Equinox - Diane Carey [23]
How much did she know? He'd told her everything, hadn't he? All about the stasis chamber and the enemy aliens, the experiments, the captain's decision to keep going... she'd understood and been comforting about it. She'd even laughed that he was worried about how they'd all react to the story. Yes, he'd told her.
Or was it the sedative talking? Was Seven still here?
"You are to rest," she said. "Good-bye."
Lessing reached out with the last of his ability to focus and grasped her arm. "Seven ... you saved my life. I hope... you never regret that..."
As he lowered himself to lie down on the biobed and Seven adjusted his newly healed legs into place so he wouldn't slip off, Lessing watched her beautiful blond hair in its tight twist and thought it looked like the swept tails of those animals they'd been experimenting on. Over and over in his mind he saw those creatures flying, fighting, screaming, their yellow tails sweeping and curled in fear and pain and anger.
He closed his eyes and dreamed of home, and knew he wasn't there yet.
Minimal power restored-good. A blip or two of encouraging light where an hour ago there had been dimness and collapse. A few consoles up and running, flashing eagerly, as if they were enjoying getting to do their jobs again, feeling the flush of unruptured energy through repair cables and coils.
Janeway reconnected two more fusion circuits and nodded with satisfaction. Beside her, Rudy Ransom picked at a station with greatly enhanced familiarity. Oh, a Starfleet engineering panel was a Starfleet panel, meet one, meet them all, but after a few years of personal treatment they started to act individually. Ships got personality just as babies did. They started out cut from the same die, only later to get the little bangs and bumps that set them apart, tiny repairs, stresses, quirks, strengths and weaknesses, each to its own. Ransom treated his ship's circuitry like errant puppies
responding to his snap, and it worked. Everything he
did happened ten seconds faster than anything Janeway did. He seemed proud of that, and she let him have it.
Behind them, several more of Voyager's technical specialists were at work, resetting and repairing, replacing bent or smashed trunk sites and monitor screens, fingerpads, and crystal displays. There was a heightened sense of purpose even in the low-keyed banter as they spoke to each other.
Everyone seemed happy, except the Equinox crew.
They seemed self-conscious, distracted, close-mouthed. That was it... they were the ones who were supposed to be the happiest people around.
Oh, was that selfish! Janeway chided herself for these thoughts. Expecting others to act as she thought she might? Pretty unfair. She really didn't know what they'd been through. She and Voyager had experienced their logful of horrors, but few of them had sustained for the sheer months on end what Equinox had dealt with. What does that do to people crammed together on a small science ship with limited battle-readiness?
"I couldn't help but notice," she began, hoping to crinkle the ice a little more with Ransom, "that your crew calls you by your first name."
He tipped his head in either a nod or a shrug. "When you've spent as much time in the trenches as we have, rank and protocol are luxuries. Besides, we're a long way from Starfleet Command."
"I know the feeling," she said.
Did she? As much as he did?
"You seem to run a tight ship," he commented, attempting to hand back the problem to her. Maybe it was a compliment.
"We've been known to let our hair down from time to time, but I find that maintaining protocol reminds us of where we came from," she said, "and hopefully where we're going."
"I'd say it's worked quite well for you."
Janeway paused. Had he put an emphasis on "for you," or was she imagining it? Suddenly she felt a little self-conscious herself, a little class-guilty about having
this