Star Trek: Typhon Pact 04 - Paths of Disharmony

by Dayton Ward

  “The way people are running around out there,” Regnis replied, “you’d think the Pioneers had finally won a title.” Looking around the room, he asked, “No luck getting us back online, I take it?”

  La Forge shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Whoever hijacked our system is still in there,” Granados added. “It’s like they’re waiting for us to try something and they know what it will be. Then they either reroute or else just lock us out.”

  Regnis pursed his lips, looking away as though lost in thought. “You’ve tried resetting the system?”

  “Sure,” La Forge said, “but you know how these consoles work. One resets, the others reconfigure to deal with it.”

  His gaze returning to regard the chief engineer, Regnis arched an eyebrow in almost Vulcan-like fashion. “But the master control setup is still here, right?”

  “That’s right,” Granados replied.

  Regnis smiled. “Then we still might have a play.” Moving to the workstation La Forge had set up as the master operations console for the deployable network, he reached for the station’s interface panel and opened it, raising it up to expose the console’s innards. Among the optical cabling and other electronic components was a row of twelve isolinear optical chips. Pointing to the chips, Regnis asked, “These oversee the core software, right?”

  “Yes,” La Forge answered, frowning as he watched the lieutenant at work.

  Nodding, Regnis reached into the console and removed the first, second, eleventh, and twelfth chips from their respective slots. “Then what we want to do is give the protected firmware a hard reset, so that it reverts back to the default configuration it was given when it was first put together.”

  “You mean the original settings, as in new from the depot?” La Forge asked. “You can’t do that, not without an A7 computer specialist’s software-configuration kit.” Indeed, the chief engineer had already considered that option, but discarded it upon learning that such a kit had not been included in the equipment brought down from the Enterprise.

  Regnis chuckled as he worked, exchanging the first and second chips with their respective eleventh and twelfth counterparts. As the last chip snapped into place, the entire console went dark, but only for a few seconds before a series of beeps and clicks accompanied the workstation’s reawakening. In response to this action, other consoles around the room blinked and emitted their own sets of alert tones and indicators, with monitors refreshing their displays. On La Forge’s console, the primary computer display now offered a new message in simple text: SYSTEM RESET COMPLETE. ENTER CUSTOMIZATION PARAMETERS.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  “I think I love you,” Granados added.

  “Get in line,” Regnis replied, still smiling. To La Forge, he said, “With all due respect, Commander, these are field units, designed for tactical environments where we don’t always have the luxury of the right tool for the right job. A lot of these systems have work-arounds that might not be by the book, but they work.”

  T’lira replied, “Most ingenious, Lieutenant.”

  La Forge nodded. “I’ll say. Where the hell did you learn that?”

  “A friend of mine figured it out, a long time ago. It came in handy on AR-558, when the Dominion kept trying to hack the communications relay there.”

  His eyes widening, La Forge recalled the name, belonging to a small, desolate planet in what at the time had been the Cardassian-occupied Chin’toka system, and the bloody battle fought there during one of the most intense periods of the Dominion War. “You were on AR-558?”

  Regnis said, “I was sent in as one of the replacements. You know, after.”

  “Yeah,” La Forge said, “but after was no picnic, either.” As harrowing as the original siege of that Starfleet installation had been at the hands of Jem’Hadar ground troops, it was but a prelude to what had come later, when the Dominion had finally taken the planet and the Starfleet communications relay it housed, along with the entire Chin’toka system.

  Once again, the young security officer looked away, as though remembering something he had not thought about for some time. “No, it wasn’t.”

  At the console, Granados said, “Okay, we’re back up. I’ve got oversight of pretty much everything. It’ll take a few minutes to bring up the grid and reestablish comm, but after that it should be simple to reinstate all systems.”

  Feeling new energy and determination coursing through him at this unexpected and most welcome turn of events, La Forge said, “Do it.”

