String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [43]
“Got it, sir.”
“Are you watching the airlock?”
“Yes, sir. Are we expecting to see something?”
“No. Just being careful.”
The Monorhans, too, were being careful, both of them taking their time picking across the broken concrete outside the airlock.
“Can you run a scan on the forcefields, Smothers? And anything you can tell me about their environment suits would be useful.”
Smothers attempted to coax useful information out of the shuttle’s small sensor package. “Not much on the shields, sir. I’m reading about twenty gigawatts, a lot of heat radiating into the atmosphere. If their planet wasn’t already such a mess, I’d say that these fields weren’t doing them much good. Otherwise, there’s nothing revolutionary about what I’m seeing: they’re the great-great-grandfathers of Voyager’s shields.”
“And the suits?”
“Again, nothing too interesting. These might be the short-range version, because they’re not recycling water or atmo. Just a small air bottle on the back, some decent linings in the hoods to keep the rads out. That’s it, really.”
“All right, Ensign. They’re close enough. Drop the shields and open the hatch. Let’s get out of here as fast as we can.”
The Monorhans knuckled into the shuttle—the first one’s shoulders were as wide as the hatch—then waited patiently while Chakotay and Smothers helped them remove their bulky hoods and packs. When they were uncovered, Chakotay was surprised to find that the second figure was a female. Though shaped like Ziv and the others, she was a third smaller and wore the same shapeless tunic Shalla Kiiy had. Fortunately, Tuvok’s patch to the universal translator worked with the shuttle’s smaller unit, and they were able to communicate.
A thought struck Chakotay suddenly, one that he realized should have occurred to him hours ago. “Only two of you?” he asked.
The female replied, “Yes, just two. Did Shalla Kiiy indicate there might be more?”
“No,” Chakotay said. “We don’t know much about this yet, but Captain Ziv’s hara is larger. It never occurred to me that a hara could be only two.”
“We are not a hara, Commander,” the woman said. “There is no formal link between us. Not all Monorhans choose to be in hara, sometimes for personal reasons, sometimes professional. Some occupations make the hara link quite impractical. Others are simply congenitally incapable—a small, sad minority. For myself, my life has taken me down many paths. I have been in hara, both as haran and haras, but today I travel only as myself, as Sem, rih-hara-tan.”
“Sem?” Chakotay asked. “Aren’t you Ziv’s leader?”
“The rih-hara-tan of Ziv’s tribe,” Sem said. “Yes.”
Chakotay studied the small figure for several seconds, trying to read something in her expression, but finally had to give up. She was, after all, an alien. He could not know what was in her heart by what he read on her face. Not any more than I could with most humans, he concluded, but there was something…something about her that made the skin on the back of his scalp itch. “All right,” Chakotay finally said. “If you’ll just strap yourselves in, we’ll be on our way.”
Settling into the pilot’s chair, Chakotay softly asked Smothers if the shields were back up. “Just as soon as the door shut behind them, sir.”
“Good job, Ensign. Get us back home. I’m going to mind the sensors as we fly.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chakotay kept a careful watch on the sensor output, finding nothing unusual as they traveled, but only really letting out his breath completely when he picked up Voyager on the short-range scopes. Just as they slipped into the shuttlebay, the second shuttle, with B’Elanna at the pilot’s station, was lifting up off the deck. B’Elanna even waved and smiled as they slid past and through the forcefield.
Maybe I’ve been letting my sense of caution get the best of me, he thought as the shuttle’s pads clicked against the deck. Maybe everything will be fine. But it was