Equinox - Diane Carey [74]
"All right!" she acceded. "If you stop your attacks, I'll deliver the Equinox to you!"
Tuvok swung into her periphery. "Captain, you would be violating countless protocols," he warned.
'To hell with protocols!" she roared. There had been enough loss already, professionally, personally, culturally. There wouldn't be any more, not another inch.
"Starfleet Command will hold you accountable," he told her sternly, ridiculous as that was.
"We're a long way from Starfleet Command," she bit off.
That sounded familiar...
Tuvok stopped short of grasping her arm as Chakotay might, but he did it with his voice. "Captain-"
She turned to him abruptly. "I've already confined my first officer to quarters. Would you like to join
him?" When he didn 't answer, she turned back to the Ankari. "Well?"
The Ankari eyed the spirits for several more seconds, listening to the whine and wail.
Finally the sound dropped away to a high-pitched buzz.
"They agree," he said.
CHAPTER 14
"WE'RE GOING TO NEED MORE FUEL. WE'VE ONLY got enough left to jump another five hundred light-years."
"Fuel... is that a euphemism for what we're using now? You mean we need to kill more life forms."
"Several more."
Sitting in his command chair, eaten up by the words he had just slapped Max's face with, Rudy Ransom was as hollowed out as he had ever been. This was like that first day after the first week, his mind crackling with grief and responsibility for the lost thirty-nine. The dead. His dead.
The count was starting to weigh on him again. He'd beaten it off until now. Janeway had brought it back.
She'd really pursued him, really fired on him. He hadn't thought she would.
Could she believe so much that he had committed crimes? Was he a mass murderer? She had no more reason to be sure of that than he did to be sure he wasn't. No one had communicated with those green whiplashes yet. He'd tried. He'd definitely tried.
Fired upon, by another Starfleet captain. The searing aftermath was hard to take, harder than the fight itself. He felt glued to his seat.
Burke hovered over him, waiting for orders. Poor Max expected him to give the order to summon more "fuel." The first officer's expression was less than helpful, carrying no sympathy at all, and in fact he seemed irritated that Ransom was lapsing into these inner questions.
Yes, of course. Max could see that something was happening to him. They'd always thought alike.
"Rudy, are you okay?" Burke ultimately urged.
Ransom blinked. "It's getting to me, Max."
Burke's eyes crimped. "Aw ... don't do this. Not now. Not when we've come so far."
Pushing out of his chair, Ransom killed the conversation, just as he had killed everything else around him, including his own conscience. Burke's cold-hearted anguish drilled horridly into Ransom's soul. Look what he'd turned his innocent crew into. Innocent Max, who'd started out so charmed and idealistic about their new mission to deep space. Innocent Maria-who wouldn't hurt an alligator if it were chewing her leg off-up there with her weapons trained behind them in the direction of a fellow Starfleet captain and her ship and the laws they all stood for.
The woman on the dune... she was still watching him from the far side of his mind.
"I'll be in the lab," he said. He gave no order for more fuel.
When he walked into the lab four minutes later, the first thing he heard was the damned distorted Voyager doctor singing some asinine tune while hunched over the table.
On the table lay the limp body of the beautiful woman. Ransom's skin crawled as he came around, saw closely the exposed Borg circuitry, the brain cavity, and The Doctor's probe. As The Doctor cheerily dug into the depths of the skull, Seven's groggy voice joined him in the last line of the song, something about