CHAPTER 25

Radcliffe arrived at the office even earlier than usual on Monday morning. He knew Captain Janeway would be eager to catch up on everything that had gone on while she was on her honeymoon and he wanted to have the COMM logs and fresh coffee organized before her arrival.

She strode into the office suite promptly at 0730 hours sporting a nice tan, a wry grin and ready for whatever Starfleet and the fates had in store for her. As she sat down at her desk Radcliffe entered with a mug of fresh coffee and her filled office thermos. He took a moment to explain priorities of the stacks of PADDs on her desk and left her to work. At the door he turned as she called out to him.

“Ethan, I want to see Lieutenant Torres when she gets into the office.”

“I’m sorry, Captain. Lieutenant Torres is at Starfleet Academy today consulting with Professor O’Brien on the interfaces Seven needs for her new processor. She’s not expected in the office again until tomorrow morning. Shall I hail her?”

“No, that’s okay. Tomorrow is soon enough.” Nodding, he returned to his desk and the incoming logs.

Janeway soon caught up on the Voyager refit project, construction of the Boudicca and current communications from Picard, Riker et al. Once she felt comfortable with the status of immediate projects under her command she signed off on the logs and withdrew a PADD from the inner pocket of her uniform tunic. She’d carried it for the entire time she had been off and on her honeymoon, reading it over frequently. Now she settled comfortably in her desk chair, sipped her coffee and began to study it one final time. The encryption coding on the PADD had been enhanced by Seven of Nine at her request and it took her a moment to access and shut down the Borg coding her wife had used.

Entering her authorization code, the PADD came to life and displayed the information she had read so often during the past two weeks. It’s amazing how an entire career can be summed up on three pages, she thought. Scanning the information, she read and re-read the third and final page of the service record. The one that said so much and so little at the same time. But taken as a whole Janeway thought she had a handle on what had happened and why Admiral Pulaski had insisted she consider the officer for duty on her new command. She just needed a few more pieces of information. Some she would get momentarily when she hailed Pulaski and questioned her involvement. And some she would get later this afternoon when she stopped by unannounced to chat with the officer in question.

Keying in the commands again, she began reading from the top of the file:

JORDAN McDEERE

(3625497)

SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET (Addenda xref EDISON/Chin’toka2)

NAME	JORDAN ANNE McDEERE
AGE	36
RANK	Lieutenant, Senior Grade
CURRENT POSTING	STARFLEET QUARTERMASTER CORPS, Logistics and Supply Utopia Planetia, MARS
ACADEMY RECORDS	AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION: Tactical Operations/Intelligence CLASS RANK (final): 03 of 1200 Phi Beta Kappa 3,4 Varsity Hoverball team, 3 years
POST GRADUATE EDUCATION/TRAINING	MIT/Daystrom Institute – PhD, Plasma Dynamics Vulcan Security Forces Training Academy – Advanced Tactical Training Vulcan Institute of Defensive Arts – Class 5 rating in six forms of hand-to-hand combat                                    Klingon War College – Advanced Heavy Weapons Training Starfleet Command School – Advanced Command Training
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION   HEIGHT WEIGHT EYE COLOR HAIR COLOR SOMATOTYPE SPECIES	178 cm / 5’10” 72.5 kg / 160 lbs Blue eyes Chestnut Mesomorph; well-developed musculature Human, Caucasian
IDENTIFYING MARKS	Faint ‘C’-shaped scar around left eye – more visible when officer smiles Heavy scarring on/around left knee (see MEDICAL subsection)
MEDICAL NOTES	2374     Plasma burns, L arm and hand Laceration, L ribcage Severe laceration, L eye socket Shrapnel injuries, Lower L lumbar area, L leg, L calf   2375     Functional amputation, L knee: Severe crush injuries to  L femur (epicondyles and articulating surface) L tibia (med and lat condyles and tuberosity), Patella, Ant. and Post. Cruciate ligaments severed, Med/Lat Collateral Ligaments severed, Patellar Ligament severed Fractured Pelvis Comminuted and Compound fractures, L Femur   Fractures of 3rd, 4th and 5th ribs (left side) Perforated diaphragm, Hemopheumothorax (L lung) Lacerated hepatic vein, splenic vein   Severe plasma burns, R thigh, leg, and abdomen
MEDICAL ADDENDUM (forwarded under seal to Starfleet JAG, Eyes Only)   SIGNED:  Kate Pulaski             Director, Starfleet              Medical Services	Cmdr McDeere has been diagnosed with several stress-related conditions in the aftermath of her line service. Being charged with cowardice and mutiny for this service has exacerbated what would normally be minor health problems into serious ones. Cmdr McDeere will require hospitalization for several weeks as a result of her court martial to repair ulcerative conditions and chronic internal bleeding in her stomach and small intestine.   It is the opinion of Starfleet Medical that a non-frontline posting and continued counseling will return this officer to full active duty status commensurate with her distinguished service record.

