Equinox Page 9

  "Or anyone to back him up," Kim pointed out,

  empathizing. "What does it do to a captain to be that alone? Oh, I know-we're alone, too, but I've never felt like we were really all that much alone. Maybe Captain Janeway and Captain Ransom have felt differently. I've got the luxury of having a captain and a first officer to support me. Who've the captains got?"

  Chakotay slumped back and slugged the last of his coffee, now cold and bitter.

  "Just us," he said.

  "Let me get this straight. You lived on a Borg Cube for nineteen years?"

  Noah Lessing absorbed the idea with a shiver. Seven of Nine was aloof, cold, mechanical, gorgeous-but somehow he'd convinced himself she'd been Borgified for only a year or two. Nineteen ... That was almost her whole life. And almost his.

  "A series of cubes," Seven explained as they hurried through the corridor. 'Twelve, in all. The Collective re-designates drones to optimize efficiency."

  "Guess that makes you an army brat," he teased. "Me too. My father was a terraforming engineer. I lived on a dozen different colonies before I went to the Academy. It's a disorienting way to grow up."

  "Drones adapt. I was never 'disoriented.' "

  "This may sound like a strange question ... do you ever get homesick?"

  She did something shockingly human-bobbed her brows. "This may sound like a strange answer. But yes."

  Lessing smiled his easygoing smile. " 'Cube, Sweet Cube.' I can understand. Surrounded by like-minded people-"

  "One mind, to be exact."

  Oh, that was another shiver. One mind? To be only a cell in a body, without control or thought? He couldn't empathize with that one.

  "Noah!" Maria Gilmore hurried to catch up with them. As Lessing turned to greet her, she asked, "Did you get a call from the captain?"

  He nodded. "I'm heading there now."

  He turned to Seven, knowing he shouldn't be fraternizing in a way from which he might not be able to cleanly extricate himself. He shouldn't get to like her too much.

  "We'll continue our Q and A later," he said, then added to Gilmore, "She wants to learn more about humanity. But I'm afraid I've been asking all the questions. I'll keep my mouth shut next time."

  Seven glanced at him and simply moved off down another corridor. He wasn't sure what that meant

  "If there is a next time," Gilmore muttered when they were alone.

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "I have a feeling the captain isn't calling us to a social gathering," she told him, keeping her eyes moving. "When Janeway ordered him to abandon the Equinox, I saw the look on his face. He's got something on his mind."

  "Rudy's face," Lessing said, only half jokingly, "isn't

  that easy to 'read.' You don't think he's going to defy her, do you?"

  "Wouldn't you? Our ship's still viable. His command hasn't been legally abrogated. I don't know about you, but this doesn't feel right."

  "Leaving Equinox? Not fighting to keep our ship?"

  "None of it feels right. Leaving, staying, fighting, not

  fighting-----I've been concentrating on the aliens for

  so long, I don't remember how to think any other way. I can't tell right from wrong anymore."

  "That's not our job. Our job is to support our captain. Our captain."

  Gilmore's expressive eyes worked in a troubled way. "Our captain ... aye."

  They moved together through Voyager to the transporter room without saying anything more. Lessing experienced a surge of raw fear as the beam gripped him and he knew he was going back to the box in which he had almost died.

  Yet, the pull of their own ship was almost tangible. They had fought for it so many times that they possessed it completely, in a thoroughly whole-souled way. He'd known in the back of his mind that he would come back. They all would. This was the platform of their reason to exist. They hadn't ever expected to find another friendly ship, so Equinox was their world.

  When he rematerialized on board Equinox, sure enough the sensation of uncertainty flowed completely away and that old possessiveness replaced it, as if he were suddenly filled with purpose. This was their ship,

  the ship they had fought for and which had fought for them, holding up beyond anyone's gues s that she could. Even her designers had set limits and said she couldn't be stressed beyond them. Those limits had been broken the first year. She'd gotten them through. Now she was hanging here, being good, waiting for someone to take her reins again.

