Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [27]
“I’ve been spending time with Kes,” B’Elanna said, surprising herself for actually telling him that.
“Well, that’s enough to make anyone tense,” he answered in his infuriating sarcastic voice.
B’Elanna clenched her fists. “She had the gall to say that I’m not nice.”
Tom finally looked concerned. “Really? That doesn’t sound like Kes. What were you doing at the time?”
“Trying to teach her to play hoverball.”
“I take it it wasn’t going well?”
B’Elanna shook her head. “It was too early to know. She hadn’t put any practice time in.” She looked down at the floor. “Okay, she was pretty awful. Somehow that ended up being my fault.”
“Really?” Tom said, his head cocked. “You were such a terrible teacher that you actually hindered her amazing innate athletic talents?”
“Kahless, no! I’m not sure she has any athletic talents at all.”
“I guess I’m not surprised,” Tom said, leaning back against the body of his car. “With the mental abilities Ocampa supposedly have, why would they need physical skills like that?”
“So she knew she’d be terrible?”
“Not necessarily. Why did she want to play hoverball, anyway?”
“She says she’s been having trouble controlling her anger. She wanted the ‘big, bad Klingon’ to try and help her with that. Anbo-jytsu had already flopped, so…”
“Ah.” Tom suddenly seemed to understand everything. “I guess she’s having trouble getting rid of that Tieran fellow.”
“I told her that I stay balanced through exercise.”
“But that didn’t help her.”
“No, and I’m sorry about that, but there’s nothing else I can do.” She turned to leave the holodeck. Tom’s voice stopped her.
“She asked you to help her, B’Elanna. You. She does a lot for this crew. Can’t you give her one more try?”
B’Elanna wanted to scream. “I don’t know how!”
Tom’s hand on her shoulder turned her back around. She shrugged off his touch. “Let’s think about this,” Tom said quietly. “Anbo-jytsu and hoverball are pretty intense. Violent and competitive. Obviously, that’s not going to work for Kes.” He wandered over to his sheet of car parts.
“You know something?” he asked. “I took the engine completely apart.”
“Why?” B’Elanna asked, bewildered by the sudden change of subject. “Wasn’t it running?”
“Yeah, it was running,” Tom said. “But I didn’t like the way it sounded. It would knock every couple of minutes. So I started tinkering with it and eventually,” he gestured at the parts, “I needed to rebuild the whole engine.”
“And this is what you think of as fun?”
“Oh, yeah,” Tom answered. “Building something from scratch, all by myself? You bet. Creativity can be just as rewarding as playing hard and winning.”
B’Elanna stared at him. He looked expectant, waiting for her to make a leap of intuition. “So, you’re saying we should rebuild an engine?”
“Well, maybe not an engine, but do something productive that you can cooperate on rather than competing with each other. Something where Kes won’t be either a winner or a loser.” He paused, probably trying to think of a way to completely convince her. “Consider it a challenge.”
“I haven’t got time to build a new holoprogram,” B’Elanna insisted, still doubtful.
“Check out Chakotay’s programs. He’s got some wilderness-type ones there that might work. Stuff like log cabins and boats.” He shuddered, then went back to his car’s open hood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I only have this holodeck for another twenty minutes and I promised myself I’d clean out the engine frame by then.”
Well, she guessed the least she could do was look and see what Chakotay had.
Kes paced her quarters, remembering the pain she and Tieran had caused and the pain she might still bring if she wasn’t careful. When her door chimed, she sped to the manual release, thankful for the diversion. The door swooshed open to reveal Lieutenant Torres, back in her black and gold uniform.
Kes had just opened her mouth to apologize again when the engineer asked, “Having a rough evening?”
Kes