Star Trek: Corps of Engineers: Identity Crisis by John J. Ordover

Author:John J. Ordover
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Star Trek, Fiction
ISBN: 9780743496841
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2005-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Commander Gomez was busy fighting with the life-support controls. The computer was still ignoring her inputs, and the brilliant idea she had come up with to bypass the blocks was taking a lot more effort than she had thought it would going in. Gomez had noted that the readout lights were still providing accurate information, and had to be maintaining a connection to the life-support and communications nodes, so she might be able to piggyback on the connection and send control signals down the same line.

It was cold enough that her hands were getting a bit numb, she was panting in the thin air, and it wasn’t helping her concentration to have to listen to Domenica Corsi using what were colloquially called “nutball” negotiating strategies to try to convince the fake Gomez on the screen to give up her insane plan. That sharp-as-a-tack “Core-Breach” Corsi couldn’t tell that the Gomez on the screen wasn’t her hadn’t made sense until the security chief had begun reading passages from what she claimed was Gomez’s personal log—things she’d never written.

Whoever did this to me, Gomez thought as she worked one end of the console board out of its slot to get access to the circuit connections underneath, put a ton of effort into it and is no slouch technically—they’ve had had to bypass not only Starfleet security protocols, but the extra ones I put on my personal logs. It wasn’t impossible, obviously, since Corsi was able to read out parts from her logs—even if it was nasty things about the Federation that she’d never even thought of writing. But it would take someone with expertise at least as great as Soloman’s—and the Bynar knew the Starfleet security protocols going in. Gomez decided she wanted to meet whomever set this thing up, first to congratulate them, then to punch them in the eye.

Who has it in for me that bad? Gomez thought, blinking her eyes against an arc of electricity that burned out what she had hoped would be the last circuit of her brilliant improvisation. The Androssi? This isn’t their style. Those Ferengi we met a while back? No, we helped them. Luaran? She’s still in custody, and besides, it’d be Corsi she’d be peeved at. Gomez sighed. The S.C.E. so rarely dealt with anyone on a personal level that it was hard to think of anyone she had irritated so much that they would go to all this trouble to get back at her. As far as I know, she thought as she burned her fingers pulling out the blown circuit, I haven’t killed anyone’s brother, mother, sister, father, or even their second cousin. I don’t live a perfect life, but I can’t think of anyone I’ve pissed off badly enough to single me out for something like this.

The wiring finally replaced with ones cannibalized from other consoles, Gomez fed power into the reworked circuitry. It had been difficult, detailed, and intermittently painful work to wire up a device that would backfeed

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