  Minimal power pulsed, but in more places than before. Repairs had been going on continually. Most of the Voyager crew was gone now, no longer trying to save, repair, or clean up the Equinox. Lessing and Gilmore changed places on the transporter pad with the last of the other ship's crew as they left with cases of supplies. Salvage ...

  Without speaking another word, Lessing led the way to the bridge, Maria following. That was all right. She was uncertain. Lessing tried not to think about this. The captain was waiting.

  On the bridge, Rudy and Max were already there, looking at a monitor that displayed the schematic of the force-field generator. Others in the crew lingered around Lessing nodded to them. It was good to see them again, without the peppering of somebody else's crew.

  "Are we alone?" Rudy asked, looking up at his crew.

  "Only Equinox crew on board now," Max confirmed, checking the bioscans from encrypted combadges all over the ship. "We've managed to clear out the others without their realizing it. Most of the Voyager crew assigned here thinks some of their own are still here.

  Oh ... wait a minute. Somebody just beamed, down in engineering."

  "Never mind that for now," Rudy said. "It's probably just a salvage team or that Borg girl finishing her capacitor transfers. Just make sure we're comm-insulated."

  "We are," Maria assured. "What happens to Voyager?"

  Rudy Ransom gazed at his last engineer with insecure sympathy. She hadn't said, "What happens to them when we leave, when we abandon them, when we betray them, when we split up the only Federation unity in the Delta Quadrant?" He knew all those things were running in her mind, and in all their minds. They'd found friends, discovered they couldn't trust those friends as much as they wanted to, and now would have to be bad friends themselves. Such was life here. They would handle it, as always. He could never do this if he didn't believe that.

  "They've got weapons," Max answered so the captain didn't have to. "Shields, a full crew ... they'll survive."

  Rudy avoided grinning in approval at him, but he was proud. What that word survive had come to mean to them-a virtue and a victory all in one word.

  "Maybe we should abandon ship," Lessing said with hesitation. "Try to forget everything that's happened here..."

  "A shower and a hot meal," Ransom bristled. "That's all it took to make some of us forget what's at stake here." He turned to face them, noting Lessing's clear

  shame. "We're proceeding as planned. Any further objections?"

  He knew Lessing hadn't been making an objection, exactly, only posing a last-ditch chance to think about this, but Ransom was done thinking. He'd been done for hours.

  "I need every one of you to give me your best," the captain challenged. "As you always have."

  They were already all with him. He could tell. Even Gilmore, in her typical cloak of doubts, sadly and warmly nodded.

  "This won't be easy," Burke said, consulting a wall monitor's display. "The generator's located on deck eleven, next to the warp plasma manifold. We can't get a clean lock without boosting the signal." He looked to his right. "Maria, we need you to set aside your claustrophobia and crawl through the access port to set up the Transport Enhancers."

  If there was anything to overcome, she was already handling it. "Understood."

  "We'll have to take the internal sensors off-line," Burke added. "Noah, you're elected."

  "You can count on me, sir," Lessing said, as if making up for his brief lapse.

  "I'll disengage the power couplings from eng
ineering."

  Ransom gave them his best confident posture. He was telling them they had to leave the comfort and safety of salvation to go back into the trenches, but soldiers had been doing that for centuries uncounted. From the Roman marches to the Battle of the Bulge,

  from Tarkus to Cardassia, troopers had returned to the pit of hell for the sake of duty. At least they were going together, shoulder to shoulder, without contamination from a bunch of people who wore the same uniform but who would never understand how that uniform looks when it's soaked in bloody mud.

  "You'll have time for one more shower," he told them. "Make the most of it."

  CHAPTER

  7

  KATHRYN JANEWAY SAT STILL AND SCRATCHED HER HAND, disturbed. If only Ransom had fought a little, argued some, defended his command, just for a few minutes. She'd quoted half a regulation, and he'd folded to it without even checking.

  Somehow she felt worse than if he'd argued.

