Ghost of a Chance (9 page)

Chakotay reminded himself of his discussions with Janeway and Tuvok, but this was the path that had been set before him, the only clear direction. There might not be another. “I cannot predict the future, but at present I think this limited agreement can be made,” he said in answer.

“More than enough for now,” Tassay said with enthusiasm, and Chakotay thought for a moment she might reach out and give him a hug.

Jonal was the first to stand. “We will inform Gantel at once.”

“By all means,” Chakotay said, rising too, leading everyone back out onto the bridge. Within moments contact with the Televek had been reestablished. Jonal explained everything perfectly. With very little discourse, the Televek agreed.

“But there may be a temporary… problem,” Gantel said, addressing Chakotay. “I will need a moment. Can you stand by?”

“Of course,” Chakotay said, more than a little curious. He stood at the center of the bridge for several moments. No one in the room said a word. Just as he was beginning to grow impatient, the Televek’s voice sounded on the comm once more.

“As I suspected, a minor delay, Commander,” Gantel began. “You must understand, the cruiser you see before you is not a merchant vessel, and we are not presently carrying in our inventory anything quite like the equipment you need. However, your needs, and of course ours, can still be met. You have my word as third director. I will explain in detail shortly. In the interim, you may of course transmit the specifications for your EPS flow regulator. In return, you will be sent all of the sensor data we have collected on Drenar Four. We will work from there.”

“Shortly?” the commander repeated, skeptical.

“Very shortly.”

“Very well.”

“Good!” Tassay exclaimed, taking Chakotay’s forearm gently in one hand.

“Can we get you something to eat or drink?” Paris asked, speaking to Mila at first. Then he looked up. “Any of you? I mean, this might take a while.”

“Yes,” Tassay said happily, “that would be wonderful.”

“If you don’t mind, of course,” Jonal specified. Then he moved toward Chakotay and quietly took the commander briefly aside.

“Is there any chance the captain could join us again?”

“I’ll take you to our dining area,” Chakotay said. “But I doubt Captain Janeway will be there. Unless she manages to free herself of her present duties.”

Jonal shrugged somewhat dourly. “I see.”

Chakotay gestured to the security guards as they left the bridge, indicating they should come along.

***

B’Elanna Torres hurried up the hallway on her way to the galley.

She had put off eating anything for hours now, but hunger was beginning to take its toll. She needed a little something to stave off the jitters, something she could eat quickly. Repairs were proceeding, everyone was still leaping through hoops, trying to make some real progress, but she hated the thought of taking a break herself.

Finally, though, her needs were beginning to affect her disposition.

She had a bowl of oatmeal in mind, or perhaps a cold sandwich.

She’d long preferred human food to Klingon, just as she had always chosen to focus more on her human half than on her Klingon heritage.

Most human dishes, like human beings themselves, were softer and easier to stomach. And in some cases quicker—a particular advantage just now.

She hesitated while the galley door slid open, then pushed her way inside.

“Torres, won’t you join us?” Commander Chakotay said, waving her toward the long, shiny table where he sat with Lieutenant Paris, Neelix, Kes, and the three Drosary advocates.

Quite a crowd already, B’Elanna decided. They didn’t need to make it any larger. And in any case, she was not thrilled with the idea of wasting a lot of time talking with creatures who didn’t seem that interested in talking to her—and probably for good reason.

She still wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t like these Drosary no matter how she tried to rationalize the situation, and she was fairly certain they didn’t like her, either. “I’m a little busy right now,” she said.

“I’ve only got a minute.”

“Just for a moment, then,” Chakotay said, to agreeable nods from the others. “I insist.”

It wasn’t an order. The commander was apparently just being cordial, for whatever reason. But that wasn’t the point. She didn’t want to tell him no. She decided it wouldn’t hurt to ask Kes how she was doing in any case.

“Please, we would enjoy your company,” Jonal said, waving much as Chakotay had done, getting it almost right. A change of heart, perhaps, B’Elanna thought, noting that even Neelix seemed to be enjoying the Drosary’s company just now. But prudence had always been considered a valuable survival trait by nearly all species, B’Elanna thought, including both of hers.

