String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [84]
A voice spoke from the shadows: “Are you two just about through?” Kaytok stepped from the gloom, a large chunk of circuit board carried effortlessly under his right arm. “Because if there’s something you want to settle, please try to do it far away from my shield generator. You have a bad habit of damaging it.”
Seven asked, “Your shield generator? What do you mean? I have observed that Monorhans frequently use collective possessive pronouns.”
Kaytok gently lowered the circuit board to the ground, lead wires jingling against the concrete floor. “I might not say it if any of the others was around, but, yes, I consider it my own. I designed it, built most of it.”
Torres and Seven exchanged glances, then Torres said, “We assumed that this was part of a larger government project, that the shield generator was based on the models being used to protect the cities. That’s not true?”
“The Emergency Council giving us a shield generator to play with?” Kaytok laughed, his large head snaking back and forth. “No, not really something they would do.”
“Then you built this yourself?”
“That’s what I said.”
Torres and Seven looked up at each other again, their movements perfectly synchronized. Seven heard herself say, “Wow.”
Torres murmured, “Indeed.”
Kaytok knelt down next to the circuit board and began clipping leads to the damaged panel. “Amazing what an individual can accomplish, isn’t it?”
Walking down the corridor back to her room, Sem lightly touched the walls as she passed and permitted herself to feel a modicum of delicious satisfaction. I can hear you singing, little minds, she thought. And you can hear me, too, can’t you? These Voyagers—so smug in their superiority. Could any of them do what she could? She knew the answer, but enjoyed asking the question anyway, especially because she was the only one who knew the correct response. But now there was a new question: knowing what she knew, what should she do next?
Feeling the urge to exercise her will once more, Sem concentrated, listened for the song of an unimportant little mind, then chirped a countertone in response. A moment later, nearby, she heard a small pop. Nothing else terribly overt occurred except for the overhead lights dimming. She clicked her tongues together in pleasure. Excellent, she thought. Now her goal would be to find important little minds, and she was certain where she could find some.
When this is all over, Chakotay decided, I’m going to bunk down for a solid twenty-four hours. If he couldn’t arrange that, what was the point of being the commander? Patrolling the bridge, he examined the crew and assessed their preparedness. Fortunately, not everyone on the ship had needed to remain awake for the duration of the crisis. Tom Paris must have found time to sleep for a few minutes, because when they caught each other’s eye, Paris gave him a goofy half-smile, half-smirk. Once upon a time, Paris’s hijinks had irritated Chakotay, but now he knew that the pilot’s cavalier attitude was his way of coping with stress.
Kathryn sat straight-backed in the center seat, alert but quiet. Having told her crew what she expected of them, the captain had subsided into a state of watchful readiness, marshaling her resources. Chakotay tried to figure out when she might have slept in the past thirty-six hours, realized that he couldn’t think of a time when she might, and decided that instead of going to his quarters when this was all over, he would make sure she went to hers. And that, he concluded, is really the point of being the commander.
Completing his round, Chakotay stopped at the tactical station and cocked an eyebrow at Tuvok, who nodded once. “Status, Harry?” Chakotay said.
From his station, Kim said, “Engineering asked for five more minutes to ‘batten down the hatches.’ ”
Chakotay smiled. It was good to know Bill Jango was down there. “That should give you just enough time to get down to sickbay then.”
Kim cocked his head, the question implicit in his expression.
“The captain said she’d like you down there in case something