"Okay, here goes nothing." Kamala pushed one last button and held her breath for a few seconds.

The lights in the engineering command section faded on gradually, some of them flickering before steadying, and the control panels and monitors came to life one by one.

Everyone waited a few more seconds and let out a series of relieved sighs.

"Guess nothing's gonna blow up," Asuka said. "Yet."

Kamala grinned. "I figured it was too much to hope for that everything would've just been turned off instead of physically damaged."

"About time we had a lucky break." Asuka hooked her ankle on the handrail running along the platform to prevent herself from floating away as she looked around. "I'd recommend against turning anything else on, like the centrifuges, until we find out what's damaged and what's not. For all we know, the crew cut the power off to prevent something even worse from happening."

"Good point." Kamala aimed her ultratool at the control panel and attempted to access the ship's intranet. "I've memorized all the info on the Enterprise that I could get my hands on -- as I've mentioned before, I wanted to join the crew as soon as they finished building it -- and this ship's layout is remarkably similar. I'd say it's at least a generation or two ahead of the one we were building, but it's familiar enough to -- oh, here we go, I'm in."

Roger took his ultratool from his belt pouch. Kamala nodded.

"I'm linking you up." She added him to the connection she'd established and began feeling her way through the computer. "A lot of the systems are locked down, which isn't surprising. Unfortunately, we don't have any of the passwords, so I'll have to hack in." She launched passcracks at the engineering crew's logs, engine status records, and a few other key systems.

In the corner of her eye, Asuka glanced at nothing in particular for a split-second. "Morrison just reported in. Seems he's found something." She turned toward the door. "I've asked Tank to keep an eye on things while I go see what Morrison's got."

"Uh-huh," Kamala muttered, already keeping most of her attention on her exploration of the computer and tuning everything else out. Amazingly, her passcracks had already unlocked some of the records. She flicked her ultratool at a bank of monitors on the left and routed the information to them. "Here we go. Looks like the main computer made the final log entry. It shut everything down after the crew died."

"Guess there was no point in keeping it all running." Seth shook his head. "Creepy."

"Is there anything in the records about how the crew died?" Marissa grabbed the edge of the console and pulled herself closer.

"Haven't found anything yet. That'll most likely be in the med-bay logs." Kamala nodded at the data scrolling past on the monitors. "Recent log entries indicate a catastrophic failure in one of the engine components."

"The ship wasn't in danger of blowing up or anything, was it?" Roger's face took on an alarmed look as he glanced around at the displays.

Kamala held out her lower-right arm and clasped his hand. "No, nothing like that. Turns out it was just a faulty piece of equipment. When it broke, it damaged the jump engines severely enough that the ship had to drop out of hyperspace at the nearest jumpgate. The engines will have to be replaced, and that can't be done without docking at a station or planet that has the gear they need. Of course, there's no way to get to a suitable repair facility without jumping back into hyperspace."

"So this ship isn't going anywhere. Great." Roger shrugged. "Well, at least we have a place to live until we figure out what our next move should be. Unless we run out of air."

"I'll see what I can do about that." Kamala found the environmental control systems and launched a diagnostic app. It ran a thorough scan on the software and hardware and sent what it found straight into her brain. "Air, heat, and all that stuff is still functional, just deactivated. I'm switching it on now."

Roger grinned and threw his arms around her. "Alright! Progress."

She laughed as they started to drift away from the controls. She coiled her tail around the handrail and pulled them back -- then she drew him closer and pressed her lips against his.

He froze for a second but didn't try to back away. Her hearts pounded and she kept the kiss going for a long moment before breaking contact and sucking in a deep breath. She stroked his cheek and grinned.

"Now that's progress."

He looked uncomfortable for a moment but kept his smile in place. He kissed her again -- but Marissa cleared her throat and both of them turned to face her.

"What about the centrifuges? Can you get them started?"

"I think so. They're not damaged, either, the computer just shut them down because … well, they were drawing power and the crew didn't need gravity anymore." Kamala sent a command to the console and smiled when it responded. "They're spinning up now. It'll take a few minutes for them to reach full rotation, but we'll have gravity in the crew quarters and other key areas then."

"That's a relief. Being stuck in zero-G would make us all turn puffy."

Seth chuckled and returned to his perusal of the displays. "How about a date on the logs? Any idea where and when this ship came from?"

Kamala checked the computer's final log entry and her jaw dropped. "The last log is dated March 2, 2177."

Everyone stared at her. She tried to think of something to say, but couldn't.

Damn. This morning was a century ago. And if the ship was also scooped up from the past and we just happened to end up in the same time period, who knows how many centuries we've skipped?

She shivered, pulled Roger into a tight embrace, and struggled to keep her breathing steady.

Shit …