Caretaker - L. A. Graf [62]
The tunnel I came out has been sealed."
It seemed a ridiculously small obstacle, considering everything else that had happened of late. "We don't need a tunnel," the captain explained. "We have the ability to transport there directly."
"Captain..." Tuvok turned his attention pointedly away from the girl when Janeway looked to him. "Our sensors did not pick up any indication of an underground civilization. The subterranean barrier Jabin described may be responsible. It might also block our transporter."
Janeway cursed quietly. Why could nothing be as simple as it sounded?
I'm not asking for the world here! Just the life of one boy on my crew. It made her long for the days when you could force cooperation out of the gods through something as straightforward as physical combat.
"There are breaches in the security barrier," Kes offered eagerly, "where it's begun to decay. That's how I got out."
A start, at least. "Have the transporter room begin a sweep for any breaches we might be able to beam through," Janeway told Tuvok.
The Vulcan nodded, heading for the door, and Janeway turned back to their visitors to find Neelix blinking after the security chief as though worried about what Tuvok had gone to do. He caught Janeway looking at him, and jumped slightly, his face growing dark with embarrassment.
"Kes can tell you where to go," Neelix said--but carefully, his hands still firmly clasping both of Kes's. "But now that she's free, we're leaving this system together."
Kes looked down at him, obviously surprised. "These people rescued me."
Neelix pouted up at her. "I rescued you," he protested, and Kes made a disapproving face.
"With their help. It would be wrong not to help them now."
Janeway couldn't help but wonder what sort of thoughts went through Neelix that made him deflate so at Kes's disagreement, only to swell with love and wonder an instant later when he looked up into the Ocampa's eyes. "Isn't she remarkable?" he said with a sigh, to no one in particular.
Janeway shook her head, struck again by the easy willingness with which men let themselves be enslaved, only to smile privately to herself when Paris answered Neelix dreamily, "Yes... She is."
Chapter 15
Janeway sensed the weight of rock above her the instant the transporter beam released them. Not claustrophobia--tight spaces and enclosed rooms were her venue and lifeblood on board starships--but, rather, a maddeningly acute awareness of the meters and tons of living planet that hovered above her like a precariously balanced sword of Damocles.
She'd discovered this sensation the first time she let Mark talk her into an overnight caving expedition. He said it would be fun. While he slept blissfully through a night of whatever underground wonders so entranced him, Janeway lay through that eight-hour stretch of total darkness with the ominous pressure of a ten-meter-thick ceiling only a handspan above her face, keeping her awake and adrenaline-powered until their subterranean guide reinstated the lights and announced it was time to move on. Mark accused her later of being scared of the dark; she hadn't been able to convince him that it wasn't the dark that made her uncomfortable, but the huge, capricious geology that held the dark inside. Just because it had chosen to hold its shape for something like three and a half million years seemed little reason to believe it would continue to do so over the next three hours.
They never went caving again.
Now that same feeling came rushing back on her, although nowhere near as strongly as before. Having a ceiling so tall it almost masqueraded for sky helped, as did the gentle, indirect lighting that seemed to cast delicate shadows in all directions. Still, not even the absence of walls in the immediate vicinity or the dramatic view of a distant city against the glowering horizon could completely distract her from the lack of a true sun blazing overhead, or the lank, clammy stillness of the air. A cave, by any other name.
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