String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [29]
Her badge chirped again, this time followed by a voice. “B’Elanna? Can you hear me?”
Harry. B’Elanna considered answering. Harry would know better than to ask stupid questions.
Tapping her badge, B’Elanna said, “Torres here. Things are a little tense down here, Harry, so make it quick. I’m busy.”
“We’re all busy, B’Elanna,” Harry snapped. “I just watched a transport disintegrate with the captain standing about three meters away. Don’t you think that might introduce some tension into my life?”
B’Elanna winced. There weren’t many people she was less likely to become friends with than the optimistic, career-oriented young Ensign Kim, but life on Voyager had produced many stranger pairings. (Like you and your boyfriend, B’Elanna thought sardonically.) The words came hard, but she knew she should say them: “Sorry, Harry. Go ahead.”
“Never mind,” Harry said, his voice sounding less frayed. “I just wanted to let you know what we’ve found so you don’t make yourself too crazy.”
“Well?”
“The problem wasn’t in the shields,” Harry said. “The problem was with the subatomic structure of the transport and everything and everyone on it. I ran my scans past the Doctor and he agrees with my theory: All of the matter in the system has subtly different properties. As soon as we got outside the range of the white dwarf, conditions were too different. The forces that held the atoms together collapsed.”
B’Elanna held her peace for a count of five, then said, “You call me crazy? That’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard. How can the laws of physics be so different in such a localized area?”
“I don’t know,” Harry rasped. “And I don’t know how long we can be here and not be affected. We need to explain this to the captain….”
The word “captain” reminded B’Elanna that Ziv and his hara had been on the bridge when their ship had crumbled into shards. “What happened to the Monorhans on Voyager? Did they…?”
“…Disintegrate? No, they’re all right. We stopped before we crossed completely into normal space. Captain Janeway has them in her ready room, trying to calm things down, explain….” He paused, collecting himself. “I don’t even know what to tell her. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“None of us has ever seen anything like this. That’s what we say every day around here until we do see it. And then we deal with it.” Harry did not reply, and B’Elanna feared that she might have overwhelmed him. Reeling herself in, she said, “I haven’t seen all the sensor logs yet. I can come up in a little bit so we can run them together.”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “Sure. Do you want to rendezvous in astrometrics and use the big screen?”
“Will Seven be there?”
“Probably. It’s her domain.”
“Then, no,” B’Elanna said. “I don’t.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on her, B’Elanna. She tries.”
“She tries to be annoying,” B’Elanna spat. “And smug and superior. And she succeeds. You should stop treating her like she’s a human being, Harry. She’s not. She’s a machine in the shape of a human being.”
“And you’re an engineer,” Harry said. “So you should really get along.”
“Shut up, Harry. I have work to do.”
“We all have work to do. Come up when you have time.”
Disaster plus 10 minutes
“Gentlemen, fellow sapients, my friends…” The Monorhan’s clicking and thrumming was almost deafening in the relatively close quarters of Captain Janeway’s ready room, but Neelix doggedly continued to try to get the aliens’ attention. “I don’t know what we can do at this time, in the face of such a tragedy, but if there’s anything…anything at all…” But it was no use; the Monorhans had drawn into a tight circle around their captain, each one facing inward, chirping madly. Helplessly, he offered, “Perhaps a nice cup of tea?” then almost smacked himself on the forehead. Who would want tea at a time like this? He realized the answer in an instant: I do. Deciding he could do nothing else for the Monorhans until they decided to calm down, Neelix slipped around the group to the replicator.
“Oolong tea,” he said into