String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [64]
“When did your scientists determine this?”
“Some say they knew as long ago as forty cycles, but I was only very young then. Certainly it has only been during the past ten that any concerted effort has been made to protect ourselves.”
“The shields over your cities?” Chakotay asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“What about the energy pulse that put us here? What do you know about it?”
“Very little,” Sem said. “Those who did it were…” She searched for a word. “Outlaws? Outcasts? I hear the correct word in my head, but neither of those is correct. The Emergency Council believes they are trying to find a way around the inevitable.”
“The inevitable?” Chakotay asked. “What do you think is inevitable?”
Sem looked first at Ziv, then at Morsa, still quietly eating. “That our planet will die. That we must find a way to leave it or die, too.”
The words hung in the air for several seconds and Chakotay considered trying to find something reassuring to say, but before he could say anything, someone else broke the silence.
Ziv said, “And tell them the last thing, Sem. Tell the whole truth. Explain how we already know that not everyone will escape. Explain how you and the other rih-hara-tan have decided who may be allowed to quietly perish.”
“That’s Voyager,” Torres said, pointing at a tiny blip on the monitor built into the console. “They knew she was up there. Not a very friendly thing to do, shooting off their little cannon.”
“Just because we found Voyager in their scans,” Seven retorted, “does not mean the Monorhans knew she was there. Researchers frequently have tunnel vision.” She was surprised when the engineer let the comment pass without a response. Likely, Torres did not consider herself a researcher and so did not perceive the statement as an insult.
“We need to get this panel off and take a look inside,” Torres said, addressing the immediate problem. She pointed at the quick scans she had performed on the console and the large array on the roof. “Is it just me, or does this remind you of a deflector dish?”
The similarity was slight, but Seven had to admit these sorts of intuitive leaps frequently baffled her. “Perhaps,” she said. “Do you believe the Monorhans were attempting to upgrade their shielding technology?”
“I don’t know,” Torres said while opening her tool kit. “It’s a possibility. We may need to talk to some of these people later and find out what they think they’re doing.”
“They will probably not want to talk with us,” Seven said. “I am under the impression that they are not affiliated with the planet’s emergency planning council.”
“Which suggests another question,” Torres said, feeling around the edge of the panel. “Here, hold this light so I can see.” Carefully running her fingers along the seam of a console, she found a recessed catch. “If these guys aren’t part of the Emergency Council, why hasn’t anyone come looking for them?”
Seven had also been wondering about this and decided there was only one possible conclusion. “If this is some kind of deflector array, the energy wave may not affect their technology, but only ours.”
In the shadow cast by the lamp, Seven saw Torres make an unhappy face. “Seems unlikely,” she said. “More likely the officials detected the wave, but don’t have the resources to do anything about…Oh, wait, I got it.” The panel popped off the console with a quivering twang.
The shadows disappeared from Torres’s face in a blaze of white light. Seven’s ocular implant attempted to parse the event and capture every moment, but the result was only a sputtering mélange of images: Torres’s eyes snapping shut as her hair flew back; tiny bits of steel and