Flashback - Diane Carey [19]
"Doing what on purpose?"
"Twisting my meaning."
"You bet I am."
He shook his head again and pushed himself straight. "Then I don't know what to say."
"You've said it," she consoled. "I understand your concern, and I appreciate your loyalty. I think you're underestimating yourself, actually, but we can have that discussion some other time."
The captain stood up and strode around to the front of her desk, to deplete that sense of captain-subordinate that prevailed when she sat back there and struck out from heaven.
"Commanding Voyager," she began, "in the strange dilemma we're having to live with daily. It's not a matter of looking out for the crew's well-being or making sure nothing happens to myself. We're facing challenges and enemies that no one in the Federation ever had to face before. No Federation starship has ever been so far from home space. Most starships expect to face the unknown, but not every single day."
Leaning back on her desk, she hitched a thigh up there and tried to appear comfortable with the idea of what she was planning, so he would feel comfortable too.
"A crocodile is hunting one of us," she said. "It's just below the surface, and we can't see it if we don't put our heads into the water and look around down there. It could be any of us, but we should consider ourselves fortunate that it's Tuvok and there's a way inside. Right now the croc has the advantage, and I mean to take possession of that. Part of being the captain of this particular crew, on this ship in this quadrant, is being willing to go identify my enemy and being willing to go wherever I have to go in order to face it down. Whether the threat is to one crewmember or all of us, this is my job. Even if Tuvok weren't my trusted confidant and someone I consider my friend, it's still my job. I've got a running fix on my enemy, and this is the only way I can fight it. If I end up disabled and have to string beads in the infirmary for the rest of the voyage, well. . . just do me a favor."
That half-grin pulled at Chakotay's lips again, because he knew he'd been beaten. "Anything, Captain."
"Knit me a bib, will you? I'd hate to drool on my uniform."
CHAPTER
7
STRANGE WAY TO BEGIN A MISSION. SEATED, FACE-TO-face as if they were about to play patty-cake.
Janeway tried to breathe deeply and evenly as she looked at Tuvok. Around them, the Doctor and Kes were preparing monitors that displayed two diagrams, two separate brain patterns. For a few moments Janeway couldn't control a childish fascination with her own brain pattern.
Like looking inside a bad cut before it's mended . . .
And looking inside somebody else's-Tuvok's brain patterns were completely different from hers. For the first time she wondered if perhaps Chakotay weren't a little bit right. She was venturing into utterly alien territory, alien from her species, alien from her culture. Had she pretended to know Tuvok
well enough to pull this off? Was she doing him a favor of devotion or subjecting him to inadequate help?
The Doctor came over to them, said nothing, but fitted a fresh neural device to Tuvok's head, then fitted one to Janeway's. She heard its faint buzz against her skull, even fainter than a nerve twitch. She'd crossed a line now. If she backed out, she'd have to tell them to take the thing off, and that would be tantamount to abandonment of Tuvok. The simple gesture alone would stick with her for the rest of her life, and she'd know she had let him slip over the cliff.
No, she'd stick to her plan and hope Chakotay knew how to knit.
"We're ready when you are, Captain," the Doctor said.
Suddenly embarrassed that she had to be prodded, Janeway nodded to Tuvok.
He had evidently been waiting for that.
Now he lifted his hands slowly. He stopped blinking at all, rapt in concentration. His hands were like sculptures as they spread to the shape of Janeway's face and