Pathways - Jeri Taylor [96]
Why had he gone away? Why wasn’t she ever told?
Then she realized: She could have known. If she had answered his messages at the Academy, she would have that knowledge. He had offered to share it, wanted to explain, wanted to see her and perhaps even love her again.
But she hadn’t had the courage to contact him.
And so she would die here on this forsaken planetoid never knowing the great mystery of her life, never having the opportunity to force her Klingon fierceness into submission and to become as human as she possibly could. And it would have been so easy . . .
She felt sleepy. Was this what it was like to die? This drowsy peacefulness? Why was it so feared, then, if it was this easy? Of course her mother had always taught her that the best death, the honorable death, was in battle. And that might not be as gentle as this. She’d heard tales all her life of glorious Klingon battles, and the heroes who died in horrible, if honorable, circumstances. Better this placid death, this serene acceptance of the inevitable. She could do without honor . . .
A pressure, a weight, was lifted from her and she imagined this was the moment of death. A release of earthly bonds, a lightening, and then the journey—where? Was there a destination? Or would oblivion follow, a nothingness? That might be preferable to the unknown . . .
Then she realized that the lifting of pressure was her release from the network of boulders. A hand was pulling at her arm—it hurt!—tugging and tugging until she thought her arm would be pulled from its socket, and then suddenly she was ascending through the waters of the stream, choking, gasping, taking water into her lungs, thrashing wildly but held in an inexorable grip until she broke the surface.
Tom was pulling her toward shore. She was coughing wildly, trying to expel the water she had sucked into her lungs. And she was freezing cold. This was altogether more unpleasant than the watery tomb had been.
Tom flung her onto shore and crawled after her. She looked up at him between coughing bouts and saw that his face was pale, his sandy hair hanging in sodden tendrils over his eyes. “Okay,” he was saying, “okay, you’re going to be all right.”
The hacking bouts diminished and she struggled to a sitting position. She felt queasy and her throat burned from coughing. She tried to speak, but the effort triggered another eruption of coughs, and the sour taste of the stream water stung her mouth. Tom rubbed her back helplessly.
Finally, she was able to talk. “Thanks,” she rasped, and felt horribly guilty at the trick she had intended to play on him.
“I can’t believe you’re still alive,” he said, and his voice reflected his concern. “You were down there forever. Until those stones fell, I didn’t even know where to look.”
She took several deep breaths. Gradually, her body was beginning to feel normal again. “Tom,” she croaked, “can we send a subspace message from the shuttle?”
He shook his head. “Not through the plasma storms in the Badlands. We’ll have to wait until we rendezvous with Chakotay.”
She got to her feet. “Then let’s get that cabin put up. I have to contact someone in Mexico.”
He looked at her quizzically, but she had already set off through the woods. She wanted to finish their task as quickly as possible. The answers to the great questions of her life were within her grasp.
That was almost the full extent of her interaction with Tom Paris before he disappeared. A day later they were attacked by two Cardassian vessels and, while the Liberty managed to destroy them, it was left badly damaged. Chakotay had sent Tom in a shuttle to bring help, but Tom never returned. So much, thought Torres, for loyalty.
Chakotay had returned from Bajor with a new crew member, a dark Vulcan named Tuvok. B’Elanna welcomed the return of a Vulcan to their midst, but her mind wasn’t really on Maquis activities at the moment. She told Chakotay she had to send some subspace messages and he gave his permission, warning her only to disguise the location of the transmission origin.
She spent