Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

52

The wardroom hummed with the sounds of many voices. Kira stood near the doors and surveyed the reception. The Bajoran, Alonis, Trill, and Andorian delegations, all clad in formalwear, continued socializing warmly with each other. Kira had earlier decided to stop speculating about what the future would hold, but if the smiles among the guests were any indication, then Bajor would be a member of the Federation within the next couple of minutes. The mood here had been so positive throughout the evening that even the normally austere Akaar seemed to be enjoying himself. That had seemed like a breakthrough for the unapproachable admiral, and Kira elected to take it as a promising sign. Overall, she thought, the event had been a rousing success.

Not typically enthusiastic herself about mingling with government figures, Kira had actually spent time tonight doing just that. She had moved about the room with relative abandon, drawing both the ambassadors and their staffs into conversation. She supposed that she had wanted to put on Bajor’s best face, though she of course knew that her behavior here would have no bearing on the talks. Still, she liked being positive.

A few meters in front of Kira, Shakaar, and the Trill ambassador, Gandres, were speaking with one of the two officers Kira had introduced as her aides. The two—Sergeants Etana and Shul—were actually Lieutenant Ro’s deputies, and the only signs visible to Kira of what she knew was incredibly tight security. As she watched, Shakaar, Gandres, and Etana moved to one side, allowing Tel Ammanis Lent, the Alonis ambassador, to float past them in her antigrav chair. Lent thanked the trio for their courtesy as she went by, and then glided over to Kira.

“Ambassador,” Kira greeted her, smiling. “I hope that you’re having a pleasant evening.”

“I am, thank you, Colonel,” Lent said, her words passing through a level of conversion even before reaching Kira’s universal translator. The water-breathing Alonis, when not in an aquatic environment, wore formfitting suits that held a layer of water suspended against their scales. The helmets they wore contained a device that transmitted the sounds of their underwater voices out into the air. “And the food,” Lent went on, “is the best I’ve had at a foreign facility.” Kira did not know exactly how the Alonis ate while wearing their environmental suits, but obviously they somehow managed the feat.

“I’m glad you like it,” Kira said. “It’s just Bajoran hospitality.”

“And you are certainly very welcoming,” Lent said. “By the way, the kelp is truly delicious.”

“Good,” Kira said. “I’d heard it was flavorful.” While it surprised her that Quark had actually been telling the truth about the exorbitantly priced kelp, what intrigued her more were the Alonis themselves. They physically resembled the creatures of myth that possessed the head and upper body of a Bajoran and the tail of a fish. The silvery bodies of the Alonis were not precisely like that, but similar; their head and torso were more or less humanoid in shape and function, but they had a long tail structure instead of legs, and short fins in place of arms. They had no opposable digits, but had developed an advanced civilization via their short-range psychokinetic ability, which they used to manipulate water into essentially solid tools. They had joined the Federation forty years ago, and were widely regarded as a kind and peaceful people.

“So I’d like to know, Colonel,” Lent asked, “have you ever been to Alonis?”

“I haven’t,” Kira admitted. “But I have been reading about your people and your world. It sounds like you have a beautiful civilization.” The ambassador flipped up the bottom of her tail. Kira had learned just a few minutes ago from one of Lent’s aides that such a gesture indicated grateful acknowledgment. “Have you ever been to Bajor?”

“I have not,” the ambassador said. “But the rich green of your oceans seems like quite an exotic setting.” The waters on Alonis, Kira had read, were colored a deep purple, like those on Trill. “I look forward to visiting them one day.”

“Well, there are no underwater cities—” The doors to the wardroom whispered open behind Kira, and she glanced over her shoulder to see who had entered. Quark stood there, carrying a tray of what appeared to be Bajoran fruits in a jumjaglaze. He quickly scanned the room, as though searching for somebody. When he spotted Kira nearby, he immediately stepped over to her.

“Colonel, have you seen Lieutenant Ro?” he asked. He seemed agitated to Kira, and she could only imagine what sort of trouble he had caused this time.