CAREER POSTINGS

USS Monarch - Tactical Section Analyst; served with distinction Promoted to Lieutenant, JG USS Selvana – Tactical Officer; served with distinction Promoted to Lieutenant USS Sentinel – Tactical Officer; served with distinction 1st Battle of Chin’toka: Awarded Starfleet Cross of Valor Citation: For outstanding heroism in the face of overwhelming enemy fire disregarding personal injuries USS Sitak – Chief Tactical Officer; served with distinction Promoted to Lieutenant Commander Operation Return: Awarded Pike Medal of Valor Citation: Under heavy fire and at great personal risk moved thirty-one injured crew into escape pods before SITAK destroyed. USS Grissom – Chief Tactical Officer/First Officer; served with distinction Battle of Ricktor Prime: Awarded Medal of Honor Citation: Ignoring life-threatening injuries when Grissom was disabled, officer set ship’s self destruct and beamed all six survivors to USS Monehga before Grissom exploded. Severely injured; transported to Starfleet Medical, SF for treatment and rehab.   *Raid on San Francisco – Awarded Pike Medal of Valor Citation: While under medical care, Officer left BOQ at Starfleet Medical Complex SF and organized Academy Cadets into a defense perimeter around Medical facility and took tactical command of squad of Hawk-class fighters in defense of city. Promoted to Commander   USS Repulse – First Officer 2nd Battle of Chin’toka: Ordered abandon ship, set self-destruct and evacuated crew when ship completely disabled. After Action: Charges of Cowardice Under Fire, Dereliction of Duty and Mutiny brought by Capt. Joshua Edison, CO; USS Repulse. Convicted by Court Martial. (see addenda xref EDISON)

FINDINGS: On stardate 52693.15 at the 2^nd Battle of Chin’toka, the battleship USS Repulse under the command of Captain Joshua Edison, and the rest of the Federation and Allied Forces fleet came under fire from a previously unknown energy weapon of Breen origin. Of the 312 ships in the fleet, 311 were destroyed by these weapons. When Repulse was hit by this energy weapons fire it lost all internal power, shields, propulsion and weapons capability. They were left adrift with only emergency power as were all other ships in the fleet.

As the ships around them came under conventional Cardassian and Breen fire and were destroyed, Captain Edison ordered the crew of Repulse to continue fighting using emergency power. Cmdr McDeere cautioned against this repeatedly, stating that to do so would destroy the emergency power conduits and would result in the loss of the ship. Capt. Edison again ordered the crew to fight on. Under the command of Cmdr McDeere, the crew attempted to reroute emergency power from damaged areas of the ship to weapons systems and managed to fire two photon torpedoes into the Cardassian/Breen fleet. However this collapsed the emergency power relay systems and Repulse lost all life support and power as a result.

Capt. Edison again ordered the crew to continue fighting by any means possible and Repulse came under phaser fire from a Cardassian dreadnaught. Without shields or weapons, Repulse took staggering damage. Capt. Edison again demanded that the crew fight on and had announced his intention to fight to the death when Cmdr McDeere relieved him of command, placed him under guard and ordered all hands to abandon ship. Setting the self-destruct, Cmdr McDeere oversaw the evacuation of all hands before entering the last escape pod with Capt Edison. When Repulse self-destructed, it took three Cardassian warships with it.

Upon recovery of the escape pods by Federation forces, Capt Edison swore out a charge sheet against Cmdr McDeere. When this investigator questioned Cmdr McDeere about events she stated that Capt Edison’s statements were fundamentally correct and refused to offer any defense or mitigation of her actions.

