a path that had taken it through the middle of the Drenar system. Its effect on Voyager had been profound, and she was just beginning to explore the more serious consequences that its preceding path implied. She was still deep into the exact calculations when the door chime sounded. She glanced up. “Come in.”

The door slid aside, and Commander Chakotay stepped into the opening.

“We are in orbit around the largest moon of the sixth planet, Captain,” he said. “The impulse engines seem to be holding their own, and we still need fuel—more than ever, in fact. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead with your original plan. With your permission, Tuvok and Kim would like to begin collection procedures.”

“Agreed, and thank you,” she said. She had intended to discuss that very possibility with her senior officers; it pleased her to find them way ahead of her. “I’ll be right there.”

“Have you seen the casualty reports?”

Janeway held her breath. “No.”

“Nothing serious, mostly bumps and bruises. We did have one broken arm, though. Fortunately it happened in Sickbay.”

“Ah, good.” Janeway nodded, glancing down at her screen again.

“The bad news is, it was Kes.”

Janeway’s head snapped up again. Kes was an Ocampa, a species that had a life span of only nine years; at just over one, Kes was already an adult, but she was still young enough to heal very quickly. No doubt she was in better shape than Neelix so far.

Chakotay shrugged. “At least we managed to get the turbolifts working again, so Neelix is with her instead of with us.”

Janeway touched her comm badge. “Captain to Sickbay. How is Kes doing?”

“Quite well, as a matter of fact,” the holographic doctor said.

“Though I’m sure the other patients would be happier if she were able to assist me again. I can tend to only one patient at a time. She is a great help. I…”

Janeway waited, exchanging a glance with her first officer in the unexpected silence.

“I understand,” Janeway said. “She is remarkable.”

“She’ll be back to work tomorrow. A little stiff, perhaps, but otherwise…”

Janeway found herself waiting again.

He sounded cheerful enough, which was almost unusual. The holographic medical assistant program that had been pressed into service as Voyager’s only doctor was doing a splendid job, and Janeway couldn’t have been more pleased, but his attitude and bedside manner were sometimes difficult to manage.

“Yes?” she prodded.

“Captain,” the doctor replied, his voice just above a whisper, “if you could please find something for Mr. Neelix to do, and someplace else for him to do it, I would be extremely… grateful.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” she replied, suppressing a chuckle, then signing off.

“I’ll add that to my list,” Chakotay said. He was grinning as he left the ready room.

Janeway stayed at her panel for a moment, working with the ship’s main computer, completing her reconstruction of the rogue star’s recent path. The brown dwarf had passed close enough to Drenar nearly to make this a new binary system. An interesting place to study, given sufficient time, which was something Voyager simply could not afford to spend.

Still, enough raw data could be collected to provide for countless hours of analysis in the months, or years, to come.

After another moment she shook her head. She didn’t need to be here right now. She told the computer to continue, then rose and followed Chakotay out.

“Mr. Tuvok,” she said, stepping onto the bridge.

“Ready, Captain,” the Vulcan answered. “The main deflector has been reconfigured, and approximate calculations have been completed.”

Kim nodded confirmation from behind the Ops consoles. “Thrusters are at station-keeping,” he said. “I’ve diverted just enough impulse power to do the job.”

Janeway took to her captain’s chair, then rested two fingers gently against her chin. “Then let’s begin.”

“Activating Bussard ramscoop fields,” Tuvok said. Janeway watched on her own monitor as the electromagnetic fields, designed to be used for emergency collection of interstellar hydrogen during warp travel, began to expand outward, stretching in front of the ship from both of the warp nacelles.

“Deflector field wrap initiated,” Kim said, working at his own console.

“Field overlay achieved, Mr. Kim,” Tuvok said. “You may begin bending them downward.”

“Commencing… now.”

