Caretaker - L. A. Graf [3]
Coming so close in a claustrophobic rattrap that had been smuggled into the Demilitarized Zone only months before by an overpriced Ferengi marketeer was enough to make even the most stalwart revolutionary question the wisdom of his fight. He expected to lose a good quarter of the crew once they set down for repairs among the Terikof Belt planetoids. Like always.
He clapped Torres on the back as he slipped past her, earning a startled jerk of her head in reply. He met her uncertain frown with a smile and an upraised thumb, appreciative of her good work over the last few hours, knowing how wrong it would be to try and tell her so.
She grunted, flushing that distinct shade of umber that no full Klingon would ever exhibit, and turned back to her panel with a terse nod.
Satisfied that she'd understood the compliment, even if it made her uncomfortable, Chakotay moved wearily toward the back of the command center to find the source of the ribbon of smoke that was steadily pooling in the struts overhead.
"I've heard Starfleet's commissioned a new Intrepid-class ship," Torres remarked suddenly. As though she knew she ought to say something in response to Chakotay's communication, but didn't know quite what.
"With the bioneural circuitry to maneuver through plasma storms..."
she added.
The smoke was spilling out of a grate beneath the atmosphere controls, weirdly lit from inside by both emergency flashers and loose flame.
Chakotay pulled the grate open with a great puff of sooty air, and knelt to reach under the damaged panel. "We'll find a new place to hide," he remarked to Torres.
She was silent for a moment, and he used that time to find the trigger for the automatic fire controls and force it into the Active position with his thumb. Halon swirled around him in a chilling blast, and he jerked his arm back into the open to let the gas do its work.
"You ever think about what'll happen if they catch us?" Torres asked as he was settling the grate back into its tracks. The controls reported that function had been marginalized, but nothing was in danger of failing.
Chakotay added replacement of the atmospherics to the mental checklist of impossible repairs he already intended to hand the technicians at the hideout, and turned to decide which hopeless task to take up next.
"My great-grandfather had a poktoy," he said to Torres as he prowled between the panels. At her dubious scowl, he smiled and clarified, "A saying, that he passed on to my grandfather, who passed it to my father, who passed it to me.
`Coya anochta zab."" The reclamation system had been fused in one of the countless torpedo hits, too ruined for him to even read the controls. He abandoned it, and moved on. "`Don't look back."" Torres almost smiled, and Chakotay had to return her flash of grim humor when he considered how appropriate those words were to most of their battles anymore. Take it where you can get it, he chided himself. Humor is hard to come by, remember? Small wonder why.
"Curious..."
Tuvok's voice floated up from the weapons console as though the Vulcan didn't even realize he'd spoken. Chakotay watched as long, dark hands played across the controls, trying to recapture something no one but a Vulcan would probably even have seen.
Apparently satisfied with what he found, Tuvok lifted an eyebrow and traced a series of readings with his eyes. "We have just passed through some kind of coherent tetryon beam."
Chakotay's heart thumped against his lungs. If the Cardassians have some new weaponry... He shook the thought away, unwilling to think of that just now. "Source?" he asked as he climbed his way back to the front