Day of Honor - Michael Jan Friedman [56]
"No sense in rehashing the past," the captain said pointedly. "What's done is done, Lieutenant."
The engineer nodded. "I sent the Borg back to her alcove. We won't be needing her in here anymore."
Janeway declined to comment on that subject. Instead, she looked around-and stopped when she found what she was looking for.
"'Mr. Paris," she called.
Tom raised his head from his console. "Yes, Ma'am?"'
"We have to retrieve the warp core," the captain said. "Take a shuttle and find it. See if you can tractor it back to Voyager."
"Yes, Ma'am," said the helmsman. He tapped out a few last commands at his console and started for the door.
"It's going to be damaged," B'Elanna intellected,
getting the captain's attention. "And unstable. It should be repaired before Tom tries to put a tractor beam on it."
Janeway considered the problem for a moment. "All right," she remarked at last. "Then go with him, Lieutenant. Do whatever you have to, just get it back here in one piece."
B'Elanna didn't like the idea of leaving her staff to muddle through without her. But they were capable enough. They would be all right.
"Right away, Captain," she replied.
Then she and Tom headed for the exit.
Lumas stood on his bridge, still dumbfounded by what he had seen. His pilot and his technicians worked all around him, propelling his vessel through space as they took stock of Voyager's largesse.
A Borg, he told himself. A living, breathing Borg, walking the corridors of Voyager as if she were just another crew member.
The memory chilled the Caatati to his bones. It left him weak and unnerved. But it also brought with it hot flashes of anger and spite.
If only there were some way to strike at the Borg, Lumas thought. If only he and his ships could seize Voyager and remove the devil from their midst. Then she would know what pain was.
And maybe, in the process of exacting his revenge, he would free himself from his own pain. Maybe he would achieve some kind of peace by tearing the Borg limb from limb. He tried to picture it ...
No. He was dreaming if he thought he could capture the Borg. Janeway's vessel was too quick, too
well-armed, too powerful for the Caatati. They would gain nothing by converging on Voyager except their own annihilation.
"Lumas?" said his second-in-command.
He turned to look at Sedrek. "What is it?"
"We have food for a month, maybe more. And the isotopes they gave us will keep us going even longer than that."
Lumas dismissed the information with a gesture. "They gave us the smallest part of what they had. So what?"
Sedrek shrugged. "I thought you would want to know. You did well."
Lumas glared at him. "If I had done well," he said, "I would have brought you the head of their Borg."
The other man looked at him disbelievingly. "Their Borg.? What are you talking about, Lumas?"
"A Borg walked their ship. I swear it. Had I not-"
"Lumas! Come quickly!" called one of his technicians.
Lumas frowned and joined the man at his console. His curiosity aroused, Sedrek came along as well.
"Is something wrong?" Lumas asked. He gazed at the monitor hanging from the bulkhead.
"Not wrong at all," the technician replied. "In fact, it may be something very right. " And he pointed to a spot on the monitor.
Lumas took a closer look and saw a red dot tumbling across the screen. "What am I looking at?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," the technician told him. "But it contains some kind of energy-a great deal of energy."
,iso
Lumas wanted to know more. "Put it on the forward viewscreen."
Then he turned to the hexagonal screen, where the even flow of stars was suddenly displaced by another sight entirely-that of a glowing cylinder plunging end over end through space.
Lumas took a step forward and tilted his head. He had never seen anything like it. "What's its purpose?" he asked.
"It's a power source," the technician responded. "That much is clear. But I can't tell you what it powered."
"I can," said another voice.
Lumas glanced over his shoulder at Grommir, another of his technicians. The man was studying the monitor above his