Star Trek: Voyager - 042 - Protectors Read online

  “Gesundheit.” Tom smiled.

  “And I don’t want it,” B’Elanna added, miserably. “I need it.”

  “Just point me in the right direction, and I promise I’ll go kill one for you and bring it right here,” Tom assured her. “What is it?”

  “It’s kind of a vegetable and fried meat sandwich,” B’Elanna replied, attempting to conjure one from thin air with her hands. “But it is made with this grilled flat bread done over a fire. It’s amazing,” she went on. “My mom used to make them for me when I was really little.”

  “I take it the replicator can’t do it justice,” Tom deduced. When it came to really specific tastes and textures, this magnificent technology often fell short.

  B’Elanna shook her head. “I tried ten different versions before I came up with a better idea.”

  “Better?

  “I needed an open flame, so I decided to rig a quick burner.” B’Elanna shrugged, as if it should have been obvious.

  Tom couldn’t find it in himself to be angry with her right now. But double-checking her sanity didn’t seem out of the question.

  “You remember we’re on a starship right now, don’t you, honey?”

  B’Elanna stepped back, now clearly ready to punch him.

  “I was the one who installed Neelix’s burners in the galley our first time out here,” she reminded him. “It can be done.”

  Tom considered his options. Only one seemed likely to end in both of them living through the night.

  “Back to bed,” he ordered her.

  “I have to . . .” she began.

  “Get some sleep,” he finished for her. “I’ll get a couple of Nancy’s gamma shift folks in here to clean up and repair the replicator. And then I’ll head to the mess hall and find something resembling your ghabjeba . . . whatever,” he finished.

  “I can’t ask someone else to . . .” B’Elanna argued.

  “But I can,” Tom reminded her. “There are lots of young officers aboard right now eager to earn points with their XO. And they will be sworn to secrecy.”

  B’Elanna sighed, considering this. She blinked her eyes a few times, then lowered them to half-mast. “Come to think of it, I’m not that hungry,” she replied. Her shoulders slumping, she trudged back toward the bedroom.

  “Honey?” he called after her.

  “I know,” she replied. “Sonic shower first.”

  “Set and match to Lieutenant Kim,” the computer reported.

  “Yes!” Kim said jubilantly.

  Nancy Conlon, who had executed a perfect dive toward the ball as it shot back into her quadrant—perfect except for the part where her swing missed—rolled over onto her back and stared up at the overhead holodeck grid. She was drenched in her own sweat and breathing in quick gasps but only really conscious of her extreme frustration with herself.

  “Good game,” Kim offered from above, reaching out a hand to help her up.

  “Best three out of four?” Conlon asked, using his weight to pull her to her feet.

  Kim smiled with sincere regret. “Can’t. I want to get to the bridge early. We’re set to arrive at our destination in a little over an hour, and I don’t want to miss a minute of it.”

  The chief engineer moved to the low bench resting along the wall that faced the velocity court and retrieved a small towel and a jug of water. Her wind was coming back and a few swigs of the cool beverage were restorative, but her competitive spirit remained unsatisfied.

  “Just one more set then?” she asked. “Winner take all?”

  Kim shook his head as he took a few gulps of his own water. “You played a great match,” he assured her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’ll get me next time.”

  He might be right. They’d begun to exercise together regularly in the early mornings even before Voyager had returned to New Talax and had quickly moved from parallel workouts, weights, runs, and hikes, to oppositional ones. Most games found them well matched, but twice now she’d come up short in velocity, and it had begun to irritate her. It was ridiculous. There was no reason she needed to be better than Harry at anything, let alone everything. But she despised losing.

  “You afraid?” she asked.

  The smile fled from Kim’s face.

  “One set,” he said softly.

  Finding her own smile, Conlon ordered the computer to begin the game.

  She took the first two points easily. Though Kim was as intent on winning as ever, his concentration was divided between rising to her challenge and getting to the bridge as soon as possible. This gave Conlon an advantage, one she could easily exploit. As she added the next two points to her score, she realized there wasn’t as much fun in beating someone incapable of performing at his best.

  Frustration seemed to give Kim focus and he took the next three volleys, albeit with some difficulty. He was moving swiftly to meet her next service when she actually saw him hesitate just long enough to miss the ball.

  It could have been another concentration lapse, but Conlon didn’t think so.

  “Computer, pause program,” she ordered.

  “What’s wrong?” Kim demanded through labored breaths.

  “You let that go,” she accused him.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Harry?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She stared at him, wondering if her imagination was getting the better of her.

  “I might have,” he finally admitted, dropping his head.

  Conlon tossed her racquet to the bench and took a seat. Kim moved to his own bench but seemed to think better of it and crossed instead to sit beside her.

  “It’s just a game,” he said.

  “Don’t ever do that,” she replied seriously.

  “What?”

  “Less than your best,” she said. “Don’t let me win.”

  “It was one point,” he pleaded.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “I don’t want a victory I haven’t earned.”

  Kim nodded, conscious of the insult he had just inflicted on her.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “Let’s finish this, then.”