  Now Seven and Tuvok were reporting a power fluctuation in the security grid, within tolerance, but still troubling. It shouldn't have happened. Everything was on-line, being monitored, being tended. This was Red Alert, not a coffee klatsch.

  Seven, standing before the captain in her ready room as Janeway sat at her desk, explained that she had tried to correct the flux, illustrating her efforts on a cutaway graphic. It zoomed into a single deck section as Seven explained.

  "The discrepancy is in the research lab on Equinox. I could tune our field generator to match it, if we can determine the frequency of that multiphasic chamber. The lab, however, is still permeated with thermionic radiation."

  "I thought it would have dissipated by now, Captain," Tuvok said, almost apologetically. "We discovered that three EPS conduits have been rerouted to the lab. They are emitting the radiation."

  Janeway looked at the PADD he handed her. "Any theories?"

  "Only one," Tuvok said bluntly. "Ransom doesn't want us to enter the research lab."

  "He has been adamant about protecting his ship. I thought it was simply a captain's pride ..."

  But maybe I'm being a sympathetic jerk and he's outthinking me.

  "I want to take a closer look at that lab," she decided. "If we can close off those EPS conduits, how long will it take to vent the radiation?"

  "Several hours," Seven said.

  Janeway frowned. She was getting to hate that word several. How many? Two? Ten?

  "I don't want to wait that long. Send The Doctor. He'll be immune to its effects. Tell him to look for anything out of the ordinary."

  "Shall I notify Captain Ransom?" Tuvok asked. He was right to ask.

  "Not yet." Janeway lowered her voice despite the privacy here. Perhaps it was the distaste in her mouth that made her quieter. "Let's wait until we test your theory.

  Have The Doctor maintain an open comlink and give us continuous reports while he looks around. Tell me when he's in."

  "Captain?"

  "Oh-Chakotay." Janeway sighed, greeting him wearily as Tuvok and Seven turned to leave the ready room. Like most of the crew they were uncomfortable here and usually tried to leave quickly. This, unlike the bridge or the briefing room, was the captain's private domain, on the edge of action. Through that door was public land. Here, not so. This was the think tank, but only the captain's. More private even than her quarters, she actually spent much more time here than there.

  "Am I disturbing you?" Chakotay asked when they were alone.

  "No, not at all. You look tired. Sit down for a minute."

  "Only a minute," he accepted. "We've shored up the shield power by tapping into the impulse pellet containment system, gained maybe another hour and some minutes. Time to breathe, at least."

  "Any information about these life forms attacking us? That's what I really want."

  "Nothing substantial. Well, nothing helpful."

  "No communication. Language."

  "None. Not even nonrandom impulses. We've had a team working on it, but I had to take them off it for a while and have them help the deflector crew. Everyone's stretched thin either salvaging Equinox or trying to keep our shields up and our propulsion units on-line in case we might be able to outrun them."

  Janeway tried to keep a leash on her dividing thoughts. "If they exist on an astral plane that parallels ours with some kind of folding effect, outrunning them may not be an option. They might be on a permanent wormhole that could stretch one mile for them and ten thousand light-years for us."

  "That means we fight." His words were steady, though significant with perception of how very long a fight that could be.

  "Yes," Janeway uttered, "or we communicate. That's an imperative."

  "Not everything communicates," he pointed out in a slightly warning tone. With one elbow pressed to the chair, he tried to be casual. "There's a big range between swarming and sentient."

  She held out a hand. "They're intelligent. They changed their tactics. They learned that by concentrating their efforts on one shield, they could get it to fold. They learned. They aren't just attacking anything they see. Not only learning, but learning something technical."

  'Technical to us," Chakotay focused. "Maybe to them, shield energy is as natural as silk to a spider. They do have that natural nucleogenic base, and it would take us tremendous technology to duplicate it."

  Sniggering doubts entered her star system. 'True, I suppose ... or they might actually be smart and it just looks natural to us."

  "Does this mean," Chakotay began, "you're questioning Ransom's interpretation of the Prime Directive?"

