Equinox - Diane Carey [73]
"We need your guidance. Your 'spirits of good fortune' are attacking us."
"Of course they are! You've been killing them!"
Janeway sat up a little at the glimmer that she might have been right all along. "We're not the ones responsible."
"Equinox."
"That's right. Can you communicate with the aliens?"
Probably a bad choice of words. To them, she was an alien.
"Release my ship."
"I can't do that Not until you agree to talk to them."
The Ankari paused. He might've been consulting someone else. Janeway couldn't tell.
"/ will summon them. But you must talk to them. You must convince them."
The challenge-yes, that's what it was-left Janeway numb and uncertain. Did she have the right words?
These aliens lived on a completely different astral plane, developed under the most foreign of circumstances. Would they have a culture? A civilization? Would they look at her as an individual? She hadn't yet looked at them that way.
The cargo bay again. Now this was a place of conflict for Kathryn Janeway, a place forever stained with her encounter with Chakotay. As she came in, with Tuvok at her side, to meet the two Ankari representatives and their funny summoning device, the absence of Chakotay at her other side was a burning wound. She wanted him back. How would it look if she disobeyed her own order?
"I'm Captain Janeway," she introduced without asking their names. "This is Commander Tuvok. I'm sorry we don't have time to get to know each other. Summon the spirits, please."
Luckily, she'd remembered to throw in the "please" at the last minute. After all, despite the fact that she had an iron grip on their vessel, they were basically doing her a favor.
She glanced at Tuvok, who nodded once. The cargo bay was completely sealed off from the rest of the ship. If they died here, they would be the only ones.
"Bay shields down," Janeway ordered.
She didn't grasp her weapon, but kept her wrist pressed against it just in case. Her heart thudded in her chest. Her legs felt prickly, as if they were going numb. She recognized the feeling.
Tuvok worked a remote control for the outer shields. Almost immediately, the alien warning tone began to
whine in the air. Fissures opened above. Two... three ... some of them closed, but others opened, as if the spirits couldn't quite make up their minds whether they were attacking or not.
Get it over with. Kill us or talk. I've got fences to mend down here in humanland.
There was one-an alien, whipping about with its greenish tail curling and swashing. But it didn't attack. Janeway couldn't imagine what was different, unless the Ankari had primed the situation by explaining to them that this was a confab.
"They say," the Ankari captain began, "they want the humans to die."
Conveniently not human himself, Tuvok seemed to take this almost as a joke. "A difficult place to start a negotiation."
Janeway turned to the Ankari. "Will they understand me?"
The big swollen head bobbed. Probably a nod.
Stepping out into the middle of the cargo bay, where there was no chance of cover whatsoever, Janeway raised her voice. "We didn't do this to you. We're trying to stop the humans who did."
Three spirits now flashed in and out of the fissures, agitated. Funny how body language could be the same between astral planes of existence.
"They don't believe you would harm your own kind," the Ankari translated.
"We have rules of behavior," Janeway called. "The Equinox has broken those rules by killing your species. It's our duty to stop them."
The Ankari waited, listening to the enhanced shrieks and howls from the stirred-up spirits.
" 'Give us the Equinox' ... 'Give us the Equinox,' " he chanted. "They insist on destroying the ones who are responsible."
Tuvok, perhaps sensing Janeway's own level of agitation, was driven to speak up. "We will punish them according to our own rules. They will be imprisoned. They will lose their freedom."
Shrieks bellowing now at a perfect level of rage, the