Equinox - Diane Carey [36]
"Or anyone to back him up," Kim pointed out,
empathizing. "What does it do to a captain to be that alone? Oh, I know-we're alone, too, but I've never felt like we were really all that much alone. Maybe Captain Janeway and Captain Ransom have felt differently. I've got the luxury of having a captain and a first officer to support me. Who've the captains got?"
Chakotay slumped back and slugged the last of his coffee, now cold and bitter.
"Just us," he said.
"Let me get this straight. You lived on a Borg Cube for nineteen years?"
Noah Lessing absorbed the idea with a shiver. Seven of Nine was aloof, cold, mechanical, gorgeous-but somehow he'd convinced himself she'd been Borgified for only a year or two. Nineteen ... That was almost her whole life. And almost his.
"A series of cubes," Seven explained as they hurried through the corridor. 'Twelve, in all. The Collective re-designates drones to optimize efficiency."
"Guess that makes you an army brat," he teased. "Me too. My father was a terraforming engineer. I lived on a dozen different colonies before I went to the Academy. It's a disorienting way to grow up."
"Drones adapt. I was never 'disoriented.' "
"This may sound like a strange question ... do you ever get homesick?"
She did something shockingly human-bobbed her brows. "This may sound like a strange answer. But yes."
Lessing smiled his easygoing smile. " 'Cube, Sweet Cube.' I can understand. Surrounded by like-minded people-"
"One mind, to be exact."
Oh, that was another shiver. One mind? To be only a cell in a body, without control or thought? He couldn't empathize with that one.
"Noah!" Maria Gilmore hurried to catch up with them. As Lessing turned to greet her, she asked, "Did you get a call from the captain?"
He nodded. "I'm heading there now."
He turned to Seven, knowing he shouldn't be fraternizing in a way from which he might not be able to cleanly extricate himself. He shouldn't get to like her too much.
"We'll continue our Q and A later," he said, then added to Gilmore, "She wants to learn more about humanity. But I'm afraid I've been asking all the questions. I'll keep my mouth shut next time."
Seven glanced at him and simply moved off down another corridor. He wasn't sure what that meant
"If there is a next time," Gilmore muttered when they were alone.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I have a feeling the captain isn't calling us to a social gathering," she told him, keeping her eyes moving. "When Janeway ordered him to abandon the Equinox, I saw the look on his face. He's got something on his mind."
"Rudy's face," Lessing said, only half jokingly, "isn't
that easy to 'read.' You don't think he's going to defy her, do you?"
"Wouldn't you? Our ship's still viable. His command hasn't been legally abrogated. I don't know about you, but this doesn't feel right."
"Leaving Equinox? Not fighting to keep our ship?"
"None of it feels right. Leaving, staying, fighting, not
fighting-----I've been concentrating on the aliens for
so long, I don't remember how to think any other way. I can't tell right from wrong anymore."
"That's not our job. Our job is to support our captain. Our captain."
Gilmore's expressive eyes worked in a troubled way. "Our captain ... aye."
They moved together through Voyager to the transporter room without saying anything more. Lessing experienced a surge of raw fear as the beam gripped him and he knew he was going back to the box in which he had almost died.
Yet, the pull of their own ship was almost tangible. They had fought for it so many times that they possessed it completely, in a thoroughly whole-souled way. He'd known in the back of his mind that he would come back. They all would. This was the platform