“No, I haven’t,” she told him, but Quark’s attention had already left her. He moved his head from side to side, apparently trying to see past some of the guests.

“Is that her?” he said suddenly, and he thrust the tray of desserts at Kira. She instinctively put her hands up and took the tray, and Quark hurried away.

“Quark,” she called after him, but he was already halfway across the room, weaving a path through the guests. Both exasperated and a bit embarrassed, Kira looked back at Lent. “Ambassador, if you’ll pardon me,” she said.

“Of course, Colonel.”

Kira strode in the opposite direction Quark had taken. She went to the end of the room, where tables had been set up for the food. She found an empty space and set the tray down, then turned to look for Quark. Before she located him, though, the doors to the wardroom slid open once more. This time, Ro Laren entered. “Lieutenant,” Kira called as she made her way over to the security chief.

“Colonel,” Ro said. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, not at all,” Kira said. “In fact, I’d like to compliment you on security. You’ve really done a fine job.”

“Thank you,” Ro said. The lieutenant seemed distracted, her gaze constantly moving about the room—part of her security training, Kira assumed.

“Quark just came in here looking for you,” Kira warned her.

“Quark?” Ro said. “Did he say—”

A blur of movement occurred at Kira’s side. “Laren,” Quark burst in. “I need to speak with you.”

Laren?Kira thought, and she wondered when Quark had developed the nerve to address the security chief by her given name.

“Not now, Quark,” Ro said, her eyes still moving about, studying the room. “I’m on duty.”

“Laren, listen,” he said, dropping the volume of his voice down to what Kira thought of as a conspiratorial level. The Ferengi drifted sideways, insinuating himself between Kira and Ro, his back to Kira. “I need to know what’s going on here.”

“Did you ever think that if we didn’t tell you about it,” Kira said over his shoulder, “that it might not be any of your business?”

Quark ignored Kira and continued talking to Ro. “Please,” he implored her. “I need to know—”

“I said not now,” Ro told him, her tone firm. She stopped scanning the room and peered down at Quark. “The colonel is right: this isn’t your business.”

Quark staggered back as though Ro had struck him. Kira jumped back, only narrowly avoiding him stepping on her feet. Ro looked up at Kira. “Colonel, if everything’s under control here, there are other security matters I need to tend to.”

“We’re fine here,” Kira said. Ro nodded, then quickly turned and left. Quark stared after her for a moment, then started for the doors. Kira stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “I believe you were about to serve more desserts,” she said. Quark looked back at her, out of the corner of his eye, and then back at the closed doors. Kira wondered what had happened—what Quark had probably done—to cause him such anxiety with Ro. She would have to remember to ask the security chief about it later.

When Quark still did not move, Kira leaned in toward his ear. “If you don’t start serving again,” she said, “then I’m going to have to penalize your breach of contract by closing the bar down for a few days.” She noticed that she did not smell the rancid cologne that he often wore.

Quark turned and looked her in the eyes. He muttered something under his breath and moved past her, headed for the food tables.

As Kira watched him go, she saw Akaar standing by himself. He had a drink in his hand, and he seemed to be observing the rest of the guests. Kira decided that the time and place were right for her to try to establish a rapprochement with the admiral. She strode over to him. “Good evening,” she said. “I hope you’re having a pleasant time.”

Akaar regarded her in a manner to which she had become accustomed by now, with an aloofness that suggested judgment and suspicion. She chose not to react to it, instead simply continuing to smile and wait for his response. “I am having a pleasant time,” he said at last. “Thank you for inquiring.”

“You’re welcome,” Kira said. “I’m glad that you’re enjoying the reception.” She paused and debated what to say next, then plunged ahead. “I hope that your time on the station continues to be productive,” she said.

Akaar sighed, then leaned down toward Kira. “I’ll tell you something, Colonel,” he said. “I do not care at all for—” He glanced around the room. “—Cardassian architecture. However, I have so far been impressed with…Bajoran hospitality.”

As Akaar stood back up, Kira felt her mouth drop open in surprise at the echo of her own words to Ambassador Lent. She began to say something in an attempt to cover her surprise, but somebody called to Akaar from somewhere behind her. Akaar raised a hand and gestured, then looked back at Kira. “Excuse me, Colonel,” he said, and walked away.

