Ghost of a Chance - Mark Garland [31]
Especially Jonal, despite the fact that she saw nothing at all wrong with him, specifically. Nothing dire, certainly...
It was the fault of her untrusting, unsociable Klingon side, she imagined; perhaps she wasn't unusually perceptive, just cursed.
She finished her porridge and stood up, regarding the others. In a way it was getting harder to dislike these strange visitors, and easier to understand why If they got her the relay she wanted, with no new; unmentioned strings attached... well, maybe it would all work out.
Jonal gazed glowingly at her. She looked into his eyes and tried to smile, but something inside her churned. She tasted yellow cereal at the back of her throat.
"I--I have to get going," she sputtered, swallowing. Then she left them sitting there.
CHAPTER 6
Janeway stood at the edge of a neatly cultivated field, straddling a row of low, leafy orange plants bearing small round fruit that reminded her of young tomatoes. Bushier plants grew in alternate rows starting thirty meters to her right. Squash, she thought, or something very much like it. The crew of Voyager wouldn't get a chance to sample much of this produce, though.
Everything in the field was dying.
Thick blackish-brown powder covered the land and all that grew from it to a depth of several inches. Rains had stiffened the early layers, but the soft dust on top led Janeway to believe it hadn't rained in a while. Someone had apparently been trying to keep the plants clean, the dust between the plants was deeper than the dust on them, but efforts seemed to be falling behind.
Kim plucked a small young fruit from the plant at his feet, brushed it off, and tucked it into the sample bag at his waist.
He toed the plant and dislodged a thick cascade of dust and soot that tumbled from its stems and leaves. Clumps of the dark stuff still clung tenaciously to the plant.
"Definitely volcanic ash," Janeway said, reading its composition from her tricorder.
Kim held up his own tricorder and resumed scanning. "Most of it fairly recent, I'd say," he noted. "I'm surprised there's not more of it, judging by the activity in those mountains."
He pointed due south. A ridge of mighty peaks could be seen well in the distance, much like those just east of their current position, though more extensive. The southern mountains featured two great plumes of angry black smoke that rose seemingly to the top of the sky--the same clouds that the shuttle had flown through on its way down.
Janeway adjusted her tricorder from geologic scans back to the electromagnetic range. She instructed Kim to resume scanning for bioelectric and organic signatures in the direction of the largest village, nearer the eastern hills. As had been the case early on, the results were immediate.
"I'm reading multiple life signs, humanoid, and they're definitely on the move. They're approaching from the east, from the village, I'd say, Captain."
They had scanned this same group of people earlier. Few details could be discerned from such a distance, but they had assumed the party was headed toward the downed shuttle. Now that assumption seemed correct.
"Range?"
"Just under two kilometers."
"I don't think that's the only company we've got, either."
Janeway turned slightly, allowing the tricorder to triangulate more accurately. "There. EM scan."
Kim recalibrated his own tricorder, waited, then slowly nodded.
"These readings are definitely artificial. And they seem to coincide with the ferric metals readings we've been getting. I'd say it's the same source."
Janeway frowned. "So would I."
"I put the contact no more than a kilometer or so the other side of the village, near the hills."
"What would you say are the chances it's a Televek cruiser that's landed?"
"I'd say the chances are pretty good, Captain."
They stood staring out across the fields toward the forests beyond. A bristled carpet