String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [35]
“I don’t know, Kathryn. The ship was probably going to be destroyed anyway. At least we saved Ziv and his hara. We can take them home.”
“But no more than that?” Kathryn asked. “What if we know something that would spell the difference between their entire civilization being wiped out or saved? Don’t we have a responsibility?”
“Perhaps,” Chakotay said. “But how far can we go before it’s too far? These people haven’t developed FTL technology yet. And while I don’t think we could have abandoned them, we might have to consider carefully whether General Order One allows us to do more than take them home.”
“And then watch them die in our monitors as we fly away.”
“We might not be able to prevent it, Kathryn,” Chakotay said. “We may appear to have unlimited resources to these people, but you and I know that isn’t true. How much are you willing to expend in order to try to fix a situation that can’t be fixed?”
“I don’t know the answer to that, Chakotay,” Kathryn said. “But I’m not ready to give up.”
“No one is asking you to give up, but if the time comes, I’m going to step in and remind you. Are you going to be prepared to listen to me?”
“Of course. That’s why I give you whiskey.” She raised her glass in salute, then tossed off the remaining liquor. Chakotay raised his glass in response, but knew there was no more to drink and he wasn’t going to ask for more. He decided then and there that if the captain ever again asked him if he wanted a drink, he would politely refuse. Though he knew his job was to tell the captain everything she should know in order to make a decision, telling her everything he felt would set a dangerous precedent.
Sem, the rih-hara-tan of the Eleventh Tribe, was not pleased. Even though Ziv could not see her, Ziv heard it in her voice, in the pauses between sentences. He knew her moods well, better than anyone in the universe. Even better than she knows them herself, Ziv reflected. She was not, however, giving in to her displeasure, her anger or suspicion. Sem had listened to Ziv’s report and understood all the implications, spoken and unspoken. She knew that he and his hara were being treated as honored guests, but were, in fact, only a whisker’s breadth from becoming prisoners. Ziv had no doubt that the weakest of his hara could break any of the Voyagers in two with the merest blow, but he also had seen their forcefields. If Sem ordered them to attack the Voyagers, to try to take possession of their ship, he and his comrades were honor-bound to obey, even knowing they could never succeed. Fortunately, Sem was not that stupid. Crazed, sometimes, Ziv thought. Amoral. Remorseless. But stupid? Oh, no, never that.
“So,” she said after pausing to consider his report, “this explains what happened to the ships that preceded yours.”
Ships that preceded mine? Ziv thought. Most of his crew had heard that the city of the Twelfth Tribe had been working to launch a ship, but he had no idea that they—or someone else—had been successful. Glad that Sem could not see him, Ziv replied flatly, “Yes, though there can be no way to know for certain.”
“But we have no other theories at this time.”
Ziv inhaled and tried not to let his thoughts run too far ahead of him. Ships! “The aliens say that the interference from the Blue Eye is strong enough that even their communication systems could not pierce it until we were this close. Perhaps they survived.”
“Yes, perhaps,” the rih-hara-tan said. “Perhaps. We have no way to know. But would you gamble on the outcome, seeing what you have seen?”
Nearby, Ziv felt his hara stir uncomfortably. He knew what they would say if pressed to the point. Though a harat cannot actually read his haran’s thoughts, only a fool would ignore their mood: they would elect to dissolve their fellowship rather than risk their fates in space again.
“But if the aliens are able to pierce this