Kira turned and watched Akaar move across the room, over to Councillor zh’Thane. She thought about her comment just a little while ago to Ambassador Lent about “Bajoran hospitality,” and she wondered if Akaar had just tried to tell her something.

53

In the full darkness of night, the soft flurry of white light stood out like a lone star in the void. The materialization sequence finished, and Prynn walked from Chaffee’s aft section and over to the site. She shined her beacon down at the small section of decking she had transported away and then back. It had been reduced to a mass of disfigured metal.

“Well, that’s it then,” she said. Throughout the day, she had managed to cobble together a working transporter, utilizing the parts of the primary system that had survived the crash, along with elements of the two backups. She had been running tests for the last hour, beaming objects in increments both toward the source of the pulse and in the opposite direction. She had ascertained now the effective ranges of the transporter in this environment: one hundred seventy-five kilometers away from the pulse, but only seven kilometers toward it. Beaming in either direction would not help them much, if at all.

Prynn returned to Chaffee’s aft section and powered down the transporter, frustrated. She had struggled with the patchwork machinery all day, not just to get it functioning, but to increase its range. But the problem stemmed from the local effects of the energy produced at the source of the pulse, not from the equipment. Even if Prynn had access to a perfectly maintained transporter, nothing short of extremely powerful pattern enhancers would—

Pattern enhancers,she thought. She raced into the shuttle’s rear compartment and pulled open the compartment doors in the port bulkhead. Several environmental suits sat within, all intact. Prynn took out two of the full-body suits, along with a pair of helmets. She could use an old test pilot’s trick, she had realized, and reconfigure the suits to function as pattern enhancers. That might increase the transporter range significantly.

Prynn spent an hour working on the suits, another idea occurring to her as she did so. She had not quite completed the task she had set herself, though, before exhaustion took firm hold of her. Reluctant to stop, but knowing that she would accomplish nothing by pushing herself too far beyond her limits, she headed back to the encampment. She considered using a stimulant from the medkit, but decided that the best thing would be to get a few hours’ sleep and then resume her work.

As she walked, Prynn swung the beacon out along her path in wide arcs. There really was little need to light her way, she reflected, considering that the ground here lay so completely flat and featureless. She wondered about the land that Vaughn’s journey had taken him across, and about how far he had gotten.

Vaughn.To Prynn’s aggravation, her thoughts had come back again and again to her father today, and not just with respect to the mission here. Her mind had continued conjuring up the image of him walking away from the camp yesterday, which in turn had inexplicably engendered feelings of abandonment in her. It made no sense. Vaughn’s attempt to reach the source of the pulse on foot had been the proper command decision, and leaving her behind to work on the transporter and to tend to Shar had also been right. And still, she could not seem to reel in her thoughts and emotions. In her mind’s eye, she repeatedly saw him deserting the camp.

Notdeserting, she chastised herself. Departing.She found it strange and disconcerting that she should be fixated on something that she did not even believe to be true. But then, the pulse, this planet, the crew’s experiences here—all of it had been nothing if not strange and disconcerting.

A memory from earlier today occurred to Prynn. While she had been working on the transporter, she had vividly recalled lying wounded on Defiant’s bridge, back during the attack by the Jarada. Except that she could not have recalled such a thing; the explosion and the extent of her injuries had knocked her unconscious, and Dr. Bashir had explained to her how it would have been impossible for her brain to imprint and retain memories of the event. And yet today, she had remembered lying on her back beside the captain’s chair, and remembered somebody touching her shoulder and midsection. That person would have been Dr. Bashir, of course, who had treated her on the bridge—except that she kept feeling somehow that it had been Vaughn there, and not the doctor. And the sense she had gotten from Vaughn had been one of intense guilt and sadness, and the memory—or daydream, whichever it had been—had left her temporarily feeling sorry for her father.

