Flashback - Diane Carey [37]
The helmsman watched his proximity sensors. "They're closing. Four hundred kilometers. . . three hundred . . . two hundred . . . one hundred . . . fifty kilometers . . ."
Staring, Janeway wondered what the hell Sulu was waiting for-to be able to smell the Klingons' armpits before he took action? Fifty kilometers was spitting distance! "Engage!" Sulu barked abruptly. Everybody flinched as if they hadn't been expecting it.
The ship shook, shuddered, and rumbled as the engines shot to high warp like a ball impelled out of a cannon. Seconds passed.
With a sigh of victory, Rand reported. "We've lost them, sir."
"Back from the dead," Sulu said, congratulating.
Janeway turned to Tuvok. "So that's how he got
out of it. He actually used the fact that they had no
technology with which to read another ship's warp
power-up."
"Yes," Tuvok said tonelessly. "Tuvok," Janeway said, using his name as a bridge to pull him back to their purpose. "Everything we've seen so far leads up to this moment. Whatever the critical detail is, it occurred sometime before this. I'm betting it had something to do with the Azure Nebula. I want you to go back to the moment when you first saw the nebula. What happened?"
He thought briefly, then told her, "Captain Sulu expected it would take approximately five hours to traverse the nebula and enter Klingon space. He decided that my shift needed some rest, so we returned to the crew quarters . . ."
As if dictated by an unseen magician, the walls around them winked out and turned bright.
Crew quarters. What a surprise.
A few young officers were taking to their bunks. At Janeway's left, Tuvok was on the lower bunk now, with Valtane lounging above on the upper bunk.
She held still a moment. Tuvok's mind was trying to show her something. The least she could do was be polite and watch.
"I attempted to get some sleep," Tuvok said, as if speaking to no one in particular. "But my bunk mate, Dimitri Valtane, felt the need to discuss our situation."
Valtane leaned over the edge of the bunk. "Tuvok? Are you asleep?"
"No."
"Me neither. I can't believe we're really doing this! I didn't think the captain had it in him."
"Had what in him?"
"You know-the guts. To defy orders and go off on a rescue mission to save his old friends."
"I take it from the tone of your voice that you admire this trait," Tuvok said icily.
"Yeah! It's courageous!"
"It is illogical and reckless," the Vulcan insisted. "Which I attempted to point out to him on the bridge."
Valtane looked down again. "Come on, Tuvok. Isn't this more fun than charting gaseous anomalies?"
Tuvok's brows came down on the idea. "The human fascination with 'fun' has led to many tragedies in your short but violent history. One wonders how your race has survived having so much 'fun.'"
Janeway almost spoke up, instead puckering her lips against pointing out that the short but violent history of humanity was also a short but astonishingly productive one that settled and bonded the Alpha Quadrant in just decades, whereas other spacefaring cultures had failed to do that in hundreds of years.
That wouldn't exactly advance the moment, and she needed to follow Tuvok's train of thought, not her own.
Still, she wished she'd really been there.
"Vulcans!" Valtane teased. "You guys need to relax!"
"No," Tuvok decided. "I will not 'relax.' Ever since I entered the Academy, I have had to endure the egocentric nature of humanity. You believe that everyone in the galaxy should be like you. That we should all share your sense of humor and your human values."
Valtane's smile dropped away. "Well, if you hate it here so much, why'd you join Starfleet in the first place?"
Evidently a touchy question, given the changes on Tuvok's face. Was he now the Tuvok of eighty years
ago, or was he Janeway's Tuvok playing a role? How much was the role consuming him?
"I joined," he explained, "under pressure from my parents. However, I have already decided to resign my commission once this assignment