Pathways - Jeri Taylor [4]
Suddenly Neelix spoke up. The orange-tufted Talaxian was wearing one of his typically garish outfits, but it looked unusually subdued in the darkened room. “A picnic,” he said tentatively.
Everyone turned to him. “Picnic?” echoed Chakotay. He sensed this was important. “Are you saying we were on a picnic?”
Neelix looked momentarily confused. “I think so . . . I can almost remember the captain telling me I should pack food for . . .” He trailed off vaguely, unable to come up with anything more.
But it had triggered others’ thinking. “On a planet,” called out Harry Kim, the black-haired operations officer. “We all went to the surface of a planet.”
“He’s right,” chimed in Seven, the beautiful blond human woman who had lived most of her life as a member of a Borg collective, and who had been on Voyager for less than a year. “The captain said we all needed to get out and stretch our legs. I remember thinking that was an odd thing to do.”
Several people smiled at that. Seven had made remarkable strides in her return to humanity, but some of the nuances still escaped her. Her memory, however, fueled that of several more people, and as they all began tossing out the bits and pieces they recalled, the story began to emerge.
It was Tom Paris who remembered the sickly-sweet smell in the air, as soon as he’d opened the hatch of the shuttle, and when he mentioned it, many of the group added their similar recollections.
“It started suddenly,” said B’Elanna pensively. “One second it wasn’t there, and then it was overpowering.”
“It must’ve been a gas of some kind,” speculated Chakotay, “but did it occur naturally? Or were we purposely attacked?”
“The fact that we’re here—wherever here is—tells me someone did it to us,” offered Tom. “We were gassed and then dumped into this room.”
They had found no evidence of any entrance or exit to the room—no doors, no windows, no control pad. Nothing but the bare walls and the few weak lights, nothing to give them any clue as to their location. They could be anywhere.
It was Tom, through his pilot’s feel for such things, who correctly surmised where they were, although his guess wouldn’t be verified for many hours, when they were finally released. “We’re on a spaceship,” he announced, “I’d bet anything on it. It just feels like a ship flying at warp speed.”
This was disheartening. If they were being taken away from the planet where they had succumbed, then they were probably being taken away from Voyager. They had no ship and no captain, and didn’t know the fate of the crew who had remained with the ship. They were boxed into a cramped, dark room with no apparent way in or out, and at the mercy of whoever had attacked them.
And they were all wildly thirsty. The gas had left them with aching heads and parched mouths, and every one of them craved a cooling drink of water, but they all sensed that was unlikely.
What none of them knew was that this was the most comfortable they were to be for a long time.
Chakotay was having a vivid and frightening dream involving a forest fire from which he was trying to escape, when a sudden lurch jolted him awake. He sat up and saw that Tom had felt it, too. “We’ve entered an atmosphere,” said Tom. They both felt the sensation of a descending ship.
At almost the same moment, a disembodied voice filled the room, rasping and harsh. “Prepare to disembark,” it announced, and then was silent.
They weren’t sure how long they had been on this mysterious ship. The effect of the gas they had inhaled was enervating, and soon after the head count, most of them had fallen asleep, though for how long they couldn’t be sure. Chakotay hoped that some of the mysteries were soon to be solved.
The vessel seemed to slow, and soon after there was a heavy impact which they could feel in their bones. Then nothing.
They waited, disciplined and alert, for whatever was to come next. Most felt anxiety to one degree or another, but were experienced enough not to manifest it. They stood