Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [165]
Fine, throw me in the brig. Then you can find someone else to fix your toilets and everyone can just leave me alone.
She stabbed the table with the point of her right forefinger. “Oh, I feel really valued here. I’m a first-class engineer unplugging toilets. I do scutwork. You guys talk this great game about how we’re all one big happy crew, but it’s shit. It’s garbage, it’s…”
Eyes stinging with angry tears she looked away. Damn it, damn him! And where was security? Why hadn’t they already come for her? Her neck was hot, and she felt sweat crawling down her neck. She still had her mug in her left hand, her grip so tight her knuckles were white and tented her skin. When she could face Chakotay again, his face blurred and wavered, and she knew that he knew she was crying-and that made her even angrier.
Don’t pity me, don’t you dare…
“I’ll tell you what doesn’t make sense,” she said all in a rush, the words tumbling out before she really heard what she was saying-though as soon as she did, she figured this kind of hissy fit, she might as well step in it. “Janeway said we had to earn her trust. Well, how do you do that fixing toilets and showers and replicators and whatever else-and never hear anything that’s not an order? You want to earn someone’s trust, that person’s got to know you’re alive. To the captain, we’re just cargo. Just… just…”
Her common sense, clamoring now: Get out; you’ve done enough; he heard you; everyone heard you, now just leave….
She stood abruptly, jolting the table, sloshing coffee. “I’m sorry… I need to go. Sir. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but… I’m… I’m fine. I understand if you want to post a reprimand… it’s what I deserve, it’s fine. Really. Sir. Just… permission to be dismissed.”
“Permission?” Chakotay regarded her with something Marla hadn’t seen in quite a while: compassion. Then he said something that absolutely stunned her. “Marla, we’re just having coffee.”
And the hell of it? She almost, almost stayed. Having coffee with someone sounded… nice. It sounded… normal. What people did.
Except there was that little voice that sneered at how stupid she was because no matter how sincere Chakotay seemed, no one would ever, ever forget the Equinox. Or forgive either-not a god she didn’t believe in, not Janeway, not her. Not anybody.
Instead, Marla whirled on her heel and walked out: aware of the eyes, and of Chakotay still back there. She expected guards in the hall, but none came. So she kept going and didn’t look back. Not even once.
Eleven hours earlier…
“God, I hate the water,” said Janeway. Her palms were moist. She cut her eyes left, saw that Chakotay was busy with a course adjustment and gave her hands a quick wipe on her uniform trousers.
Terrific: First contact, and her as twitchy as two Bynars with the yips. Sure, she had a healthy degree of curiosity. The situation had all the ingredients: global warming, catastrophic melt, deserts and all that black water so sensor-opaque in spots their sensors spit out garbage. A little odd for water so dilute everywhere else thanks to the Falnari’s de-sal programs coupled with all those clouds dumping in fresh water; no good reason why they couldn’t get a clear idea of what was down there. But they couldn’t. So Chakotay was making leisurely passes now, plying newly modulated sensors in tandem with Voyager.
Chakotay glanced her way, a grin tugging the corners of his lips. “I thought zero-g training in the Coral Sea helped you get over not liking the ocean. At least, that’s what you told Crewman Celes.”
“I lied.”
“Really?” Chakotay’s black eyebrows inscribed nearly perfect twin arches. “It boggles the mind.”
“Don’t be snide.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at the view: a lip of star-studded space over a haze of atmosphere, a spiral of cloud to her left and a whorl of yellow-white light mingling with black water to