  Conlon shook her head. “No. You need to get to the bridge. I shouldn’t have pushed it.”

  “I’ve got a few minutes.”

  Conlon smiled and placed her hand over his where it rested on his thigh. “That’s sweet of you, but I want to beat you when you can give it your all. Not when your mind is already at your station.”

  “Is it really the end of the world if you don’t?” Kim asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, there’s going to be stuff you do better than me, and I’m going to have to learn to live with it, right?”

  “Oh, yes,” she assured him. “But don’t think you know what I need better than I do. If there’s a question in your mind, ask.”

  Kim squeezed her hand gently and brought his face close to hers. “I have a question.”

  She replied by touching her lips to his.

  “And now you have your answer.” She smiled, pulling away.

  Nodding, Kim rose to collect his things. He turned back to see her standing, hands on hips, shaking her head slowly.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “When we get to the middle of nowhere we’re going to find something really fascinating, and we’re going to learn a ton, and Chakotay is going to add a commendation to your file, and you’re going to be the one who handed him exactly what he wanted.”

  Kim considered her words. “And . . .”

  “You’re so excited just by the possibility that you can’t keep your head in the game. When all that happens, there’s going to be no living with you at all,” she teased.

  “You won’t be happy for me?”

  “I’ll be thrilled for you,” Conlon said honestly. “You deserve it, Harry. We’re both serving with some of the brightest lights in Starfleet. It’s easy to get lost in the shadows of their brilliance.”

  “Not everything is a competition,” Kim said. />
  “No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “But ever since you set foot on this ship, I’d bet you’ve been dying to distinguish yourself. You’re going to have to if you ever want to serve anywhere else.”

  Kim shrugged. “The same is true of every officer on this ship.”

  “No, it really isn’t,” she replied. “Plenty just want to keep their heads down and do their duty and stay alive. You want more.”

  “Maybe,” Kim agreed. “But I learned a long time ago that when you are surrounded by the best and the brightest, more can be a long time coming. Thing is, you have to keep your sights set on your goal.”

  “A ship of your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go get it,” Conlon encouraged him.

  “Of course, every starship needs a great chief engineer.” Kim smiled.

  “Go,” she ordered, stepping aside and pointing toward the door.

  “Talk to you soon,” he said, jogging lightly past her.

  Once he had gone, Conlon sighed. Her initial attraction to Harry had been simple. He was a good guy; smart, funny, and cute as hell. The honesty and insight he had offered her lately—even when she tried her best to push him away—had come as a surprise, but they had cemented her impressions that this relationship was worth pursuing.

  Lieutenant Harry Kim was, without doubt, the most optimistic individual she had ever known. No matter how close the darkness came, his determination to overcome it and certainty that goodness would prevail was refreshing.

  Conlon remained unsure about the universe’s tendency toward beneficence. She could only function in the here and now, moving through one moment at a time. She might hope and work like hell for the good, but she didn’t think she could ever believe in it as completely as Harry did.

  DEMETER

  Commander Liam O’Donnell had arrived on his bridge less than five minutes earlier. He had spent the majority of the last few days with Brill and DeFrehn tweaking several of the hybrids they had just developed for New Talax. Colonizing asteroids was a risky business. It was a challenge to create a wide enough range of edible substances from soil that tended to be homogenous and lacked the renewal the life-forms and water sources a more diverse ecosystem provided. To their credit, the scientists of New Talax were aware that their people were already showing signs of nutrient deficiencies. Synthetic supplements could only go so far to replace these. They needed greater variety in their diet. Figuring out which fruits, vegetables, and grains would solve this was easy. Coaxing them from the available soil was another matter.

  Demeter’s crew had made great strides in the past weeks, infusing the soil with several natural compounds and overhauling the waste-processing facilities to maximize the amounts of usable fertilizer produced. They had also managed to create from scratch more than two dozen new seed varieties, several hearty bacteria, and a bunch of annelids, most of which were flourishing by the time they departed.

  But O’Donnell wanted more.

  Right now, every bit of usable space on the main colony was spoken for. As the population continued to grow, they were going to have to find significantly more generous trading partners or begin maximizing the resources available to them. Getting to the other asteroids wasn’t a problem. Creating livable and workable environments within them was a challenge, and one for which the colonists did not have sufficient resources. O’Donnell’s chief engineer, Lieutenant Elkins, had suggested creating small, heavily shielded areas on the outside of the local rocks that could be filled with appropriate atmosphere and turned into productive fields. The next time they visited New Talax, O’Donnell was bound and determined to make sure that he had fifty or more species of seeds that would thrive in such an environment.

  The optimal soil properties for three versions of tomatoes were foremost in the commander’s mind when his first officer, Lieutenant Commander Atlee Fife, announced that the slipstream field was dispersing. O’Donnell had settled on two of the three tomatoes when Fife ordered Ensign Thomas Vincent at ops to begin long-range scans of the uncharted area of space while cautioning Lieutenant Url at tactical to keep a sharp eye for anything that might be coming their way.