“Let me grab a bite first,” she said, lifting lids on pots, searching for breakfast, though she wasn’t at all certain what meal the time of day required. She ended up with a bowl of something that was apparently hot cereal but was definitely not made of oats. She tasted it as she walked toward the table. The grain was palatable, a variety Neelix had helped find and gather several weeks ago on a planet very much like Drenar Four. You just needed to put a lot of sweetener on it, she decided. An awful lot.

“How’s the arm?” she asked.

“Better, thanks,” Kes replied. She grinned broadly. “We have an excellent medical staff.”

“So I understand,” B’Elanna said. She sat down and began to spoon the thick yellowish porridge into her mouth.

“The doctor can hardly manage without Kes,” Neelix said proudly.

“But he’ll just have to manage for a little while longer.”

“Your concern for one another is refreshing,” Jonal said. “Even among different species.”

“We have a great deal in common, it seems,” Chakotay began.

B’Elanna looked up. “Who does?”

“Tassay and I. The Drosary and the Maquis. Our part of the galaxy and theirs.” He smiled with genuine enthusiasm, something of a surprise to B’Elanna. “The Drosary have always desired a peaceful existence,” he continued. “They would rather put their resources into building a colony, a better way of life, than fighting wars for governments they feel they have no part in.

All that was taken away from them.”

“One of the reasons we started our own colony,” Tassay interjected, “was to escape the destruction of our culture, which goes back much further than my current homeworld’s culture. The old ways, the old traditions, are all but gone now. All of our ancient customs are being lost.”

Chakotay sat back and gazed warmly at her. “It seems we have even more in common than I thought.”

“I ended up on that colony, where the Televek found us, for a very different reason, I’m afraid,” Mila said, apparently addressing everyone, but looking mostly at Paris. “Personal reasons, I guess you could say.”

“Tell me about them,” Paris said, as sincere as B’Elanna had ever seen him.

Mila grew somber for a moment, thoughtful. Then she seemed to recover.

“Very well. There was an accident on a small commercial space transport during a routine trip to one of my world’s two moons. The ship was nearly lost, and many people died. I was the pilot. It was a systems failure, pure and simple—I was there, I know what happened—but that was never proven to the satisfaction of the review board. I lost my commission. I had a hard time living with the stigma, the stain, that followed me after that. Until I finally got far enough away.”

“I… I do understand,” Paris told her, taking her hand in his, gazing raptly at her. “Maybe too well.” They seemed to have still more in common than Tassay and Chakotay, B’Elanna reflected, silently nodding as they both glanced toward her.

They turned to each other again, and she watched Paris for a moment, watched him doting on Mila. Then she turned instead to Chakotay, who seemed to be paying a great deal of attention to Tassay at the moment.

It’s enough to make anybody sick, B’Elanna told herself, noticing she was not quite as hungry as she had been a moment ago.

“You seem upset,” Jonal said to her, disturbing her speculations.

She looked at him. She was. “What makes you think so?”

“I can tell, that’s all. Though it looks almost out of place on you.”

No one had ever told her that before. “What do you mean by that?”

“You have many great responsibilities, I’m sure, but I am nearly as sure you have the means to meet them. You seem so… competent.” His smile was soft, not the least acerbic, as she was sure hers would have been if she had been inclined to attempt one. She couldn’t tell if he was being empathetic or diplomatic.

Either way, she wasn’t much in the mood. She shrugged. “It can get a little rough sometimes. Goes with the territory, I guess.”

“You are different than many of the others.”

“I’m only half human,” she said, purposely glaring at him, “if that’s okay with you.”

“I assure you, it is. And I understand your reaction, I think, though you seem to be among very good people here. I admire this Federation of yours. You see, on my homeworld I too am something of a—a mixed breed, or half-breed, you might say. Mila and Tassay are as well. But the dominant society there has not yet risen above the ignorance that so often complicates such things.”

“I… didn’t know,” B’Elanna said, somewhat stunned by the gentle man’s words. “But for me, I think it’s probably a little more complicated than that.” She thought of how many times people had told her they understood what it was like to be B’Elanna Torres, how ridiculous she always thought they were.