RECOMMENDATION: In the absence of explanatory or evidence in mitigation it is recommended that a general court martial be convened on the charges and specifications listed above.

FINDINGS OF GENERAL COURT MARTIAL: Stardate 52747.94

In the face of Commander McDeere’s refusal to dispute the charges and specifications or offer a substantive defense, in the matter of Starfleet v Commander Jordan McDeere the summary findings of the court are as follows:

On the charge of DERELICTION OF DUTY the court finds the defendant NOT GUILTY

On the charge of COWARDICE UNDER FIRE the court finds the defendant NOT GUILTY

On the charge of MUTINY the court finds the defendant NOT GUILTY

On the charge of REFUSAL TO FOLLOW LEGAL ORDERS the court finds the defendant GUILTY

SENTENCE:             It is the recommendation of this court that Commander McDeere be reduced in rank to Lieutenant, be removed from service as a line officer and assigned to a rear echelon staff posting. No additional punitive action is deemed necessary.

IN CONCURRANCE:               Timothy Paulson

Starfleet Judge Advocate General

Alynna Nechayev

Chief of Operations, Terran Sector

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Janeway had committed the details of the record to memory when she brought her workstation online and did some back channel research on Captain Joshua Edison. He had been two years ahead of her at the Academy and she vaguely remembered a tall, thin cadet who seemed ill at ease in his gray uniform. She couldn’t remember if he was assigned to Command Track or a different specialty at the Academy but for some reason she couldn’t remember him in any command classes. Figuring it was better to question someone who might remember him better, she hailed Will Riker on the USS Titan. As the screen came online Riker grinned at her.

“Good morning, Kathryn! Is this another dinner invitation? Deanna wants to pump Seven for details about your honeymoon.”

“Why? Didn’t her parents explain those things to her?” replied Janeway with a laugh. “And are you on your way back toward us so soon?”

“No, unfortunately, we’re still on patrol near DS7. We’ve been tasked with research on the characteristics of Borg transwarp corridors. But I promise to let you know if we head back to Earth. The wedding was fantastic, by the way. We had a great time.”

“I’m glad, Will. And make sure you do let me know when you come back this way. Seven and I would love to have you and Deanna for dinner again, honeymoon details notwithstanding. But right now I need to pick your brain a little.”

“Fire away.”

“Do you remember a cadet named Joshua Edison at the Academy? I think he was a couple of years ahead of us.”

Riker’s genial face clouded. “Yeah, I remember him. And not just from the Academy. Why are you asking about him?”

“I’m trying to find out what kind of commanding officer he was. I’ve been reading about him in a service record and I wanted to talk to someone who…”

“McDeere? Are you talking about McDeere?” His voice mirrored the eagerness she saw on his face at that information.

Cautiously she replied. “Yes, I’m considering her for a…posting…on Boudicca. And how would you know about her? Maybe you’d better tell me everything I apparently missed about this while we were out in the Delta quadrant.”

Riker leaned back in his seat. “It’s an ugly story, Kathryn. And it’s going to take a little while. You okay for coffee?”

Laughing, she held up her mug. “Freshly poured, Will. Start talking, my friend.”

“Jordan McDeere was…well, her case caused a lot of controversy within Starfleet. You have to remember that when the Dominion War broke out we were woefully unprepared. Most of our captains were used to commanding research and exploration ships. They didn’t think like a warship captain needed to. So what we got was a lot of captains who commanded by the book, were inflexible and made terrible decisions when they got into a firefight. Those captains cost us a lot of good crewmen and ships.  Edison was one of them. But he had been lucky enough to be posted out on the fringes of the War and always had a good First Officer to keep him out of too much trouble.” Riker paused and took a drink from the mug on his ready room desk.

