Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [70]
No, the ensign heard a voice tell him, a voice that rose from the depths of his psyche. You’re not going to fail. You’re going to straighten out this beam and complete your mission.
It took him a moment, but he figured out whose voice it was. It belonged to the woman who had refused to accept his fear and uncertainty, who had bared her own doubts to free him of his.
You make it, she had said. Somehow you make it and you get through to the other side.
The ensign could see Commander Wu staring at him across the captain’s desk, demonstrating a faith that had taken him by surprise. Not because you’re a Paris. Frankly, that couldn’t matter less to me. The reason I think you’re the best is because you are.
Paris’s teeth ground together. If Wu believed in him, who was he to give up on himself? If he failed in this mission, it sure as hell wouldn’t be for lack of trying.
Shakes or no shakes, he wrestled with the shuttle’s tractor controls, doing his best to keep Jiterica on something remotely resembling her intended course.
Picard was the last member of Simenon’s party to crawl out of the cave on the far side of the rock wall. As he did so, he saw his comrades shading their eyes and looking back.
“What is it?” the captain asked, using his fingers to comb back an unruly lock of hair plastered to his forehead.
Vigo pointed to the immense, dark gray barrier, first to a spot far on their left and then to another on their right. “We’ve taken the lead,” he said.
As Picard followed his weapons officer’s gestures, he saw that Vigo was right. Both of Simenon’s rivals and their teams were visible from here, and neither had benefited from the decision to go over the wall instead of under it.
The Aklaash were little more than halfway down, slowly and laboriously using a series of vines to lower each member of their party from ledge to narrow ledge. And the Fejjimaera group hadn’t even come that far. They were still in the vicinity of the summit, descending by use of hand-and footholds alone.
The captain nodded his approval. It was the first glimmer of hope they had gotten since the beginning of the contest. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.
After all, their underwater ordeal had been a grueling one. They were cold, their legs were rubbery, and their energy was at a decidedly low ebb. But the sight of the other teams’ positions was a tonic.
“Let’s go,” said Simenon, always the driving force behind their efforts. Still breathing heavily, he dragged his battered body away from the cavern mouth. “We’ve still got seven or eight kilometers to go.”
Ben Zoma looked as if he would have liked to rest for a moment. Like the engineer, he hadn’t quite caught his breath yet. Nonetheless, he followed Simenon without complaint into the towering woods on the other side of the wall.
Picard could do no less. “Come on,” he said to the others. “This lead will evaporate all too quickly if we don’t get a move on.”
Nor was he offering that simply as a spur. They might be ahead now, but the other teams could do a lot of catching up over the course of seven or eight kilometers.
And no doubt, they would.
* * *
Ensign Jiterica had a problem.
She could see the unconsumed portion of the Belladonna through the visual-analog apparatus built into her containment suit. It wasn’t far away, either—less than a kilometer, perhaps, its gray hull only partially obscured by drifts of fiery golden plasma. But the way she was whipping about on the end of the shuttle’s tractor beam made her wonder if she would ever reach the beleaguered vessel, much less get inside it.
The Nizhrak wanted to rescue the research scientists as much as anyone. To accomplish that goal, she would suffer any hardship, assume any risk. However, she couldn’t get herself across the space separating her from the Belladonna. That was the job of her colleague, Ensign Paris.
Commander Wu had said that Paris was a good pilot. She had told Jiterica that she would be in good hands. But clearly, the rescue effort wasn’t going as the commander had