Janeway looked at us across her desk, "You think the Maquis are behind letting the Kazon know where we were?" she asked.
"Not exactly, Captain," Harry explained, "More like we want to rule them out."
I nodded, "If they're the ones behind it, then we'll know. If not... well, then we're back to the even dumber ideas like the Kazon having some sort of super sensors or a stealthed ship."
She leaned back in her chair in thought before she nodded, "Alright. How would we split up? It would need to be for some time."
"We spent most of the night brainstorming that," I said, "Ensign Kim had an idea that I think may have the best chance."
Harry nodded, "Neelix described the sector to us and there are a number of planets and systems we should be able to pick up resources from. We have visited some of them already, but there are well over a dozen left. If we split up, we could knock them off in a month instead of almost four months sticking together."
"Worst case and we're wrong," I said, "We'll be able to leave the Kazon far behind as we're able to put a straight course towards the alpha quadrant. Best case, we'll know and have to figure something out."
Janeway frowned slightly, "We give the Val Jean our flightplan and then take a completely different route."
"Yeah," I agreed with a nod, "And nobody outside this room is to know what we're doing. Find an excuse to change our route a day or so after we're out of their sensor range, look at a neutron star or something. Do the expected science captain thing."
She looked out the window at the whirling clouds, one finger tapping against her desk as she thought, "I don't like the idea of tricking them. If we're to get home, we have to cooperate. And I like the idea of splitting up even less. Voyager may be able to get out of an ambush this size but the Val Jean may be captured or destroyed."
"Agreed," I said, "But to cooperate, we need trust. We need to know if they can be trusted and so far, my best theory is that there is at least one traitor onboard the Val Jean."
"You don't think it's from Chakotay?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.
I shook my head, "No. I have not had regular contact with anyone but him and Torres, but they're both too smart to work with the Kazon. Only reason to do that that I can see is to try to secure a powerbase here instead of trying to return to the alpha quadrant."
"But you don't think we should discuss it with them instead?"
"No. Because I may be wrong."
She took a deep breath before letting it out and nodding once, "Very well," she finally agreed, "I'll review your plan and I'll discuss it with Commander Tuvok. He is going to need to know about it, but that's as far as this goes. Neither of you speak about it to anyone."
"Yes, Captain," Harry agreed and I nodded,
"For this to work, secrecy is paramount," I said, "Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go pass out for a couple of hours before getting to my shift."
Harry smiled, "I'm ready to go, Captain," he said and then headed towards the bridge.
The door closed behind him and Janeway shook her head, "The energy of being in your twenties," she mused.
"Speak for yourself, Captain," I snorted, "In age translation I'm like ten in human years. Maybe it's a primate thing."
"Perhaps so," she answered with a small smile, "I'll look over the plan in detail, go get some rest."
"Yes, sir," I agreed and moved to leave.
An uncomfortable lift ride and a short walk later, I collapsed on my sleeping pad, looking out into the whirling clouds as I tried to get to sleep.
It didn't come.
My brain kept working. First on the Kazon problem and then on to the managing program for the ship. At least here the alien thing in my brain was useful. Matrix equations that would take me minutes even with the ship's computer?
I knew the answer the instant I thought up the question.
The clouds whirled outside my window like the whirling thoughts in my head. Need to look at the shield geometry when I get to engineering, it's slightly off from what it should be.
I slowly blinked.
How did I know that?
I raised my head in thought. Why did... the whirling of the clouds. They didn't match quite what should be caused by our supposed shield geometry.
...Bloody hell, did my alien supercomputer just casually throw out a combined field and fluid dynamic calculation based on nothing but visual data? Our best computers couldn't do that based on visual data alone. Not anywhere near that fast anyway.
The shields were off optimal geometry by point six.
"Computer, use current data of surrounding medium, current shield power requirements and optimal shield geometry to calculate how off from optimal current shield configuration is. Answer by percentage."
"Acknowledged. Working."
The computer fell silent for almost ten seconds before it answered, "The current shield configuration is off by zero point six percent from optimal."
Holy shit.
Voyager is brand new, from a brand new class of ships. Her computer core is one of the most powerful ones in the fleet.
It took ten point three two five seconds to calculate the answer, and that's using state of the art sensors, direct access to shield configuration and energy levels.
The thing in my head figured it out in what seemed at no time at all, at a glance, from nothing but visual data.
I knew the thing was powerful, but this was on an entirely different level.
I really needed to find the limits of what this thing could do.
But first... sleep.
Don't suppose you have an easy way to let me sleep for a couple of hours?
Nope, no answer materialized.
Hyper complicated math, no issue. Make a lizard go to bed? Syntax error apparently.
Snorting to myself, I curled up on my sleeping pad and closed my eyes.
I fell asleep.
For what felt like about four seconds before my alarm went off.