“McDeere was a gifted officer. I assume you’ve got her full jacket. Have you read the fitness reports? Tenacious, intuitive, gutsy beyond belief, creative in her tactical thinking. She had been promoted ahead of schedule until the War broke out and then they moved her up fast. She never once let her CO down, not until she got sent to the Repulse and Edison. Look at her records; she was awarded the Medal of Honor and won the Pike Medal of Valor twice I think. Hell, she won the second one for getting out of her hospital bed when Headquarters was attacked. She was on crutches still trying to get her leg to work and she took command of a company of cadets and organized a defense perimeter around Starfleet Medical. Once she’d secured the Medical facility she hitched a lift to the EOC bunker at the Presidio and took command of a squadron of Hawk fighters in defense of the city.”

“That much I can read in her service jacket. What happened on the Repulse, Will?” she asked quietly.

“Nobody’s really sure. But what we do know is that Edison and Repulse got assigned to the assault fleet at Chin’toka – the second battle there – and the entire fleet got caught in that Breen energy wave. Our ships were dead in the water. Emergency power only. And only enough of that to launch escape pods.” Riker took another drink and looked at Janeway gravely. “From here the story gets confused. A lot of this is rumor and the Court Martial documents were sealed. But crewmen from Repulse generally told the same story.”

“When the ship was hit with the energy wave Edison kept demanding that they fire on the Cardassian/Breen fleet. McDeere was glued to a Tactical console and was watching what was going on in the battle. She could see that the situation was hopeless and that the Cardassians and Breen were going after the warships and leaving the escape pods alone for the most part. McDeere kept telling him that they needed to abandon ship and that to utilize the emergency power for weapons would cost them life support. But Edison was crazy or stupid or some combination of both. He kept demanding that the crew fight to the death. So McDeere organized a couple of surviving engineers and they managed to reroute the emergency power to the torpedo launchers. They fired two torpedoes before the relays collapsed and they lost even the emergency power. But McDeere had been smart; before they rerouted power, she’d isolated the escape pod launch relays so they wouldn’t collapse.”

“Meanwhile, Edison was storming around what was left of the bridge and screaming at everyone to arm themselves with phasers and prepare to repel boarders. By this time, everybody on the bridge could see that the Cardassians weren’t boarding any ships; they were just blowing them out of space using torpedoes and phaser arrays. They didn’t need to board any of our ships. We didn’t have any shields; they just blasted us to atoms while we floated there, helpless. Anyway, when McDeere got back to the bridge Edison blamed her for the loss of power and ordered her to organize the crew into fighting groups for the escape pods. He had some crazy idea of attacking the Cardassian fleet using the pods. Apparently that was one crazy order too many for McDeere. She relieved him of command and put guards on him. Then she ordered the crew to abandon ship. She set the self-destruct routines and got everyone into the escape pods. She and the guards manually launched all of them and then hooked a power cell to the relay for the last one. They boarded, along with Edison, and launched the pod with barely enough time to get to a safe distance from the ship.”

“When the self-destruct kicked in it took three Cardassian battleships with it. The pods were recovered at the edge of Cardassian space. As soon as Edison’s feet touched a starship deck he began accusing McDeere of mutiny. I don’t even think he stopped to take a shower before he swore out the charge sheet against her. Once they got back to one of our bases he demanded an investigation. There was nothing Starfleet could do. The news media was going crazy for details of the battle and Edison got his side of the story out to the entire quadrant. They had to follow up on his charges.”

“Why didn’t she offer a defense, Will?”

“Nobody knows, Kathryn. The only thing the investigator got out of her was that Edison’s statements were essentially correct. She never offered any corroboration that he was behaving erratically when anyone on the bridge would have backed her up on it. It was the crew who testified that she was the one telling him that to utilize the emergency power for weapons would take out their life support. She never said one word in her own defense. The investigator had no choice. He had to recommend a general court martial.”

“I don’t understand, Will. How could Starfleet allow that to happen? It’s obvious that once they were hit Edison lost it and was unfit for command. How could they allow her to be brought up on charges like that?”

