Seven of Nine - Christie Golden [63]
They were helping her. It was as if she had unseen comrades, ready to share their advice and experience.
If so, they would be her only comrades for the near future. No one on Voyager would listen to her. They were unwitting pawns of the Skedans still on board.
She could not rely on anyone save herself.
Seven assessed the situation. Tamaak and his companions had locked the door. She did not have the authority to override the computer system.
There were no tools here in sickbay for repair work.
Then be creative-use your imagination! The old, raspy voice of an aging artist inside her mind.
Seven hurried to the tool kit and rummaged through it. She found an exoscalpel. "Crude, but efficient," she said aloud, and turned back toward the door. After all, a cutting tool was a cutting tool.
Several minutes later, Seven had raided the ammunition closet and was running full speed for the transporter room before the Skedans could trick someone into shutting that down, too. She had tried to communicate with Janeway and the away team on the surface, but the thorough Skedans had left nothing to chance. All communications with the away team had been severed, and the only way to warn them was to go to the surface herself.
The door to the transporter room hissed open.
Fortunately, the room was empty. Seven hurriedly punched in the same coordinates as the away team, and stepped onto the platform. The transporter room shimmered about her for an instant, then she found herself in an open street.
Open, save for the thousands who crowded it.
Seven fought back the urge to strike out and calmly pulled out a tricorder. Janeway, Tuvok, and Neelix were approximately a kilometer away. No one seemed to react to her presence, and indeed, in a place this crowded with representatives of so many places, Seven of Nine hardly stood out.
She adjusted the tricorder and nodded to herself.
Tamaak, Imraak, and Shemaak were heading directly for the Central Octagon. Seven reached for her commbadge automatically, to share the news of the danger with her captain, then lowered her hand as she remembered that Tamaak had taken her commbadge.
That settled it, then. Seven would follow the little band of terrorist Skedans alone. She did not wish to lose precious time.
It will be like stalking the skorrak bird, came an excited thought.
There are so many of the m! sent Shemaak to her two companions.
Yes, Imraak replied. So many of them and so very few of us now, thanks to them.
Tamaak was weary of the incessant pounding of Imraak's hatred. The average Lhiaarian knows nothing of what happened. They didn't even know there was a Borg attack, much less that Beytek covered up the incident. Cease blaming the race, Imraak. We know where the fault truly lies.
He carried the precious Sphere and maneuvered his way through the crowd. No one even noticed them.
Years ago, when he and the rest of the Circle of Seven had devised the plan to exact revenge upon the Emperor, Tamaak had gone to sleep every night comforted with dreams of this hour. Now that the time had finally arrived, after much longer than any of them had expected, he felt no elation, only a grim sense of duty.
It would not bring his family back. But it would honor their memories.
It would serve justice, and that would have to suffice.
The almost stunning blow of Shemaak's naked terror make Tamaak stumble.
He whipped his head around, clutching the precious orb, and his own fear flooded him.
Not eight meters away, now revealed, now obscured by the tide of visitors for Tribute, stood the black, chitinous shape of a Ku. By the agitation of his body, Tamaak guessed the thing had seen them. The Ku were the only creatures Tamaak had ever encountered who naturally could not be affected by Skedan telepathy. Even the Borg needed their artificial implants to screen it out. But Ku brains were different, just as the Ku were different.
Not now. Not when they