  Unwilling to say that straight out, Janeway hesitated. "They might be a nasty civilization, but if they are a civilization, then the directive applies."

  His eyes swept the lovely vista out the viewport behind her. "We can say that when we're standing behind intact shields and we can go have a hot dinner in a clean mess hall."

  "I don't know, Chakotay." Tense, Janeway sank back into her chair, feeling as if she were shrinking. "Something's wrong."

  Purposefully he leaned back too, but in a more relaxed way, probably hoping to telepathically get her to do the same. "Is there something I don't know?" he asked. "W hat kind of 'something' are we discussing?"

  Janeway inhaled a choppy breath of the fresh air, noting that there was a slight rise in temperature. The air in here wasn't as crisp and cool as usual. The ship was stressed, selectively preferring some systems over others.

  "I wish I were sure of things," she vented. "Is there an animal spirit guide to walk me through a relationship with another captain who might end up living in my house for the rest of my life?"

  "Doesn't seem like you'd need advice. Not you."

  She laughed. "What does that mean, not me? Oh, don't answer. Have I been so far removed from dealing with other Starfleet officers that Ransom's reactions strike me as too accommodating?"

  "You mean giving up his ship?"

  "Of course," she said. Instantly she wanted to bite back her tone, but too late. Narrowing her eyes, she

  sought his dark gaze and the pool-quiet passiveness that always underpinned his attitude. "Wouldn't you have struggled a little?"

  "I'd have struggled a lot," he offered. "There's no measuring what he's been through or what it does to a man to lose half his crew. Maybe he kept fighting because he had to, without the passion for command. We've relieved him of having to carry the load anymore."

  "Mmm," she responded dully. "I'm afraid I'm being too hard on him."

  Chakotay paused and thought. "I don't think he sees it that way."

  Shifting her aching back, Janeway felt her stomach tense. "I've never usurped another captain's command before. Oh, it's one thing to have the authority or even the tactical advantage. It's something else to tell a captain with a viable ship that it's time to dump it. How long before someone has to tell me that?"

  "There's another problem, too." Chakotay stretched his shoulders against the chair back and, despite the time crunch, actually crossed his l
egs. "Ransom is senior to me by twenty-two months. By the book, the minute we cut loose the Equinox, you have a new first officer."

  Was there something wrong with the atmospheric pressure in here? Janeway groaned and palmed back a straggle of her brown hair. "Why do you have to be so damned thorough! Do I have to think about that?"

  He raised one shoulder and lowered it. "If regulations are going to rule the roost, we both have to think about it."

  In the quiet room, under soft lighting, she pressed all ten fingers to her forehead, closed her eyes, and indulged in a gale-force grimace. How could something so positive and hopeful turn so tricky in a matter of hours?

  "Space travel is for the birds..." Lowering her hands to the desk with a thump, she eyed him critically. "Are you ready to give up your post?"

  Raising his chin with cursed nobility, he quite seriously said, "Captain, I'm ready to do whatever makes the ship run better in your eyes."

  "I may have to shoot you."

  "Depriving Ransom of his command and his seniority is unwarranted in my estimation. I'd be lying to say I didn't think he deserves the posting. Not only that, but he'll have a significant portion of the crew who still regard him as their commanding officer. You can't ignore them. Crew attitude is critical. That's how we blended the first two crews," he reminded. "Yours, mine-"

  "Ours." Janeway pressed her wrists to the edge of her desk. "It's possible he doesn't care one way or the other. He's not a battle captain, not by training. He's a scientist. His promotion was a reward. A science crew doesn't expect to fight for its life. By the time they arrive at a duty location, all the battles are supposed to have been fought already."

  "By captains like us."

  "Yes ... us."

  "But he's been a captain now for a long time," Chakotay flatly said. "His command wasn't pro tem.

  And he's done the job, he's brought them through. You can't wish that away just for my sake."

  "It's not just for your sake," she said, suddenly shrill. Almost immediately she deflated and grinned miserably at herself. "Sorry. It's for my sake too. I don't want him as my first officer. I want you."