Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [173]
The kicker was she’d brought them on herself. So had the captain. Just like Chakotay’s fireflies on a summer’s night-because when the sensors multiphased, they thought it was us, signaling to start a dialogue. They thought we understood.
Her translator sputtered: No why, no why.
Okay, so they didn’t understand. What would they get? Her mind flashed to the briefing room, the images. Seven: The column moved. “Are they moving?” She thought, frantically, for something the Nimtra could latch onto. “Do they… reorganize elsewhere?”
This time, they came back fast: Yes. Not we.
Not we. Did they mean one person? Probably. Who? And what to do now? She checked their depth. Still too far down to raise Voyager… and then she thought: Wait, I hailed the captain. The channel opened; I heard it.
Voyager was too far away. But she wasn’t.
How? If the Flyer had passed the sub on the way down, surely they’d have seen them. But they hadn’t.
“The column moved,” she whispered. Her voice sounded hollow in the helmet. “When I told them who I was and why I was here, they moved.” She knew what that cost the Nimtra: more kinetic energy, and some of them just ceased. Their information de-cohered. But they understood, knew what they’d done without meaning to and wanted to help. Maybe, atone.
Quickly, she brought up the multiphasic sensors. (Now that the Nimtra understood what the sensors were, they stayed out of the way.) Looking, looking… a surge of elation coursed through her veins. Two combadge signals, close enough for a transporter lock. “I got you, I got you, just hold on.”
Then, she paused. Four people. Had to assume Chakotay and the captain were both alive. Couldn’t work it any other way. Four people.
Her eyes roved over the Flyer. Superheated air thinned to the equivalent of six thousand meters above sea level. Unbreathable.
And three… working… suits.
She wasted a minute trying to figure an angle. It wasn’t the mechanics so much; she knew she could do it. She’d beamed nucleogenic aliens in and out of containment fields a hundred times smaller. That wasn’t it. Only… she wasted thirty seconds, figuring how to make this fair. How to make it right.
Then she brought up her log. “Listen,” she said, as she punched in coordinates, “there’s one more thing.”
The voice didn’t come back. That was good. Janeway didn’t believe in angels.
She hit the seventh command. Then she watched her finger rise, suspend in midair as if suddenly weightless….
Cold water, I’ll breathe it in. A reflex, no way to stop it. Over fast. Ten seconds, maybe fifteen.
“Now,” she said-and hit the eighth command.
She had just enough time to see the water curl, roll, hurtle forward. She heard the roar. Felt the cold slap her face. She opened her mouth….
And then she saw the lights, and there were so many… how beautiful… how…
And then-nothing.
Marla felt it happen: that sudden hitch in her consciousness. A skip between one state of being and the next. Her vision blacked, folded, expanded.
And then she saw the lights. Everywhere. There were so many… how beautiful… how… she was cold, icy; she opened her mouth…
No, no, no, no! She flailed. It hurt. Her chest was on fire. Karl!
Then-how odd-her mind broke free and she floated high above toward… lights. Strange and weird and wonderful. So bright. But she was rising too fast; her air was mostly gone and now she was scared because she would rise too far too fast and never be safe, never…
Then, a miracle. A hand on her elbow. A voice in her ear. I’m here, Marla. It’s all right. Hold on tight, and don’t let go.
Karl pulling her down, reeling her in, holding her close. Keeping her safe.