“Kathryn, you have to remember that we’d just had an entire fleet destroyed in one battle. Three hundred twelve ships were in the assault force: three hundred eleven were destroyed. Only one ship survived that battle. The citizens of the Federation and their Allies were terrified. The Federation Council was furious. Starfleet couldn’t leave itself open to accusations that its commanders were unfit. They needed the support of the Council to rebuild the fleet. So, they convened a court and tried her. Jean-Luc once told me he’d never seen Admiral Nechayev angrier than the day she had to authorize that trial. She did what was politically necessary, but she also worked behind the scenes as much as she could. McDeere was acquitted on all the serious charges. The only thing they convicted her of was refusal of an order. She got dropped two grades in rank and assigned to a staff position. Nechayev was hoping that everyone would forget quickly and in a couple of months she’d be able to reinstate McDeere. Edison went back into the Fleet with a political hack as his First Officer and got himself killed in his first skirmish. The only bad thing about that was he took a lot of decent crewmen along with him. But I think the trial broke McDeere’s nerve because when Nechayev approached her about going back into a ship of the line she declined.”

“Any ideas why?”

“You’ll have to ask her. Maybe ask Admiral Pulaski too. I seem to remember that she was a staunch supporter of McDeere. Threatened to resign and raised three kinds of hell at Headquarters over the trial.”

“It was Pulaski who insisted I consider her, Will. She told me that once I’d read her records I wouldn’t have to go any farther to find my First Officer.”

Riker nodded sagely. “Pulaski’s right. From what I know McDeere would be a great fit at First Officer for you, Kathryn.”

“Well, I’m going to surprise her this afternoon to interview her. We’ll see how she handles it. But I think I’ll take your advice and get more information out of Pulaski before I go. Thanks, Will. I appreciate your candor.”

“My pleasure, Kathryn. We’ll need all the good officers we can lay our hands on out in the Delta quadrant. I hope she works out for you. I’ll pass your query along to Jean-Luc too. He may have some additional information that will help you. Any problems with that?”

“None at all. I’d appreciate any light he can shed. Give my best to Deanna. Janeway, out.”

“And you give mine to Seven. Riker, out.”

Janeway refilled her coffee mug, leaned back in her chair and contemplated her next move.

* * * * *

B’Elanna stood in front of the office door and took a deep breath before knocking. At the barked permission to enter, she opened the door and strode to the desk. Master Chief Miles O’Brien – now Professor O’Brien – regarded her easily.

“And you’d be Lieutenant Torres from Voyager. Glad to see you folks finally made it home. Have a seat.”

B’Elanna didn’t sit so much as collapse into the chair in front of the desk. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Master Chief. I need your feedback on something I’ve been working on.”

“You told me you’re assigned to Utopia Planetia, right? The Voyager refit? What new designs are you working on for that? I thought I’d heard you were the resident expert on the Borg technology on Voyager and were overseeing its removal.”

“That’s right. But I also worked closely with Seven of Nine on Voyager and she’s at MIT-Daystrom now. She presented me with a problem and asked if I wouldn’t mind trying to come up with some solutions for her to try. And I wanted to run a couple of them past you before I forward them to her.”

“What kind of problem?”

“CPU/processor interfaces with deflector arrays.”

O’Brien considered her for a moment before he answered. Then folding his hands and leaning forward toward B’Elanna he said very quietly, “Are you trying to tell me that Seven of Nine has made a breakthrough in slipstream drive technology?”

Torres fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat. “Master Chief, I can’t comment on that. I haven’t been given permission to do so. I can tell you that she requested that I come up with a means to increase and strengthen the interface between the processor and the deflector array and that she needed it as quickly as possible.”

O’Brien’s eyes widened. “’As quickly as possible’? My God, are you telling me that she’s nearly ready to start on a prototype? We can’t ignore this. If she’s ready to build a prototype we’ve got to alert Starfleet Command and TPG.”

Now it was B’Elanna who leaned forward in her seat. “Master Chief, all I know is that she’s made a significant breakthrough and needs this interface designed before she can present anything to Starfleet. She’s married to Captain Janeway; do you honestly think that she’d try to build a slipstream drive and not bring Starfleet into her project? Believe me when I tell you that is not how Seven works. But I do know that she wants to present Starfleet with a complete package: new processor, enhanced interface and improved deflector array technology all aligned to support a slipstream drive. I need your help with the interface; she’s got the rest already.”

O’Brien stood and indicated a large worktable at one side of his office. “Well, let’s have a look at what you’ve got.” At the table he linked her PADD and her calculations and schematics were suddenly blown up to blueprint size. The two heads bent together over the large display.

