Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [162]
That morning, Marla got what she wished for twice over. One was to get the heck out of engineering. Torres was in this perpetual funk that had started round about her fourth month. A half-Klingon prickly as a cactus was marginally bearable; a pregnant and prickly half-Klingon was what Marla’s gran would’ve called downright wolverine mean. So when Torres growled about how Marla was behind on her work schedule again and the captain was still waiting, Marla made like she had thrusters attached to her butt and got out of there but right quick.
Only she didn’t go to the captain’s ready room to fix the replicator. No secret that the five Equinox survivors weren’t exactly on the captain’s hit parade. The captain wouldn’t leave for a briefing for another two hours after which she’d head down to the planet. With four hours to kill before the coast was clear, Marla detoured to Lieutenant Coleman’s quarters, figuring that surely his little glitch had priority.
And that’s when the second thing she’d wished for came true: as she lay on her back, fiddling with an intake baffle of a waste reclamation unit. (Starfleet-speak for a john. What a crock. Look over any starship specs, and you’d wonder why the hell no one ever bothered to put in the johns. Showers, the designers didn’t seem too embarrassed about. But johns? Forget it. A hundred million years from now, there’d probably be some archaeological exhibit claiming humans could tolerate deep space because no one ever had to pull over. Honestly.)
She hated the work. Not because it involved a john but because her workspace was so tiny, her heart seized and fingers of anxiety stepped up and down the ladder of her spine. Little no-nothing space, and you never knew when an interspatial fissure was going to open up and then the last thing you’d see was a streak of gold light and then…
C’mon. Marla forced her trembling fingers to cooperate. She bit down on her lower lip, hard. Don’t worry about the mule, just load the wagon. No bad ghostie alien light coming to gobble you up. Just do the work, get it done….
She was concentrating so hard that when Seven’s voice sounded over her combadge, Marla near about jumped out of her skin. Clamping back a scream, she held her breath a sec, then let it out. “Say again, please?”
Seven did. (Not happily; Marla’s brain would have to be on life support to miss that. Seven was tighter than bark on a tree and not exactly known for little niceties like nuance and generosity.) So when Marla registered what Seven was really saying, Marla just… froze. Baffle bolt in one hand, Mulliard slip-wrench in the other, and her heart crowding into the back of her throat.
“Say again?” she asked. “From where? Are you sure?” And thinking: It can’t be because that means Janeway told them. Please, God…
“Obviously, Crewman, if you’ve processed that I indeed said something and now ask if what you claim not to have heard is accurate, questions are rhetorical.” Seven might as well have added and dumb as a stump. “Nevertheless, I believe the appropriate responses are: You have a message from Earth, and, yes, I am sure.”
Marla’s reaction wasn’t what she’d always thought. She didn’t drop everything. She didn’t cry or scream or faint. She didn’t even smile. Instead, Marla thanked Seven and finished fixing Coleman’s john. Then she repacked her tools and took her time going to astrometrics. Once there, Seven arched an eyebrow and handed her a padd; Marla thanked her, took it, did an about face and walked out of astrometrics.
And the thing was… she couldn’t play the message. Didn’t even check who sent it. Only one person it could be, anyway. Instead, she slipped the padd into a pouch on her tool belt and knocked off for coffee. She didn’t really want coffee. She just wanted to get someplace where no one would bother her.
Now, she sat in Voyager’s mess, cradling a coffee