  Five minutes later, O’Donnell had narrowed the field to a single variety of tomato, settled on the precise soil configuration and its complementary atmospheric profile, and digested his crew’s initial scans.

  For good measure, he double-checked the main viewscreen, then rose from his seat.

  “Captain?” Fife asked cordially.

  “If you find anything interesting you’ll let me know,” O’Donnell said.

  “Aye, sir.” Fife nodded and moved to take the seat the commander had just left.

  O’Donnell smiled internally as he exited the small bridge. A few months ago, Fife would have taken his choice to leave the bridge as evidence that he was unsuited for Starfleet service, let alone command. One near mutiny and many long conversations later, Fife had come to accept their unique command structure. O’Donnell was the captain, but his skills were best utilized working the problems the Demeter had been charged with when the ship joined the fleet. As one of the Federation’s preeminent botanical geneticists, O’Donnell felt those problems did not include the various and sundry tactical and operational concerns or the scientific mysteries present in vast areas of space most Starfleet captains considered their purview. Those O’Donnell was content to leave to Fife.

  The commander smiled because finally, Fife was done questioning this and seemed content to simply live it.

  VOYAGER

  Harry Kim didn’t know what to think. When not answering inquiries from the rest of the senior staff about the sensor logs and data he had recovered from the distortion ring, he had spent most of the last few days theorizing about what they might find when Voyager and Demeter reached their intended coordinates. He thought it was too much to hope to find a planet or space station busily manufacturing the distortion ring technology. He considered it possible one or more of the phenomena might be detectable nearby. At the very least he expected to find a part of interstellar space with visible stars and planetary systems within scanning range.

  He did not expect to find nothing. Unfortunately, that seemed to be exactly what they’d found.

  Everyone else on the bridge was busy. Short- and long-range scans were being continuously run, and there were a few very distant stars visible from the occasional angle of inquiry.

  Otherwise, Voyager and Demeter, at Kim’s suggestion, had just arrived at the edge of a massive void.

  To Paris’s credit, he waited a few minutes before saying, “Is it me or does the Delta Quadrant seem to have more than its fair share of these?”

  The tactical officer caught Chakotay’s stern glare in Tom’s direction, but with every scanning frequency Kim tested, his heart sank further, and he waited for the captain’s disappointment to focus in his direction.

  “What do we have, Lieutenant Lasren?” Chakotay asked.

  “Nothing, sir,” the ops officer replied. “No contacts in any visible spectrum for several million kilometers. If we set course bearing one two six mark three, long-range sensors are picking up a few star systems several days’ journey from here at maximum warp. Less, if you wish to engage the slipstream.”

  “Any EM discharges matching those of the distortion ring?” Chakotay asked patiently.

  “No, sir,” Lasren replied.

  “Do we have any idea how far this void extends?” Chakotay asked.

  “Long-range sensors are at maximum, sir,” Patel advised from the science station. “Apart from the sector Lieutenant Lasren noted, there are no visible stars or systems discernible for at least a parsec. Beyond that, we won’t know for sure unless we set a course into the void.”

  Kim had already tuned his tactical sensors to search all EM frequencies for discharges comparable to those first detected with the distortion ring. Nothing. And while he fervently hoped there was more to this than met the eye, that wasn’t going to be enough for him to per
suade his captain to waste their time exploring all that nothing. Past experience suggested there could be some interesting phenomena undetected in the darkness. But it hardly seemed likely. If he’d had more to go on from the ring’s original data, he might have been able to make a few intelligent suggestions, but it seemed they had just invested several days and their precious benamite reserves to travel to one of the Delta Quadrant’s least-interesting swaths of space.

  Chakotay resettled himself in his seat and ordered, “Continue long-range scans for the next hour. If nothing comes up, we’ll set course for the nearest visible system, maximum warp, and take a closer look.”

  Kim resisted the urge to apologize for this fiasco, but he was pretty sure he’d be doing so privately to his captain in about fifty-nine minutes.

  Chakotay began studying the sensor data routed to the small screen embedded in the arm of his chair. Paris ambled toward Kim’s station and leaning in said softly, “That’s not just nothing, Harry. That’s a whole lot of nothing.”

  “You think I don’t already feel bad enough about this?” Kim replied for Tom’s ears only.

  At that moment, a faint wave registered on tactical. It disappeared so quickly, Kim wasn’t sure he’d even seen it, but he quickly narrowed the frequency.

  “Do you see that, Lasren?” Kim asked, transmitting the data to the ops station.

  Lasren studied it quietly for a moment. The young Bajoran was thorough and maddeningly slow to commit to an analysis where the available information was this sketchy.

  “Looks like a sensor echo, sir,” Lasren finally replied.

  Kim had already decided this was a definite possibility. The EM frequency was so low it could have been any number of things, none of them terribly promising. But still, it was something.

  In the interest of thoroughness, Kim decided to expand the search grid of the low frequency. To his surprise, this resulted in the immediate detection of several more “sensor echoes.” It wasn’t inconceivable that this would occur naturally. They knew next to nothing about this area of space, and any number of natural phenomena could account for it. But so could a handful of unnatural ones.