“See, what I was thinking was that if we increase the number of capacitors in this area, we could buffer the resistance here and utilize a higher frequency bio-neural relay. But I’m afraid that if we don’t provide a buffer on the resistance it won’t work. And none of the conventional buffering media would work against that kind of energy flow. Its resistance would compromise the data stream and degrade the processing speed. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”

O’Brien considered the schematic carefully. “You’re right. We don’t have a buffer strong enough to withstand the energy flux. But maybe we don’t need one. I think I’ve got something here that might…give me a second to find…” He strode to the workstation on his desk and began to scan his archived files.

“Once on DS9 we had to utilize our deflector array and shield generators to boost a subspace energy burst fired into the Bajor wormhole. We had to beef up the interfaces on the station’s systems and we used interlink buffers to spread the load evenly across the interface. By eliminating the variances in energy phase the interfaces were much more stable and we didn’t have to deal with any buffering medium along the linkage. If I can just find the schematics…here we go. Take a look at this.” O’Brien sent the file in question to the worktable and opened it to display the schematics and calculations of the array enhancements.

B’Elanna immediately recognized the efficiency of spreading the energy streams evenly across the interface and was amazed at how well the interlink buffers performed the task. Moving to her original PADD she began to feed in the parameters of Seven’s new processor and adjusted O’Brien’s calculations accordingly. As both of them watched the worktable displayed a simulation run.  B’Elanna’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.

“That’s amazing! How is it the interlinks aren’t overheating at these transmission levels?”

“We buttressed them by utilizing a honeycomb alignment. That way the excess heat is dissipated along the exterior of the interface where the heat exchangers can deal with it. As you can see, even at the increased transmission stream levels neither the interlink buffers or the heat exchangers come near to being over-extended. Add standard cooling protocols to the interface and you’ve got a link that’s even more stable. I think an arrangement like that will work quite well for your interface.”

The two engineers continued to discuss the interface for another two hours but all they accomplished was to more firmly convince each other that the buffer alignment was precisely what was required. B’Elanna headed for the Transport Center shortly before noon after hailing Seven. With any luck they’d get the interface designed after lunch.

Stepping onto the transporter pad in the Starfleet section of the center, she commanded “Cambridge, Massachusetts. Energize!”

* * * * *

The morning had gone well in Seven’s lab. She and her lab team had met with the beta-testers and the two groups spent the morning discussing the test protocols that had been conducted so far. As of that morning the new processor was performing precisely to specs and had not even wavered once despite the best efforts of the beta testers to crash it. Seven’s team was quietly ecstatic; there was no question that being part of the first team to build a working slipstream would guarantee career advancement and success. While Seven wasn’t concerned about those things for herself, she realized that their enthusiasm could hasten construction of a working prototype, and she was concerned about that.

She set both the development and test teams to work and walked to the administration area to brief Dr. Pedersen on the status of her project. The director waved her into the office and Seven took a seat across the desk from the older woman.

“Welcome back, Dr. Hansen. You look like you got some sun.”

“We stayed in a plantation house on a tropical island. It would be unusual if I did not have a tan after a week in those latitudes.”

The director chuckled. “Very true. Well, the wedding was lovely. Are you and Captain Janeway settling in to married life smoothly?”

“We are. It is strange; we had been living together before the wedding. I did not think that a ceremony would make any difference in our attitudes toward each other, but it did. Kathryn and I are closer than we have ever been.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be, I believe. But I’m delighted you’re back. How are things in your lab?”

“The testers have been very busy. We had a briefing from them this morning and so far none of their test protocols have caused the processor to in any way fail. My team has been working with them to create more stringent tests and we will continue to push the limits of the processor to simulate what might happen in space. A quantum slipstream drive could power a starship across an entire quadrant in four to five hours. We plan on testing the processor continuously for twenty-five hours to insure it is capable of safely propelling a ship to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and back. That test will happen mid-week.”

“And where do you stand on your interface enhancements for the deflector array?”

“Lieutenant B’Elanna Torres will be here this afternoon with some ideas on interface enhancements. She was Chief Engineer on Voyager and a most capable engineer. She and I work efficiently together and should have schematics and preliminary calculations by the end of the week.”