Though what she was doing right now was possibly worse. “Or maybe it isn’t,” she said. “Maybe I don’t know.”

“B’Elanna has had her share of successes as well as setbacks,” Chakotay remarked.

“I’m sure we would all enjoy listening to you talk about them,” Jonal told her. Mila and Tassay quickly agreed—Mila still holding Paris’s hand while Tassay marveled at the tattoo over Chakotay’s left eye.

“It’s so nice to find beings who care about the lives of others the way you do,” Kes said, smiling softly at the Drosary. “There is so much we can all learn from each other. So much I want to learn.”

“The similarities do make the differences easier to understand,” Neelix said, typically aiding Kes by any means available to him.

Neelix and Kes had seemed largely content simply to observe the conversation until now. B’Elanna wasn’t sure she liked the change.

“Sometimes there are things about others that we can never understand,” she told Kes before glancing at Jonal.

“I suppose that’s true,” Kes said, “but working with the doctor has made me realize just how precious all life is and how easily it can be lost. It’s wonderful to find people who embrace that same basic ideal.”

“Isn’t she remarkable,” Neelix said. It was not a question. He grinned broadly at Kes and kissed her cheek. The sentiment seemed to carry all around the table. It stopped at B’Elanna Torres’s chair.

Something about the Drosary still bothered her. She couldn’t shake the uneasy, restless feeling the visitors seemed to inspire in her.

Especially Jonal, despite the fact that she saw nothing at all wrong with him, specifically. Nothing dire, certainly…

It was the fault of her untrusting, unsociable Klingon side, she imagined; perhaps she wasn’t unusually perceptive, just cursed.

She finished her porridge and stood up, regarding the others. In a way it was getting harder to dislike these strange visitors, and easier to understand why If they got her the relay she wanted, with no new; unmentioned strings attached… well, maybe it would all work out.

Jonal gazed glowingly at her. She looked into his eyes and tried to smile, but something inside her churned. She tasted yellow cereal at the back of her throat.

“I—I have to get going,” she sputtered, swallowing. Then she left them sitting there.

Janeway stood at the edge of a neatly cultivated field, straddling a row of low, leafy orange plants bearing small round fruit that reminded her of young tomatoes. Bushier plants grew in alternate rows starting thirty meters to her right. Squash, she thought, or something very much like it. The crew of Voyager wouldn’t get a chance to sample much of this produce, though.

Everything in the field was dying.

Thick blackish-brown powder covered the land and all that grew from it to a depth of several inches. Rains had stiffened the early layers, but the soft dust on top led Janeway to believe it hadn’t rained in a while. Someone had apparently been trying to keep the plants clean, the dust between the plants was deeper than the dust on them, but efforts seemed to be falling behind.

Kim plucked a small young fruit from the plant at his feet, brushed it off, and tucked it into the sample bag at his waist.

He toed the plant and dislodged a thick cascade of dust and soot that tumbled from its stems and leaves. Clumps of the dark stuff still clung tenaciously to the plant.

“Definitely volcanic ash,” Janeway said, reading its composition from her tricorder.

Kim held up his own tricorder and resumed scanning. “Most of it fairly recent, I’d say,” he noted. “I’m surprised there’s not more of it, judging by the activity in those mountains.”

He pointed due south. A ridge of mighty peaks could be seen well in the distance, much like those just east of their current position, though more extensive. The southern mountains featured two great plumes of angry black smoke that rose seemingly to the top of the sky—the same clouds that the shuttle had flown through on its way down.

Janeway adjusted her tricorder from geologic scans back to the electromagnetic range. She instructed Kim to resume scanning for bioelectric and organic signatures in the direction of the largest village, nearer the eastern hills. As had been the case early on, the results were immediate.

“I’m reading multiple life signs, humanoid, and they’re definitely on the move. They’re approaching from the east, from the village, I’d say, Captain.”

They had scanned this same group of people earlier. Few details could be discerned from such a distance, but they had assumed the party was headed toward the downed shuttle. Now that assumption seemed correct.