Prynn passed the shuttle’s forward section and headed for the camp. She slowed her pace, trying to be quiet so that she would not wake Shar. He had come to this afternoon, and had been sheepish and apologetic for his outburst this morning. She had waved the incident away, then checked his injuries and provided him what little care she could. He had at least been able to eat and drink, which she hoped would allow him to retain whatever strength he had right now.

Prynn put down the beacon, stripped off her jacket, and flopped down onto her bedroll. Fatigue affected her both physically—she had spent a lot of effort digging through the shuttle wreckage—and mentally—the reconstitution of a working transporter had been far from a trivial matter. And she also supposed that she had been taxed emotionally, with the—

“Prynn?” Shar’s voice sounded very small in the night.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I wake you?”

“No…well, yes, actually,” he said. “I’ve been lying here falling in and out of sleep, thinking and dreaming.” Shar’s voice, though low, sounded fairly strong. Prynn squinted through the darkness in his direction. She had not yet extinguished her beacon, and he was just visible in the fringes of its illumination. He lay on his back, his head turned toward her, and though she could not tell anything about his complexion in the dimness, he eyes appeared more alive than she had seen them in the last day and a half.

She reached over to where she had set the beacon down. “I’m going to turn the light out,” she warned Shar.

“Would you leave it on?” he asked. “For a few minutes?”

“Oh,” she said, surprised at the request. “Sure.” She pulled a blanket over her body.

“Did you have any success with the transporter?” Shar asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I actually got it working, but because of the interference from the energy, the range is limited.” She told him the distances to which she had successfully been able to beam objects. “I’ve started to reconfigure the environmental suits as pattern enhancers in order to address that,” she continued. “It should help, but I’m not sure how much.”

“You’re trying to use the environmental suits as pattern enhancers?” Shar asked. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“It’s not a common practice outside of flight testing,” she explained. “I also have another idea. I’ll need your help with it, though.”

“What do you want me to do?” Shar said.

“The primary power cell for the shuttle’s internal systems was destroyed,” she said. “The backup’s intact, but it’s not working, either. Fortunately, the secondary backup is working, and that’s what I’m currently using to power the transporter.”

“All right,” Shar said.

“If we can get the primary backup cell to function,” she went on, “then I think I might be able to construct another working transporter out of what’s left of the primary, its backups, and the environmental suits.”

“If one transporter won’t help us,” Shar asked, “then what good will a second one be?”

“We can beam ourselves and the second transporter and power cell,” she explained, “and then use the second system to beam the first one to our new location. Then we can keep doing that, sort of skipping across the planet until we reach the far side, where there are breaks in the cloud cover.”

Shar seemed to think about that for a moment—Prynn wondered whether he might have drifted back to sleep—and then he said, “That could work.” Even though his voice remained quiet, Prynn thought she heard some excitement in it.

“I think so too,” she said. “But the problem is that primary backup cell. I can fix it, but it’s going to take me a while to finish modifying the suits and piecing together a second transporter. I won’t have time.”

“I can do that,” Shar said. “If you tell me how to reconfigure the environmental suits, I can help with that too.”

“Good,” she said. “We’ll start on it first thing in the morning.”

Shar said nothing more, and the silence of this empty world pushed in on them. After a few minutes, Prynn reached out from beneath her blanket and switched off the beacon. The darkness descended at once, nearly suffocating in its completeness. Prynn closed her eyes, anxious for sleep to welcome her into its fold. To her surprise, though, she was still awake fifteen minutes later when Shar spoke.

“I wonder how Commander Vaughn is doing,” he said.

“I don’t know,” Prynn responded, and she heard a coldness in her voice she had not intended. “I don’t know,” she said again, holding her tone level.

“Whatever happened between you and your father,” Shar said, “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to be at odds with a parent.”

Prynn laughed, a loud, ugly sound that she regretted at once. It seemed as though the tension of their circumstances had caused her to lose the full control of her emotions. “I’m sorry, Shar,” she said. “I didn’t really mean to laugh.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry that I said anything.”

“No,” Prynn told him, not wanting him to feel bad. “It’s just…you don’t know what my father did to me.” Did tome? Prynn asked herself. She must have been tired to have misspoken like that. “I mean, what he did to my mother,” she amended.