“So I’ll need to contact Starfleet at the beginning of next week to notify them that we’ve got the makings of the slipstream drive they’ve been waiting for all these years. Dr. Hansen, I cannot tell you how delighted the Board of Governors is right now. Not that we deliberately place ourselves in competition with Starfleet and TPG on a regular basis, but when it happens it’s always good for us when we come out on top. That’s not to take anything away from Dr. Brahms and her group, but she and her team do seem to garner a great deal of notoriety.”

“I do not claim to understand the political ramifications of research. I will be happy just to move into construction of a prototype drive for testing.”

“I would hope that a research scientist wouldn’t need to understand the political wrangling that goes on. That’s the administration’s job. Just do your research and leave the politics to us.”

“There is one other thing; I’ve been requested to help oversee removal of the Borg alcoves from Voyager tomorrow afternoon. Will that be a problem?”

“I don’t see why. If you’ve established the testing protocols and have your team working on the interface enhancements then there’s no reason you can’t be at Utopia Planetia tomorrow. Will one day suffice or do you need longer?”

“I believe that most of the work has already begun; I’ll be overseeing the final disconnects and storage of the alcoves. I’m afraid that Kathryn is too demanding regarding them; she is determined to have them available if ever I need another.”

“Perfectly understandable. If I were in her shoes I’d feel the same way. We’ll see you when you get back. And Dr. Hansen?” Both women rose and Pedersen reached out to shake Seven’s hand, “Congratulations. On both your marriage and your research.”

“Thank you, Director.”

B’Elanna’s arrival at the main desk of Seven’s building was heralded with little fanfare. Starfleet engineers were a common sight at MIT-Daystrom; Dr. Pedersen saw to it that a good working relationship existed between the two organizations. B’Elanna was escorted to Seven’s lab suite by a security officer and then Seven introduced her to the lab team. Torres and Seven set up at Seven’s workstation as Seven’s lab team tried to watch them without appearing to do so.

“I think you’re going to be pleased, Seven. I consulted with Miles O’Brien this morning and we came up with an unbelievable interface. Look at this.” Torres linked the PADD she carried to Seven’s workstation and the schematics appeared on the screen. As she examined them, even the unflappable Seven raised an eyebrow in appreciation.

“This is a very efficient design, B’Elanna. Have you tested it in any way?”

“Only twice with this particular configuration, but I’ve got results of both simulations and real-world performance specs from a similar interface that O’Brien used on DS9. They used it to bolster the interface to the deflector array to fire a high-energy beam.”

“And it worked for them?”

“Got the performance specs right here. Check them out for yourself.”

Blonde and brunette heads leaned close to the screen together as they studied the calculations and results displayed. After several minutes of murmured conversation Seven leaned back.

“Chief O’Brien and I believe this honeycomb configuration will allow the heat dissipation necessary for the interface. And look what happens to the heat coefficients when you add standard cooling protocols at critical junctions along the interface.”

Seven looked at the calculations and nodded her approval. “That increases the cooling coefficient even more. B’Elanna, this is far better than I had hoped. With this enhanced interface the data stream speeds will be far more than adequate. Thank you. You have made a slipstream drive possible.” The women looked at each other both knowing that not only their lives, but also the lives of those they loved would depend on that drive.

“Well, lets get your lab team busy testing it. If they can’t blow a hole it in then we’ll know we’re on to something. Once we get them started can we grab a bite to eat? Breakfast was a long time ago for me.”

“Of course, B’Elanna. It shouldn’t take long to show them the schematics and get the simulations started. Come with me.”

The lab team’s eyes bugged out as they saw the design and performance specs. It didn’t take long for them to put together a test protocol and set up a testing simulation. Seven and B’Elanna supervised the beginning of the tests and once the simulations were running smoothly left for the dining room. Seven’s lab team was so efficient B’Elanna’s stomach didn’t even have time to growl.

Meanwhile on Mars, Janeway picked up the PADD she’d been studying for the past two weeks and headed for the Logistics and Supply Department wondering what kind of officer she’d find there. Would it be the kind she needed as her new first officer or more of the broken wreckage of the Dominion War? Whichever McDeere turned out to be, Janeway was looking forward to the interview. Unconsciously, she quickened her pace.

* * * * *