Equinox - Diane Carey [24]
"We've overcome our share of obstacles," she attempted. That sounded wrong the instant she said it. Would he think she was trying to share, or compare? "Warp core breaches, ion storms, a few rounds with the Borg-"
"Borg? We haven't seen so much as a cube since the day we arrived."
"Consider yourself lucky." Her eyes crimped in disapproval. That was perfectly heartless. Why wouldn't this conversation go right?
Ransom didn't seem to take it the way she thought it sounded. "Have you ever run into the Krowtonan Guard?"
"Never heard of them."
The other captain paused for a moment, and his shoulders sank. "That's how we spent our first week in the Delta Quadrant. They claimed we'd violated their territory. It was either circumvent their borders and add another six years to our journey ... or maintain course. I gave the order to keep going." His eyes tightened. "I lost thirty-nine. Half my crew."
Well, that was the end of the what-we've-been-through competition. Janeway's heart skipped as she gazed at him. She couldn't even come close to that one.
"I'm sorry," she offered warmly.
Neither the sympathy nor the memory was doing Ransom any good, unless it helped at all to talk to an-
other captain about it, unburdening himself for the first time to an equal. "We never recovered from that loss," he said. "It changed everything ..."
He looked at her, but only for a moment. He stopped talking.
"What do you mean?" Janeway encouraged, hoping he would keep talking, get it over with. Did she have to tell him it was off the record?
"When I first realized that we'd be traveling through the Delta Quadrant for the rest of our lives," he went on, struggling, "I told my crew we had a duty as Starfleet officers to expand our knowledge and uphold our principles. After a couple of years, we started to forget we were explorers. There were times when we nearly forgot we were human beings."
Offering silent solace for a few moments, Janeway reflected on how hard it must have been to uphold higher principles when just eating was a critical factor. Exploration was a pretty goal, but the starving explore for only one reason.
"This is a Nova-class science vessel," she comforted, beginning with the painfully obvious and working around to the rest, as if going up a ramp. "Designed for short-term research missions. Minimal weapons ... you can't even go faster than warp eight. Frankly, I don't know how you've done it. You've obviously traveled as far as we have, with much fewer resources."
She held back from complimenting him that half his crew mostly survived, realizing how hollow that would
sound and the counterpart of the favor was very, very sour. Half hadn't
"I wish I could take all the credit," Ransom handed back. "But we stumbled across a wormhole. M ade a few enhancements to our warp engines ..."
He stopped with that. She sensed there was more, knew that B'Elanna was having some trouble with the warp core.
"May I ask you something, captain to captain?" Ransom began after a moment of hesitation. "The Prime Directive. How often have you broken it for the sake of protecting your crew?"
"Broken it?" The eternal haunting question. "Never," she said before really thinking. "Bent it... on occasion. And even then, it was a difficult choice."
Now who was holding back?
"What about you?" she reversed.
"Oh, I've walked that line once or twice. Nothing serious."
Somehow it seemed like the conversation was over. They weren't being open anymore. They weren't equals anymore. Something had changed and Janeway wasn't sure what that something was. They were the only two Starfleet captains in the Delta Quadrant. They had to make up new rules as they struck new situations, encountered civilizations that had never even heard of the Federation and had no idea or any care about its influence. The weight of that played hard