Have Tech, Will Travel (SCE Books 1-4) - Keith R. A. DeCandido_. [et al.] [68]
Gomez wasn’t superstitious, but this was a bad way to start a mission. Her boots rang loudly as she stepped onto the transporter pad.
“Core-Breach got you?” asked Duffy.
“Kaboom,” she replied softly. He grinned a little, then looked away quickly. Too quickly. It would take more time than this to get used to each other again.
Geordi, too, was smiling. She felt a trace of annoyance. She didn’t want La Forge to see any division in the ranks, any hint that she couldn’t take care of subordinates. She wished Gold hadn’t ordered him to accompany the away team. This ought to have been her mission.
It was only now that she realized that 110 was missing. Her dark brows drew together in a frown. “Where is—”
The door hissed open. 110 stood there for a moment, looking around as if lost. Gomez’s vexation with Geordi evaporated. Dammit, 110 seemed so very tiny, so very fragile in his envirosuit. So . . . alone. There was something very strange to her about seeing a single Bynar, something wrong about it. Like watching a Vulcan laugh at a joke. That wasn’t the way this culture was meant to be.
Were they pushing him too hard? Was 110 really ready for another assignment, without a chance to properly mourn and reconnect with his people?
Hesitantly at first, then with more determination, 110 moved into the room. He clambered onto the transporter pad and craned his neck to look up, first at La Forge and then Gomez, with unreadable dark eyes.
“We—I—apologize for being late, Commander.”
“Don’t worry about it, 110,” said Gomez, with more warmth than she had intended to show.
She looked up at Wong, who was awaiting their order to transport.
“Energize,” said Gomez.
. . . Jaldark . . . ?
They materialized in hell.
The command center looked like a torture chamber to a horrified Duffy. It was a huge, domed area, but there was no skylight letting in the softening light of the stars. The area was completely enclosed. There appeared to be no exits. All was metal, heavy and cumbersome-looking. Everything seemed the same—the arching ceiling, the consoles, the walls. What little light there was was red and eerie, casting a pulsing, bloody hue over the alien equipment and the macabre centerpiece of the disturbing scene.
For, in the center of the room, its decaying limbs splayed at an odd angle, a corpse was strapped into a chair.
“So it did have a crew,” said La Forge softly, sadly.
“Or at least a pilot,” said Gomez.
Duffy admired the calmness of her voice. Sometimes it was hard to believe this was the same big-eyed girl who’d spilled hot chocolate all over Captain Picard just a few short years ago. But, of course, she wasn’t really the same. She had changed, just as he had, in the intervening decade or so.
Gomez stepped forward and shone her wrist-lamp over the humanoid body.
La Forge and Duffy stepped beside her. Duffy began to take tricorder readings.
“As Commander La Forge reported earlier, the atmosphere in here is perfectly breathable,” he said to whoever was listening. “It never shut down after the pilot’s death. That’s why the body’s rotting.”
“Let’s not take our suits off just yet, shall we?” said La Forge. Faulwell and 110, less interested in the dead body than in the computer that might be coaxed to yield information, stepped over to the consoles and began to analyze them. They spoke together in low voices, Faulwell occasionally bending over to hear 110 better. They seemed to be having a hard time figuring out where to begin. For the first time in a while, Duffy heard the oddly musical sound of the Bynar language, as 110 adjusted the blinking buffer he always kept at his side. Duffy wondered why 110 was talking in his native tongue. Could he simply have forgotten there was no one here who could understand him?
La Forge