  Chen gritted her teeth, biting back growing irritation.

  “I can’t just do it,” she said, looking away from the computer interface terminal and glaring at Taurik. “If I rush this, we might trip some kind of alarm, or some other signal, and that might make somebody decide to blow up the ship. That would be a bad thing, right?”

  Standing next to her in the service corridor leading to the Cousteau—the captain’s yacht, which was currently stored in its customary home on the underside of the Enterprise’s primary hull—Taurik’s expression was unreadable. “Sarcasm is a most unbecoming trait, Lieutenant.”

  “It works for me,” Chen snapped. Returning her attention to her console, she studied the technical schematic it now displayed. Though the yacht itself had been sealed off as just another aspect of the commandeering that had affected most of the Enterprise’s computer systems, Chen had still found a way to access its computer by means of the smaller vessel’s self-contained diagnostic-and-maintenance computer system. After first navigating past the software protocols linking the Cousteau to the Enterprise’s main computer, Chen was able to integrate her portable interface directly with the yacht’s primary data core. A few checks of her own confirmed her theory that she had managed to effect her infiltration without triggering any alerts or other booby traps that might be lying in wait.

  “All right,” she said, “according to this, once I establish the link between the yacht’s main computer and the ship’s protected backup core, I should be able to connect to our shuttlecraft fleet and slave their computers to the Cousteau’s. Once that network’s up, it should only take a few seconds to switch out the Enterprise’s operating system for ours.”

  Taurik said, “The Cousteau acts in lieu of the Enterprise main computer, directing software applications from the backup memory core, rather than trying to install those components to the primary systems.” He nodded as he pondered her scheme. “An unorthodox yet shrewd strategy. However did you think of it?”

  “I did something like it when I broke into the records system at my school and changed my grades,” Chen said. Sensing Taurik’s surprise at her admission, she looked away from her terminal and smiled. “I wasn’t always the stolid, forthright Starfleet officer you know and love, Commander.”

  His right eyebrow rising, the Vulcan offered no other reaction. “Indeed.”

  An indicator tone sounded from the console, and she nodded in approval at the monitor’s status displays. “Okay, we’re set.” She reached for the interface, but stopped when the terminal emitted another signal. “Uh-oh.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Taurik asked.

  Reaching for the control pad, Chen began scrolling through screens and pages of data, studying the flurry of constantly streaming status updates. She caught the signs of new activity in the system, events being recorded and procedures being enacted, which she had hoped not to see. “We’ve got a big problem. I must have tripped something. I’m seeing new instructions being sent to the engineering subprocesses. Something’s querying the status of the antimatter-containment systems.” She could feel her heart racing as the potential consequences of what was happening before her within the vast computer network hammered home. “Taurik, I think they know we’re here.” Then, she tapped a new string of commands into the terminal. “We have to do this, right now.”

  Taurik extended his hand, resting it atop hers. “Should we not contact the bridge and inform them as to what we are doing?�
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  “No time,” Chen snapped, shaking her head. “Besides, why spoil the surprise?” Without waiting for the Vulcan’s response, she entered a final, furious string of instructions to the terminal, new protocols she was making up as she went, creating them in the heat of desperation and near-panic. There was no time to test what she was writing. It would either work, or not.

  “Lieutenant,” Taurik said, his voice rising an octave as he pointed to the display monitor. “There’s been an update to the antimatter-containment protocols.”

  Chen ignored him, her fingers pressing down on the control pad’s smooth surface as she executed her new commands. She drew a deep breath, held it, and shut her eyes. If the ship was going to explode around her, she decided she would rather not see it coming.

  Nothing happened.

  At first.

