Ezri felt her heart pounding in her temples, louder in her head than the throbbing of the warp core behind her. After experiencing the effects of the pulse firsthand, she found it difficult to view the simulation and not revisit all that had happened—both on the Vahni world and on the shuttle. But I have to push those thoughts away,she told herself. It was one thing to indulge her feelings offduty, but right now she had work to do.
“So here’s what we’ve come up with,” Nog said. He stood next to Ezri at the primary console. His demeanor, typically rushed and animated when he discussed a potential solution for a problem, now seemed flat. Ezri had come down to engineering after Nog had informed her that he and his staff might have developed a defense against the pulse, but now she understood that, whatever they had developed, it did not satisfy the chief engineer. She reached up and rubbed the side of her forehead, tired after a long day; she had not been sleeping all that well recently.
Nog tapped at the controls on the console, and the display above it reset. At the center of the screen, near the blue circle that represented the planet below—and which should have been gray, Ezri thought—two green segments appeared, wedged together in a shallow Vpointing toward the planet. Nog pressed another touchpad, and the simulation reran. Again, the energy wave spread from a point on the surface of the planet, but this time the segments deflected a portion of it in other directions. Beyond the segments, a region devoid of the destructive energy extended all the way to the other blue circle, the one representing the world of the Vahni.
Ezri took her hand from the side of her head and pointed to the segments. “All right,” she said. “What is that?”
“It’s a pair of amplified, finely focused deflector fields,” Nog said. The concept did not seem to excite him.
“Amplified by what?” Ezri asked. “And focused by what?”
Nog worked the console again, and two schematics of Defiant,one lateral and one overhead, replaced the simulation on the screen. “We think we can tie warp power into the deflector grid,” Nog explained, still lacking the enthusiasm he usually demonstrated when discussing engineering matters. He indicated several points along what Ezri recognized as the warp-power backbone, presumably at points of intersection with the deflector grid, although her knowledge of the ship’s systems did not extend that far. “Then, if we defeat the surge protection, we can use the navigational deflector to project the strengthened fields.”
“Nog,” Ezri said, looking away from the display and over at the engineer, “you don’t sound particularly happy about this plan.”
“I’m not,” he admitted. The light from the display shined on his face, lending it a pale tint. “If we can even make these modifications work, then in the best case, the navigational deflector will be completely destroyed, and the warp drive might overload.”
“And if the warp drive overloads…” Ezri said, leaving the sentence dangling for Nog to finish.
“Then we’ll either be adrift,” he said, “or a fireball.”
Ezri looked again at the skeletal cutaways of the ship, trying to put Nog’s words into perspective. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “What you just told me is the best-case scenario?”
“Yes,” Nog said. He operated the controls once more, bringing the simulation back up on the display. “The modified deflector fields,” he said, resting the tip of his index finger on the green segments, “have to be generated from somewhere. Obviously, the safest place for Defiantto do that would be behind the fields.” He slid his finger off the segments, over to the area the pulse failed to penetrate.
“And if the fields don’t work, if they don’t redirect that portion of the pulse, then the pulse will strike Defiant,”she said, not needing to add that the ship could not survive such an event.
“Right,” Nog said.
“So what are the chances of this working?” she wanted to know.
He shrugged. “Three percent,” he said. “Maybe five. The problem is the enormous amount of energy in the pulse. And the fact that we don’t understand how it’s being generated.”
Ezri bit anxiously at her lower lip. Movement caught her attention, and she peered to her right to see another engineer, Tariq Rahim, working at a console. Looking back at Nog, she asked, “How long would you need to set this up?”
“Ten hours,” he said.
“So if we decided to try this,” Ezri said, thinking aloud, “you’d have to begin the modifications about two days from now.” And if Commander Vaughn had not returned to the ship by that time, then Ezri would have to measure a three-percent chance of saving four billion Vahni against a ninety-seven-percent chance of losing the Defiantcrew. “All right,” she said. “See if you can get us something with better odds.”
“Aye, sir,” Nog said, and she could hear weariness in his voice. He had been working to find a means of stopping the pulse almost since the moment it had destroyed the Vahni moon.
“And make sure you get to bed before too long,” Ezri told him. “You’re not going to solve anything if you’re falling asleep on the job.”
“Aye, sir,” Nog said again, offering her a weak, but seemingly genuine, smile. “I just want to try one more thing with this simulation,” he said, pointing to the display. Ezri looked in that direction just in time to see the entire console go dark.
“What—” she started, looking back up, but she stopped when she saw two other stations wink out across the room. Nog stabbed at the controls, but nothing happened. Ezri saw Rahim making the same attempts at the other dead consoles.
Nog dropped to his knees and pulled an access panel free. Ezri squatted down beside him. Nog set the panel aside, leaning it against the bulkhead, then peered in and examined a complex clutch of optic fibers, isolinear chips, and other equipment. Ezri wanted to ask questions, but she knew that Nog would tell her what had happened once he had figured it out himself. He reached inside and checked several connections. When he withdrew his hand, he said, “We’ve lost an engineering circuit.”
“Shouldn’t the backup take over?” Ezri asked.
“It should,” Nog said. He looked over at Rahim, who was still trying the controls on one of the other dead consoles. “Tariq,” Nog said, “I need a spanner.”
“Yes, sir,” Rahim said. The crewman reached over to an open case on an adjoining console, pulled out a tool, then brought it over to Nog. “Here you go,” he said, handing the spanner to Nog.
“Thanks,” Nog said. He switched the tool on, then inserted it carefully into the access port. In almost no time at all, the console sparked back to life. Ezri peered across the room and saw the other consoles still dark. “The main circuit shut down,” Nog said, “but for some reason, the power didn’t shunt to the secondary.”
“Why not?” Ezri asked. “And why did the main circuit shut down?”
“I don’t know,” Nog said. He grabbed the access plate and set it back in place, the magnetic locks sealing with a clank. “All I did,” he said as he stood up, “was to manually switch over to the backup circuit.” He handed the spanner back to Rahim, and said, “See if you can do the same for the other consoles.”
“Yes, sir,” Rahim said. He took the tool and started back across the room.
“It’s probably just a bad monitor or a bad switch,” Nog said. “I’ll get somebody to track the main circuit and see what happened.”
“All right. Let me know what they find,” Ezri said. She headed for the door, which slid open before her. Before she left engineering, though, she turned back toward Nog. “Just make sure it’s not you crawling around the Jefferies tubes all night,” she said. “Get some sleep.”
“I will,” Nog said, and this time his smile was wider.
Ezri stepped out into the corridor and made her way to the nearest turbolift. As the car rose on its short journey from deck two to deck one, she rubbed at her eyes, exhaustion setting in. Still, tired as she felt, she hoped to find Julian awake. She needed to sleep, but she needed—and wanted—his company first.