Caretaker - L. A. Graf [79]
"They are ignorant," it sighed mournfully. "Dependent bipeds..."
"Then educate them before you die. Give them the knowledge they need to survive."
It shook its head and huddled smaller down into itself. "Would you put your most dangerous technology in the hands of your children? I would be sending them the means to destroy themselves."
"You said yourself that in a few years, they'd be doomed anyway."
Janeway didn't like seeing the pain her words obviously caused it, but she couldn't help speaking the truth as she could see it.
"We have another saying-- `If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime."" Watching the projection absorb the information reminded her of Tuvok committing a string of variables to long-term memory. With both creatures, she didn't know what they would make of the data once they were done squeezing every byte of information out of it, but she'd learned how to trust that good input made for good output, whatever the processing device.
Her comm badge interrupted with an urgent beep. "Voyager to Janeway."
She wondered for an instant what had happened to Rollins, then remembered that they had Kim back. "Go ahead."
"We've got problems here," Kim's voice returned, and the crash and wail of ship's sirens wove a horrible reinforcement to his words. "The Kazon just got some backup!"
* Sensors put the newly arrived Kazon cruiser at a good eighty times the size and mass of the little grunge fighters they'd already been hammering for the last ten minutes. Power and engine output flashed right off the screens, and Chakotay didn't see any reason to waste the time recalibrating sensors just so he could get an exact reading. All told, if the big cruiser had the good sense to vaporize Voyager before turning her attentions to the peanut gallery, Chakotay figured he had about forty seconds of life left in which to get his personal affairs in order. It seemed a good thing just then that the Maquis lifestyle didn't leave much in the way of loose ends.
Chakotay bared his teeth with a certain grim satisfaction as one of Torres's phaser burns cut a long scar across the prow of one of the smaller Kazon fighters. If he'd had photon torpedoes on this little junk-bucket, they and Voyager combined could have knocked both these scows clear to kingdom come. The Kazon had half-decent shielding, he had to admit as another of their polarized plasma bolts chewed at his starboard bow, but their weaponry wasn't even as formidable as Cardassian disruptors, and they hadn't the finesse God gave a dung beetle. A couple of good commanders in a couple of functional ships would have left a serious mark on Kazon history before jaunting back to their own side of the cosmos.
Now Chakotay had a very bad feeling that the only mark he was going to be making was as a new ice-and-carbon debris field. And not a very impressive one, at that.
Communications to and from the Voyager kept up a steady patter across the open subspace channels. "Status of the Maquis ship?"
Janeway was asking.
"Holding their own, Captain" was the young officer's quick reply.
Yeah, hold this, you little washichu! Another blast, this time from behind, threw Chakotay forward into his panel. He stole a glance at Torres, and she shook her head. Meaning no worse damage than normal, and nothing they could do about it anyway.
"We need more time," Janeway continued to her own crew. On the screen, the monster ship had already carved halfway through the starship's forward hull and was dogging it like a terrier on a bone. "Can you hold them off for another few minutes?"