  The lights were the first signs that something was amiss, extinguishing an instant before Chen heard a fluctuation in the omnipresent hum of the Enterprise’s warp engines. Despite safety features in place to prevent injuries to the crew in the event of a power failure, her stomach still registered the wavering of artificial gravity and even the inertial damping systems as emergency backups took over in response to loss of connectivity with the main computer. On her terminal’s monitor, she watched as dozens of status indicators danced, racing to keep up and register thousands of changes taking place across the ship as one software platform was replaced by another at the speed of light. The display was receiving information not only from the Cousteau itself but also from each auxiliary craft in the Enterprise’s shuttle fleet as they carried out Chen’s instructions, establishing access between one another and surrendering their autonomous control systems to the captain’s yacht. When the screen went dark, Chen released the breath she was holding, and smiled as the display coalesced into a new image, that of an introductory LCARS screen and a banner that read: COUSTEAU. U.S.S. ENTERPRISE, NCC-1701-E. MAIN ENABLED.

  When the ship did not explode around her, Chen looked to Taurik. “I think that’s it.” Before the Vulcan could respond, she tapped a series of commands on the terminal’s control pad, verifying the status of various systems, her heart pounding harder with every beat as she saw the results of her work scrolling before her eyes. “We’re back!” she said, slapping the edge of the console in her excitement. According to her readouts, the Enterprise’s primary computer core had been entirely bypassed, with her patchwork amalgam of computer processes from the shuttle fleet standing in for the starship’s comparably larger and more complex systems. “Links to the protected backups are functioning, and the system is executing protocols there rather than from the main platform. All antimatter-containment protocols are back online. Communications is coming back. Defensive systems are still running up, and we should have weapons in about a minute.”

  “Commander Worf will certainly be gratified to hear that,” Taurik said, his expression neutral and his tone impassive, but it was still more than enough to elicit from Chen an unrestrained belly laugh. Without thinking, she reached for him and drew him to her, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing for all she was worth. To her delight, she felt Taurik’s hands on her back, and she smiled as she buried her face in his neck.

  Then, she was struck by an amusing thought.

  Wow. What I wouldn’t give to be on the bridge right now.

  Alert sirens sounded across the bridge, and the entire chamber was bathed in dull red lighting. On the main viewer, a tactical schematic appeared, superimposing itself over the images of the Andorian freighters, which were breaking from their formation and veering off on different vectors.

  “They’re locking weapons,” reported Ensign Balidemaj from the tactical station.

  At the center of the bridge, Worf leaned forward in the command chair, muscles tensing as he studied the tactical readout. “Status report.”

  “Shield generators are recycling,” replied Rosado at the ops console. “They completely reset, pretty much like everything else, sir. We’re not going to have them for another minute or so. Weapons are coming online, too.”

  How long had it been since the ops officer had reported the sudden reset of the Enterprise’s main computer system? Less than a minute, by Worf’s measure. He had no idea what had happened, or why, or by whose hands, and he did not care. All that mattered was that his ship had been returned to him, and it was now time to bring this ridiculous situation under his control.

  “Bring us about,” he ordered. “Stand by all weapons.”

  Rosado glanced over her shoulder at him. “Sir, weapons aren’t online yet.”

  “They will be by the time we’re ready for them,” Worf said, imagining the three-dimensional picture of the Enterprise and the two freighters, moving about one another. “Mind your station, Ensign.”

  From her station, Balidemaj said, “Commander, we’re being hailed by one of the ships.”

  “I imagine we are,” Worf replied. “Ignore them.” There would be plenty of time for talk once the events of the next few minutes played out.

  Balidemaj shouted, “They’re firing!”

  The effects were felt an instant later as the Enterprise, without benefit of its deflector shields, absorbed the full force of the Andorian freighter’s disruptor strike. The reverberations channeled up through the ship and through the deck plates beneath Worf’s feet, and he even felt them in the arms of the captain’s chair.

  “Damage report!” Worf ordered.

  Rosado replied, “Minor hull buckling on deck eleven, near deflector control. No breaches detected, but force fields have been activated, anyway.” The ship shuddered again as the second ship opened fire, and Rosado reported more minor damage, this time further aft near the main shuttlebay. Even with her skilled evasive maneuvers, Worf still winced every time he felt the disruptors slamming into the hull. How much longer before some actual damage was inflicted?