“You’re right,” Shar said. “I don’t know.” He said nothing else, neither inviting her to say more, nor stopping her from doing so. Prynn did not like talking about this, but then…after tomorrow, she might never have a chance to talk about it again.

“My mother was a Starfleet officer,” she said. “She and my father worked together a lot before I was born, but then Mom decided that she’d had enough of a soldier’s life.” Prynn felt pressure behind her eyes, and the gentle sensation of tears forming. Still, she found herself wanting to go on. “She wanted children, but Vaughn…Vaughn could never let go of the job, even after I was born. We could never really be the family Mom wanted, but she and Vaughn never fell out of love.” She could see her mother in her memory—her mother and Vaughn. Tears spilled from her eyes now, sliding coolly down the sides of her face. “I loved them both. I missed Vaughn so much when he was away, and loved it when he came home. I always wanted to be closer to him. That’s why—” She stopped, stunned at the words she had been about to say. The revelation had come to her simply and powerfully. “That’s why I joined Starfleet,” she finished. “I just wanted to share more of his life.”

When Prynn paused, Shar said, “That’s nice, that you wanted be with your father that much. But I guess something happened.”

“My mother ended up on a mission with my father again,” she said. “He ordered her away team to…” Prynn wiped a hand across her eyes, trying to dry her tears, but smearing them across her face instead. She had not spoken about this—had not thoughtabout it like this—in such a long time. It was still hard. “The away team never returned. Vaughn knew the danger, but he made the decision to send them anyway.”

“Was it the wrong decision?” Shar asked.

The question astounded Prynn. Was it the wrong decision?It had resulted in the death of her mother; how could it be anything but wrong?

“I mean…are you angry with your father because you were almost killed when the Jarada attacked us at Torona IV?” Shar asked.

“No, of course not,” Prynn answered immediately. “That wasn’t his fault.”

“On his order,” Shar said, “we didn’t defend ourselves.”

“Because if we had, it would have put a hundred thousand Europani in danger. The Jarada would have attacked the convoy.”

“That’s right,” Shar said. “So maybe there was also a good reason for the order he gave your mother’s away team.”

No,Prynn thought. No reason could justify the death of her mother. But what she heard herself tell Shar was, “I don’t know.” And she realized that she had never known. Vaughn had never talked about his decision to dispatch the away team. He had always simply taken the responsibility for her mother’s death—and she had always let him take it. “I don’t know,” she said again, wondering for the first time whether Vaughn’s guilt had been because he had given the wrongorder, or because he had given the rightone.

“Good night, Shar,” she said, unable to talk about any of this anymore right now.

“Good night,” he said, and she was grateful that he did not choose to pursue the conversation further.

She had been seventeen when her mother had died, and she had been devastated. They had been not just mother and daughter, but the best of friends. Prynn remembered so vividly when Vaughn had told her…the horrible words, the look of pain and guilt on his face, and her tears, flowing as though they would never stop…

How could it have been the right decision?she asked herself. If her father had to give the order again, would he? Prynn had never asked him that, had never thought to ask him. And seven years ago, there had not been an opportunity to ask such a question anyway. Mom had died, and her father…her father had been there with her for a while, but she had never been able to approach him; the enormity of his guilt and the depth of her anger had been obstacles too great to overcome. After he had told her, they had never really spoken of it again, other than her blaming him, and him saying how sorry he was. He had abandoned her—

Abandoned?

Once more, Prynn saw in her mind the figure of Vaughn walking away from the camp. For a day and a half now, the image had refused to leave her. Do I hate him because he was responsible for Mom’s death,she asked herself, or because he wasn’t really there to help me through that terrible time?Although it was not a question that she had ever asked before, she’d been sure of the answer to it for the past seven years. Until today. Until right now.

Prynn wondered if her father knew the answer, and she resolved to ask him—to talkto him—about it.

If I ever see him again.

A tremendous sense of sadness and loss engulfed her. And as she fell asleep, all Prynn could think about was how much she missed her father.