On the display, the captain witnessed the results as the two EM fields wrapped themselves around each other to form a tighter, more cohesive funnel, one that began to bend down and away from Voyager at nearly a forty-five-degree angle, an energy funnel theoretically capable of channeling the hydrogen-rich material of the moon’s upper atmosphere back toward the collectors located in the warp nacelle caps.

“Take us in a little closer, Mr. Paris,” Chakotay told the helmsman, and Voyager slowly, gently descended.

Gradually the mouth of the funnel began to fill with tenuous clouds of hydrogen-methane as the twin fields skimmed the atmosphere’s surface, drawing in material the way a draft drew smoke from a room. Paris brought the ship down another hundred kilometers, as dose as he dared to get while using the thrusters almost exclusively, but within seconds the ram fields started to collapse as the increased volume of gases leaked through.

“Too much,” Janeway told him. “Back us off a bit.”

As the ship slowly rose again, the fields reestablished themselves.

“The process seems successful on a limited scale,” Tuvok reported.

“Thank you,” B’Elanna Torres’s voice said over the intercom.

Janeway looked up from her monitor and smiled. “I think we can live with that. B’Elanna, how long can we sustain the fields at this level?”

“Approximately twenty-seven minutes.”

“Good. We might try this again later. Meanwhile, as soon as we’re finished here I’d like to complete our preliminary scan of the rest of the system. The astrophysical data I’ve seen so far are quite remarkable, but I know there’s more.”

“Agreed, Captain,” Chakotay said. “Actually, some of the early data would suggest the need for a more thorough survey as well.

The fourth planet appears to have an extremely rich biosphere.

It could even provide a good source of food. And…” He stopped himself, then shook his head.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said.

She sensed there was definitely something more. She stood silent for a moment, studying her first officer and feeling more certain. “You’re not telling me something.”

“May I have a word with you in private?” Chakotay said, suddenly pensive.

A rare mood for this man, Janeway thought. She nodded once.

“Tuvok, you have the bridge,” she said. Then she turned.

“Commander, my ready room.

“All right, what’s going on?” she asked evenly, once the door slid closed behind them.

“I had a vision last night,” Chakotay said, focusing on many things in the room before finally looking at Janeway. “Or a premonition. I’m not sure which, but it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I was visited by… by a ghost.”

Janeway crossed the small room and sat on the sofa along the opposite wall. “A ghost?” she asked, after giving them both a moment. She tried to get Chakotay to sit as well, but instead, the commander began pacing as he told her about the beautiful world and its people, then about the destruction he had seen, and the final desperate cry.

“If it’s real,” he concluded, “if these things I saw are true, then their plea for help was, too.”

“And you think we can help these people, whoever they are?”

“I don’t know. But I’d like to look into it, at least.”

“And there’s a possibility that they are on the fourth planet in this system?” Janeway said, proceeding.

“Nothing else fits. In fact, that planet may well be inhabited, and early spectral analysis of the atmosphere is consistent with a volcanically active planet. And something else, Captain. I checked with the doctor in Sickbay. Several other crew members have complained to the doctor about nightmares, about seeing things. Visions, you could say.”

“Like yours?”

“Two specifically mentioned seeing ghosts.”

Janeway looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you saying Voyager is haunted?”

“I really don’t know.”

Janeway couldn’t help frowning. “As if we didn’t have enough problems.”

Chakotay raised both eyebrows, compressing the Indian tattoo on the left side of his forehead. “I know,” he said. “But I thought… well, as long as we’re in the neighborhood…”

“We’ll look into this more.” Janeway nodded. “I have a certain fascination with this system myself. I’d like a detailed survey, including the fourth planet, which should certainly include any effect the passing of that brown dwarf may have had on indigenous populations, if they exist. We’ll go through with it. But understand, if we find any pretechnological civilizations living here—” “We’ll keep our distance. I continue to be aware of Starfleet’s precious Prime Directive,” Chakotay cut in, making sure his tone indicated his mild dissatisfaction.