  “Commander,” Balidemaj said, “weapons are now online.”

  Despite himself, Worf actually smiled at that report. “Target both freighters’ engines and prepare to fire on my command.”

  “They know we’re hot, sir,” Rosado said, and even with her back to him Worf could see that the ops officer was smiling.

  “Pursuit course on the lead ship and overtake, Ensign,” Worf ordered. “Fire phasers.” The lights around the bridge dimmed as power was routed to the weapons systems, and on the main viewer the first officer saw twin beams of fiery orange energy lance across space to strike the freighter near its aft section. Wasting no time, Balidemaj followed with a second strike, and this time Worf noted the surge of energy as the phasers found their mark.

  Rosado nodded with satisfaction. “Their primary propulsion system is off-line, sir. Life support is holding steady.”

  “Excellent,” Worf said, his eyes focused on the main viewer as the image shifted back to that of the other freighter. “Where is the other ship?”

  Balidemaj replied, “They’re trying to sneak in behind us, sir.”

  “Evasive,” Worf ordered. “Target its propulsion systems and fire when ready.” Seconds passed until the phasers fired again, and this time Balidemaj’s aim was true on the first attempt.

  “Nice shooting,” Rosado said.

  Balidemaj looked to Worf. “They’re not going anywhere, sir, but their life-support systems are operational.” She looked down at her console in response to a new alert tone. “The lead ship is hailing us again.”

  Rising from his chair, the Klingon moved between the ops and conn stations until he stood mere meters in front of the main viewer. He folded his arms across his chest and regarded the image of the now-wounded freighter.

  “Very well. Let’s see what they might wish to discuss now. Open the channel, Ensign.”

  When the image of the freighter’s now harried-looking captain appeared on the screen, Worf forced himself not to sneer in triumph.

  40

  The fist drove at his face, and Austin Braddock jerked his head
to his left and dropped his shoulder, avoiding most of the strike. He still felt a graze as the Andorian’s hand whipped past his right ear, and he lunged to his left, trying to get around his opponent to gain some maneuvering room.

  Damn, this guy’s fast.

  Releasing an angry grunt, the Andorian shifted his feet and turned to face Braddock, who now was dancing on the balls of his feet and watching his attacker for any opening he might exploit. The lieutenant held his arms loose and low in front of him, flexing his fingers and leaving his face exposed, essentially daring the Andorian to take another swing at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ensign Theresa Dean struggling with her own opponent, lashing out at him to keep him at bay. Somewhere behind him, Braddock knew Ensign Nordon lay unconscious, a victim of the tranquilizer gun carried by his own assailant.

  That weapon was not part of the current equation, at least not after Braddock had managed to wrest it from the Andorian. He had tried to use it himself, but the Andorian was just too quick, lunging at him and forcing Braddock to go on the defensive in order to avoid being tackled and dropped to the ground. Likewise, the Andorian, who obviously had some form of unarmed combat training, had managed to separate Braddock from the police-issue stun baton he had taken from the protester near the gate checkpoint. It bothered Braddock that the Andorian had tossed away the weapon rather than trying to use it. So far as Braddock could tell, his opponent was actually enjoying their little impromptu melee.

  Just my luck.

  The Andorian was grinning at him now, his stark-white teeth looking as though they might be more at home on some predatory animal. Was he cocky, or just that confident in his own abilities? Braddock was in no real mood to find out, one way or another.

  “Okay, sport,” he said, gesturing to the Andorian to come forward, if he so chose. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “All security teams, this is Lieutenant Regnis.”

  The voice exploded from his combadge, startling Braddock. He could not help looking down at the communicator affixed to his uniform, knowing the Andorian would take advantage of that error even before he sensed his attacker springing forward.