Star Trek: Typhon Pact 06: Plagues of Night by David R. George III

Author:David R. George III
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books

June 2383

16

The fusion core pulsed with power. Though noticeably cold, the entire space hummed with energy, as if charged, like the air before a planetside electrical storm. In the center of the vertical conduit—one of six that attached above to the midcore power-transfer hub of Deep Space 9—an immense, brilliant column of harnessed force flowed upward, carrying the output of one of the four fully functioning reactors to the rest of the space station.

Security Chief Jefferson Blackmer paced around the metallic mesh walkway that circled the coruscating pillar of energy, headed for the ladder that would take him down to the reactor itself. He looked everywhere about him, not allowing his gaze to dart, but trying to take in every surface. In the bulkheads along the round walkway, as with the bulkheads enclosing all twenty-five levels above the reactor, few control panels or access plates interrupted the many rows of sensors that kept a meticulous watch on the flood of magnetically contained power. The security officer thought—and hoped—that he would be able to distinguish anything out of place.

Blackmer rarely visited the lower core, although circumstances had brought him down there just two days before. He still felt relatively new to DS9, having transferred from the Perseverance less than a year earlier. He had replaced Lieutenant Commander Evik Nath, a middle-aged Bajoran whose death from natural causes clearly shocked and saddened the crew and residents of the station. Perhaps because Evik had been so well liked and so highly regarded—Blackmer still heard the man’s name fondly mentioned around DS9—the reception of the new security chief had trended toward the cool side. In particular, while Captain Ro treated him professionally, she also plainly resisted establishing the sort of easy familiarity she demonstrated with Colonel Cenn and Lieutenant Tenmei and other crew members. After ten months’ active duty on the station, Blackmer had essentially given up attempting to gain the friendship of his commanding officer, settling instead for her respect and a utilitarian working relationship.

When he’d finished inspecting the grid on which he stood, Blackmer swung onto the ladder and climbed down to the reactor chamber. As he understood it, Deep Space 9’s original lower core had been jettisoned and destroyed some years earlier, then replaced with the core of an abandoned Cardassian station. The half-dozen energized-plasma generators had been manufactured more than three decades earlier. Over the course of the seven or so years since the second core had been installed, Starfleet engineers maintained and upgraded the reactors, but only four of the complex mechanisms continued in regular use. The other two reactors remained off line, though the engineering staff sporadically coaxed them into service to ensure that they could serve as functional backups during repair cycles or in the case of an emergency. Since DS9 did not operate as an ore-processing facility—one of the major uses for which the Cardassians had originally constructed the station—the four reactors provided more than sufficient power.

Blackmer moved slowly about the huge compartment at the base of the lower core.

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