Go with Seven

Kal's decision was an easy one. His relationship with Dren had been going on for a while now, and if she really was serious about her desire for more it would come up again soon. And besides, he might even have time after he was done with Seven to go help her anyway.

At 06:30, Kal reported to the Astrometrics lab. "Mam," he began, "I've gotten Commander Tuvok's permission to assist you. What exactly will we be working on?"

"Yesterday, we scanned several vessels in a convoy on long range sensors, just before they went down. We collected some interesting data on their tactical systems, as they were unmatched by any in our database. Also, one vessel in the convoy seems to have, perhaps intentionally, caused our sensors' failure. I require assistance in both determining their tactical abilities and to ascertain whether that ship meant us harm."

Kal walked to the main console and keyed in the entries for yesterday's sensor logs. "Hmm, I don't believe I've seen anything like these systems before," he muttered after several minutes of perusal. "Though I do remember hearing something back at the Academy that might explain this."

He seemed to have piqued her interest, for she asked, with a bit of expectancy in her voice, "What did you hear?"

"Well," he responded, "my tactical professor theorized, in private and only to his most advanced students, that it may be possible to unleash the destructive equivalent of a photon torpedo, with only the energy output of a hand phaser. If one put out the same amount of energy as a normal photon torpedo, the results would be destructive on a planetary scale." Kal looked at Seven with a look of sheer amazement. "Supposedly, one would need a focused warp field around a single dense mass, and accelerate it toward the target. The creation of a warp field around an object without its own warp engine caused a very unstable subspace vacuole that would create a momentary subspace rift if it were to hit something." Kal didn't need to voice his worries; if any race got their hands on such technology, they would pose a threat to the entire quadrant. "Unfortunately, these readings seem to indicate those ships not only have the ammunition on board, but also the specialized warp engines to project the warp field."

Seven looked at him with a grave expression. "Are you sure?" When Kal nodded, she said, "Then we must warn the Captain. She must make the decision on how to proceed."

Thinking it over, Kal realized that the Captain would need every detail available to make a good decision. However, analyzing the rest of the sensor logs could take several more hours.